RIGHT IN THE CENTRE OF MONASTIRAKI, ATHENS, there beats a Southern Bronx pulse at the moment, in the form of the unique group art exhibition entitled “Made in the South Bronx”, at the TAF, The Art Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Vassiliki Vayenou and runs till July 20, adding an interesting multicultural artistic perspective to this already multicultural district, teaming with tourists every summer. But this is not the first time that the artists of this show (Blanka Amezkua, Carey Clark, Linda Cunningham, Mimma Scarpini, Tammy Wofsey), have joined forces.

In 2023, the legendary Margarete Roeder Gallery in New York City presented the five Bronx-based women artists in the exhibition “Bronx Fivefold: Harmonious Convergence”, highlighting the diversity of their visual expression, as well as the creative collaboration born out of 20 years of friendship and artistic comradeship in an art scene that is both unique and dynamic.Extending this multifaceted solidarity and wanting to bring a piece of the South Bronx to Athens, the artists present works in a variety of media in the show “Made in the South Bronx”. They reveal ways in which their daily contact with this particular area of New York City, as residents and active artists, has influenced their visual practice. Their themes include the importance of the cultural heritage bestowed upon us by indigenous peoples, the tragic destruction of life and nature due to human brutality, the transformations of neighborhoods due to gentrification mechanisms, and the personal changes in our emotional and spiritual worlds caused by the interaction with a rapidly changing global socio-political environment. Formally trained as a painter, Mexican-American Blanka Amezkua’s creative practice is greatly influenced by Mexican popular art and culture, from papel picado to comics. She combines traditional and contemporary techniques, as well as socio-cultural mythologies and philosophies to preserve evidence of the past in the present. Honoring the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Amezkua has made research on medicinal plants and flowers from the first book of medicine created in the Americas, the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano (1552). The visual result is a series of papel picado pieces dedicated to the Cempasuchil flower and the California poppy, created in collaboration with maestro don Rene Mendoza from Huixcolotla, Puebla, Mexico in August 2024. Underscoring her ancestors’ respect and admiration for plant diversity, Amezkua pays tribute to the valuable knowledge of Mexico’s ancient and modern culture and its special contribution to world art and science.

Carey Clark’s video installation includes elements that she has been exploring for many years in her current practice. Her idiom involves merging different figurative elements to convey a reality that is not dictated by visual observation, but encapsulates the emotions and sensations experienced. Exploring a new body of work that incorporates her long term interest as a figurative painter in picturing alternate landscapes, cityscapes and portraits through montages of diverse elements, Clark shows a series of painted images-portraits of her Bronx neighborhood combined with projections of videos displaying diverse places from which she got inspiration for her paintings. The overlap between the moving and painted images, the interplay between movement and stillness, allude to the endless impermanence of our world and the multiple rapid or slow, positive and negative transformations it creates- though often invisible to our eyes and not perceived by our direct perception. Linda Cunningham’s work is concerned with time, transience and contradictions, with a particular interest in the architectural and structural remnants of present and past cultures. Her images employ a fluid, calligraphic line and drawing form. With compelling forms she often challenges the viewer to accept the sometimes discomforting content of her works.

In Cunningham’s mixed media “South Bronx Waterfront Sagas” series, her materials and images merge, revealing a broken history of the South Bronx, an area that was once a haven for clean air and greenery. The themes addressed are environmental concerns in relation to industry, urban blight and loss of the natural environment, as well as her concern for her Bronx home area facing the mechanisms of gentrification. Athens residents share a number of parallel concerns, which reveals the universality of socio-political strategies aimed at economic gains at the expense of community cohesion and economic equality, as well as the environment and history of the area. In another series of works, Cunningham addresses the consequences of the climate crisis, depicting the devastating hurricanes that have hit America in recent years.

Mimma Scarpini is an Italian artist living in New York who creates with various visual media. Her work is characterized by both an abstract and figurative idiom, engaging in a dialogue with both the European figurative and abstract art traditions. The triptych drawing on paper entitled “Black Eden” depicts a burnt Garden of Eden, which, according to the Bible, was originally created by God as a Paradise for humans. The medium Scarpini uses, charcoal, is itself burnt organic matter (wood), intensifying the idea of the irreversible evil perpetrated by the human hand. In the mixed media work on paper Maria Mesa fleeing tear gas at the border, she is inspired by the Pulitzer Prize winning Kim Kyung Hoon’s photograph of migrants running away from tear gas at the border with Mexico. Hoon’s photograph captures a paradox, underlined by Scarpini’s use of color: as the woman and her children flee from tear gas, their shadows appear to move in the opposite direction, as though returning to the very place they are trying to escape. This aesthetic detail reflects key elements of the migrant experience: while they flee from danger and economic hardship, they also leave behind their culture and history—an identity that calls them back, like the irresistible pull of a siren’s song.

Tammy Wofsey’s art attempts to condense the essence of the natural world within the confines of paper. Paper acts as the conduit that gives life to all her prints. Her creative pursuit is guided by the goal of creating a deeply human connection to our environment and evoking a sense of slowing down over time. In this series the artist prints blue mountains on large flat paper, engraves them and folds them. According to the artist, the folded paper contains a memory that cannot be erased, telling a story that can be revived at any time with specific stimuli. Images evoke memories and vice versa, and connections between past and present are effortlessly activated: the smoke from the forest fires in California and Canada erases the artist’s memories of her home state of Colorado and the view from her apartment in the South Bronx, respectively. The viewers can pick Wofsey’s works in their hands and process them as they would flip through the pages of a memory-filled photo album. She hopes her work will give viewers the time to ‘slow down’, reflect, experience positive memories and aim for a better balance between their inner and outer worlds.

• “Made in The South Bronx”, group show with works by artists Blanka Amezkua, Carey Clark, Linda Cunningham, Mimma Scarpini, Tammy Wofsey and curated by Vassiliki Vayenou at TAF/ the art foundation, Normanou 5, 105 55, Athens, runs till July 20, 2025. Opening hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 17:00-22:00.

Art Scene Athens’ is written/run by artist/journalist Stella Sevastopoulos. Dedicated to presenting what is happening on the Greek art scene (but not only), and also to giving Greek artists (and artists based in Greece) an international voice on the internet. For more on Stella Sevastopoulos’s art, click here If you would like to be featured in Art Scene Athens, please send email (stelsevas@yahoo.com).