Lessons to Understand Art History
February 15, 2025
WhiteBox, founded in Chelsea in 1998 as a pioneering alternative art space, has been a catalyst for bold contemporary initiatives, providing a platform for artists shaping the global and New York City art scenes. As an artist-run nonprofit, it has served as a laboratory for commissions, exhibitions, salon series, and educational programs. With over 25 years of programming, continuing its Chelsea tradition, WBX champions risk-taking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and socially engaged art, cementing its role in the city's artistic ecosystem.
The WhiteBox SIP—Staff & Internship Involvement Program—is a recognition and development initiative that advances this mission by offering hands-on experience in curation, exhibition production, and public programming, nurturing emerging arts professionals and ensuring WhiteBox remains a vibrant hub for creativity, research, and cultural dialogue.
In 2025, WhiteBox presents two key projects: Lessons to Understand Art History by curator and program developer Yohanna M. Roa, and Have a Good One!, a collaborative initiative by Winter ’24–Spring ’25 interns Christy Li and Debora Maurelli.
"Have a Good One!" examines the rising cost of living and eating in New York City—and other hyper-urbanized cities worldwide—by transforming the grocery store into a site of critical engagement.
Through subtle artistic interventions camouflaged within a real bodega, the exhibition critiques the normalization of inflated prices and exposes the absurdities of economic inequality embedded in our everyday lives, even in meeting basic needs. The grocery store, a mundane yet essential space, becomes a microcosm of contemporary capitalism’s surreal contradictions: a place where abundance is displayed yet remains out of reach for many.
The artworks seamlessly integrate into the store’s vending process, drawing attention to the tension between privilege and necessity. By embedding art into this familiar yet fraught environment, the exhibition disrupts the routine act of shopping, encouraging audiences to confront how value is constructed and commodified—even for the simplest requirements of life.
The title, drawn from the casual farewell often heard at checkouts, hints at a more profound ambiguity. This seemingly trivial phrase gestures toward broader questions of value, worth, and what constitutes a "good one."
Embracing humor, irony, and play as tools for critique, "Have a Good One!" reframes the grocery store as a site of paradox—where scarcity, abundance, necessity, and luxury uneasily coexist. By blurring the line between art and everyday objects, the exhibition challenges viewers to look closer at what often goes unnoticed or is accepted as "normal."
Artists are invited to respond to these tensions by creating works that challenge visitors' perceptions of products, occupying the liminal space between purchasable goods and works of art. Through their unique perspectives and mediums, artists are encouraged to expose the absurdity of the "gentrification" of even the most mundane objects, reframing them to question their value, significance, and role in consumer culture. Engaging with the delicate balance between survival and excess, the works will seamlessly adapt to the grocery store’s context, provoking questions about the disparities and contradictions of the modern economy.
Yasmeen Abdallah
Tea Vines, 2015-ongoing
Assorted tea, yarn, fabric, circular hoops
Variable dimensions
Tea Vines is an interactive sculptural artwork that reimagines gathering around the water cooler. Finger-knit yarn vines hold fresh tea bags, ready for use. Visitors choose a mug, fill it with hot water, and steep their tea directly from the vines, creating a shared ritual of quiet connection. As tea bags are removed, they drip onto a handmade white rug, forming a collective painting of stains. This evolving piece, which has existed as both performance and sculpture since 2014, reflects tea’s role across cultures—as a moment of introspection, community, and renewal. Used tea bags, once discarded, gain new life, symbolizing memory, time, and transformation.
Adina Andrus
Fortunes of Comfort - selection of work, 2020
Glazed stoneware, metal, plastic wrapper and 24k gold leaf
Variable dimensions
The Fortunes of Comfort series explores the yearning for belonging in a new place and highlights the nostalgic connections sparked by familiar foods. It draws from Andurs' own experiences, as well as those of many immigrants she knows, capturing the thrill and tenderness of discovering childhood food items in grocery stores across NYC. Each piece is designed to express the tension between an idealized “back-home” and the deliberately chosen new home of present life. Each amulet is crafted from ceramic and adorned with beads wrapped in plastic food packaging.
Silvia Francis Berry
Jewel wasps and cockroaches, 2025
Print on paper, series of three
Variable dimensions
The artwork tells the story of a process that has been present in nature for a long time: the zombification of cockroaches by emerald (or jewel) wasps. Through a highly detailed and meticulous process that involves several steps, these wasps stun the cockroach, putting it in a state of drownsiness, and ultimately transform it into the perfect place to lay their egg. The cockroach, "parked" in a sort of tomb, will become the food source for the new emerald wasp, which will be the only one to emerge alive from the grave.
This process is narrated in the form of an illustrated story in three phases, depicted in three different chapters, on three different cockroach traps. The trap can even be assembled, blending in perfectly among supermarket products.
A brutal and normalized act that represents the natural way in which emerald wasps reproduce. These two opposite poles serve as a parallel to tell another paradoxical story: that of a population suffering from inflation, unable to change things, and how the wealthiest and most powerful continue to demand more at the expense of those struggling to make ends meet. Common people are "zombified" by capitalism, which makes them believe in essential objects that only serve to fuel a market of false needs.
Lindsay-Ann Chilcott
Artificial Appetite - selection of works, 2022
Cardboard, electrical wires, liquid glass, metal, plastic, and wax paper
Variable dimensions
Chilcott repurposes electrical wires and other discarded matter from Canadian landfills to explore the relationship between society's natural perception and the online world. Her work carries a social responsibility, as she finds meaning in the wire itself. By isolating electrical wires from their intended purpose of online communication, she segregates digital influence from the tangible world. Activism is central to her practice: she uses iconography that is universally readable to address major themes in her work, such as consumerism, posthumanism, pop culture, and satire.
Yen Yen Chou
Sweet Jiggles - selection of works, 2019
Acrylic and glitters on flexible urethane foam
Variable dimensions
Drawing from my personal experience of overindulgence in sugary treats and childhood memories of longing for colorful candies, "Sweet Jiggles" explores obsession, sensation, and the complex interplay of sensory delight and unfulfilled cravings. Through their organic and tactile forms, these drippy sculptures serve as an escape from the endless desire for sweets—indulging in their visual allure, even when they don’t always taste as good as they look.
Angelique De Castro
Waruchan mugs, 2024
Ceramics
4 x 3.5 x 3.5 in, 5.25 x 3.5 x 3.5 in, 3 x 4.5 x 3.5 in
Instant ramen is a post-war bodega staple beloved by the budget conscious college students and residents of food deserts, like some neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY. It has become increasingly expensive in part due to the rising cost of production and inflation; a single serving pack of used to cost under a dollar now costs $1.50 - 5 depending on the brand at my local bodega. I grew up with the Maruchan brand, whose mascot I'd grown fond of– and by extension the brand. Out of nostalgia and sometimes out of necessity, I buy the brand when it's available despite the rising cost. When I buy instant ramen in a disposable styrofoam cup, I contend with the conflicting realities of living budget consciously day-to-day and its impact on the environment, the latter of which impacts the market forces driving the cost of instant ramen. This tension inspired me to make a series of ceramic mugs I dubbed "Waruchan". Each mug costs $45 to reflect the labor and cost-of-living expenses as an artisan. Ceramic, a medium antithetical to the disposable, cheap attributes of instant ramen, elevates this humble product, but makes it out of reach for many. As the cost of instant ramen continues to climb, how can we enshrine our nostalgia and fulfill our basic needs more sustainably? Why must this sustainability come at a cost to the individual?
Noah Fischer
The Siren Newspaper, 2025
Printed Newspaper
33 x 22.5 in
The dreaded moment is upon us – an era of political extremism even more intense than the last one. The prospect of living in a country with a president who proudly proclaims that he’ll be a dictator on day one, who fills his cabinet with cronies and stacks our courts with theocrats is nothing short of terrifying. Most of us want gun control, birth control and healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us, but we’ve been outmaneuvered by SuperPACs and let down by the politicians they fund. Today, the future does look grim, but we can’t allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear or hopelessness. If we abandon all efforts to imagine a better way to live just because we lost an election, we’ll become exactly the kind of people authoritarian rulers like to push around – passive and fatalistic. MAGA is coming for our rights, our schools, our books, our news, and our environmental regulations. Let’s not sit back! Let’s work together – and make it fun! Nothing irks those who believe in their absolute power more than being laughed at. Let’s skewer them with humor and expose the absurdity and pettiness of their goals.
Abby Goodman
Happy you - selection of works, 2024
Giclee Print
14” x 16”
These bright, colorful, giclee prints represent artwork from my public art project called the Dolly Files, which brings fine art to a NYC audience in an informal, portable gallery setting. The artwork for this project is from my Take Out Series, a collection of hand painted and printed botanicals arranged in iconic packaging. The artwork is inspired by the design origins associated with these classic containers, art history, the language of flowers, sustainability, multiculturalism, and NYC street culture.
Yeeun Joo
Untitled (Happy New Year), 2025
Inkjet Prints mounted with wire
Variable dimensions
Untitled (Happy New Year) explores the grocery market as a fundamental gathering place within the Asian community. When my grandparents and I first moved to the United States, our first instinct was to seek out a Korean or Asian market. These spaces serve as cultural anchors, offering a sense of familiarity and belonging in an unfamiliar land.
Around the New Year, grocery stores become more than just places to shop—they transform into spaces of connection where people gather to share food, traditions, and moments of togetherness. Their footsteps and emotions intertwine within the aisles, forming an invisible thread of community. Through this work, I seek to reexamine the role of these markets, not only as physical spaces but as vessels of memory, identity, and the things we carry—both literally and emotionally—when we leave them.
Nicholas Leeper
Madonna and Child (Tomatokos), 2024
Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Panel
15" x 10"
The Virgin Mary advertises Christ as a can of soup, a symbol of nourishment accessible to all through mass production. She offers the Anointed One freely, fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy: “You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat… you shall delight in rich fare” (Isaiah 55:1-2). At this utopian banquet, “he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples… he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces” (Isaiah 25:6-8).
In the present age, we labor for our sustenance. Yet there is hope for the future where nourishment is accessible to all people regardless of merit or wealth.
At this intersection of a New Heaven and a New Earth is the bodega. It is where all are welcome to come and find affordable food. Here the community comes together, and neighbors of all nations gather to enjoy a meal.
The corner store is the New Kingdom. God’s promise converges here, and it comes through a messiah, who comes in the form of food that is free for all to eat and multiplied and distributed to the world. Through this figure, God establishes a New Covenant that offers new life to all people. In this place and through this can, hunger ends, suffering ceases, and even death dies so that all may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).
Kara Li
Deptford - selection of works, 2024
print on paper
Variable dimensions
The ongoing photography series "Deptford" captures the market street right by where I live. The tango of bargaining a vinyl you've been looking for ages, of hands passing fish wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, of the scent of rain mixed with fresh cut pineapples...It's a market I returned to week after week, drawn by the colourful chaos and the relationships built over small conversations and shared nods of recognition. Within the layered streets of South East London, its resonance travels across the Atlantic to the urban pulse of New York City. I want to depict Deptford Market as both a specific locale and a universal metaphor; the series invites spectators to consider the tension between necessity and luxury, community and isolation, survival and indulgence. Both cities, shaped by histories of migration, commerce, and relentless gentrification, reflect the paradox of abundance and exclusion that defines hyper-urbanised landscapes. This photographic dialogue asks us to confront how these parallel realities-separated by oceans yet bound by shared struggles-reveal the precarious nature of existence in modern cities.
Helen Lin
can you grab these on the way in (series), 2023
Yiuting shopping bag, thread
9 x 16 inches (22,8 x 40,6 cm)
"can you grab these on the way in" is a series of repurposed fabric shopping bags from Chinese supermarkets in Flushing, folded and sewn using shibori fabric manipulation technique. Despite being constructed to serve as a sustainable alternative to plastic bags, this bag can often be found in landfills and littered across the streets of New York City. The time-intensive manipulation process turns this common item into something special. The title references the everyday action of asking a family member to help grab the bags of groceries on the way back into the house from the supermarket.
Alisa Ochoa
Fruits of Labor, Selected works, 2020&2021
Ceramic, underglaze and glaze
5 x 6 x 4 in
Fruits of Labor is a series of trompe l’oeil fruit rattles made of clay. What began as a playful activity with my child during the early days of the global pandemic gradually took on a life of its own. Over time, I sculpted a persimmon, bananas, mango, papaya, and finally, a jackfruit. These forms embody time—just as fruits are often used to mark fetal growth during pregnancy: a blueberry at seven weeks, a papaya at 24 weeks, and so on. The rattles serve as a visual pun on the phrase enjoy the fruits of one’s labor, reflecting both the creative labor of an artist and the unseen labor of caregiving.
Onaje Grant-Simmonds
Voyagers, 2024
Oil on Canvas
32 x 54 in
Brooklyn is inhabited by a vibrant assembly of immigrant communities, many of which have dwindled due to raising prices and gentrification. One of these communities is the Caribbean population of Crown Heights, and ten years ago its streets were filled with block parties and children playing in the summertime. The artist Onaje Grant-Simmonds mourns the loss of this idyllic past and his own childhood through expressionist vignettes of the borough that weave urbanscapes with tropical imagery. “Voyagers” merges the symbolic Atlantic Ave with a Bajan shore.
Debora Maurelli (Italy, 2000) is a curator, artist and art organizer. She holds a master’s degree in Visual Arts from IUAV University of Venice and a bachelor’s in Architectural Design from the Politecnico di Milano. Her education is further enriched by a master’s in Architecture and Museography for Archaeology, deepening her exploration of spatial design, heritage conservation, and exhibition curation. She has taken on a transversal role in artistic and cultural management, exhibition production, and installation, collaborating with various organizations in the art and non-profit sectors.
Her practice moves across the boundaries of visual arts, curatorship, multimedia installations, and writing, centering on posthuman perspectives. She investigates non-anthropocentric modes of interaction, fostering new relational dynamics between humans, non-humans, spaces, and objects. Through her research, she tries to challenge traditional perception, exploring multispecies entanglements and expanded ways of being.
As an artist, she has exhibited in Unfolding Roots (L’Appartement 49c, New York City, 2024), Artefici del Nostro Tempo (Padiglione 29, Venice, 2024), and Components of Existence (10 & zero uno, Venice, 2024). Her curatorial projects include Components of Existence (10 & zero uno, Venice, 2024) and she has been part of the curatorial collective Co_Atto in Milan. Her work is part of the collection of the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna Ca’ Pesaro in Venice.
Christy Li (Beijing, China, 2001) is an emerging curator whose work bridges politics and art, reflecting her academic background at Pitzer College. She has interned at Pitzer College Art Galleries in Claremont, California, and Yiwei Gallery in Venice Beach, California, assisting curators in producing diverse exhibitions.
In the summer of 2024, Christy curated two exhibitions in Beijing. Intertwined Introspection: A Dialogue Between External and Spiritual Realm explored the complex relationship between personal identity and societal structures, providing a space for reflection on how individuals navigate cultural and spiritual landscapes. She also curated Rebirth: Contemporary Perspectives on the Heritage of Chinese Art, which reinterpreted traditional Chinese artistic practices through a contemporary lens. These exhibitions showcased her ability to merge cultural heritage with contemporary discourse and foster critical dialogue.
Christy plans to pursue a graduate program in Arts Management in Fall 2025, aiming to establish a nonprofit platform that amplifies the voices of emerging artists of color. She is committed to supporting underrepresented communities in the arts and fostering inclusivity within the art world.
Through her curatorial practice, Christy strives to create spaces that celebrate diverse artistic voices and contribute to a more inclusive and innovative art community.
