SVA Continuing Education and Artist Residency Programs present “Fluid and Flux,” a group exhibition curated by Abbas A. Malaker. Artists in the exhibition include Jonah Brock, Dalit Lapid, Maria Fragoudaki, Michael Hubbard, G Imaginations, Mary T. Konieczny, Sahar Kubba, Elena Loderer, Stephanie Moon, Laiza Onofre, Ivan Perera, Javier E. Piñero, Cristina Querrer, Victoria Rosales, Karma Sirikogar, Rory Torstensson, Rose Wambsganss, Alex Z. Wang, and Sasha Zhitneva.

“How do we present an exhibition of studio practices scattered globally, emerging from vastly different imperatives to make and tell stories? The answer lies not in geographic or stylistic unity, but in recognizing a shared necessity: these artists must create, regardless of—or perhaps because of—the instability that defines contemporary experience. 

Fluid and Flux brings together artists for whom making art is a practice of navigating unstable territories where identity, memory, and perception exist in perpetual transformation rather than fixed states. Their work responds to fundamental questions: What drives us to create when nothing feels certain? How do we shape meaning alongside and against the contemporary world? What forms emerge when we work between permanence and change?

These practices converge around three interconnected approaches: memory as physical necessity, perception as subject and medium, and identity through deliberate instability. This cohort manipulates fragments, archives, and objects not merely to recall the past but to keep it materially present—through persistent handling and reconfiguration, memory becomes tangible, something held, reworked, and sustained through the body's engagement with materials marked by use and time. Through investigations of light, optical experience, and spatial atmosphere, these works make the act of seeing itself visible. Layered environments and structured patterns invite viewers to witness subtle shifts in their own understanding, transforming observation into a participatory experience of time and space. Whether expressed through paint's ambiguity in depicting gender, through reassembled fragments of image and material, or through the body as a contested site where language and lived experience collide, these works resist fixity. Identity emerges as multiples, always in motion.

Against endless content streams and dissolving certainty, these artists propose contemplation as resistance. Through structured solitude, ritual slowness, and sustained attention to ambiguity, they create quiet architectures for holding contradictions: order and decay, clarity and complexity, attachment and release. Their work insists that flux itself—the space between states—demands not paralysis but presence. What happens when we commit to making art within instability rather than despite it? These practices answer through doing, through the irreducible need to create forms that embody perpetual motion while offering momentary sanctuary within it.” – Abbas A. Malakar, curator

Abbas A. Malakar is a curator born in Kolkata, India. He is a graduate of the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. His undergraduate degree (BFA) was completed in Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University (India) in Art History and studio practices in ceramics, textile design, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. His practice spans public media, social practices, and storytelling. From cooking to collective zine-making, his focus is deeply rooted in the everyday need for communal gatherings and public programming. He is the current South Asia Correspondent for IMPULSE Magazine.

He has been involved in various capacities with SVA Galleries (New York), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studios (New York), Arthshila Santiniketan (India), Emami KCC (India), and presented with Praksis Oslo (Norway), Indie Comix Fest (Mumbai, India), Gaysi Zine Bazaar (Mumbai, India), Emami KCC, Arthshila Santiniketan, and Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University.

SVA’s Artist Residencies offer artists, designers and creative thinkers time, space and a supportive community in which to develop ideas and focus on their artistic direction, with summer programs on campus in New York City, as well as year-round in online formats.

In addition to time-honored studio residencies, a variety of innovative professional immersion programs provide opportunities for artists to explore new areas of social and technological practice and engage critically within their field.

A unique combination of creative and professional resources provides a rich environment for growth and opportunity in the current, vibrant art scene.

On-campus housing is available, as are opportunities to display work.

For further information or questions regarding SVA’s Artist Residency Programs, email residency@sva.edu.

SVA’s Artist Residency Programs are hosted by the Division of Continuing Education.

For additional courses and workshops, refer to the Division of Continuing Education.