How would you describe the mission of EMW Gallery?

Mission: Expose the mercuriality of fundamental truths.

Jeremy Endo + Azita Moradkhani live performance at Unbound Bodies opening

EMW Gallery is part of EMW Bookstore (934 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge). It’s both a literal home and community space that houses a phenomenal carefully curated community library, an underground street bio facility, and music, words, and visual arts/performance program. The core mission as a community-oriented space is to serve as a resource for peoples of marginalized identities and empower pursuit of creative visions. The gallery’s explicit mission is to expose the mercuriality of fundamental truths. By this, we aim to critique and challenge themes in which the power of dynamics enforcing colonial rhetoric still run course through curated exhibitions of experimental art. We strive to foster and build a space of inclusivity, love, mutual support, respect, and openness. We welcome everyone into our space, though we’d really like to sustain dialogue with an audience ready to engage in meaningful discourse about building an equitable future.

Tell me more about yourselves, and why were you drawn to EMW Gallery and how did you become involved there?

Stephanie is a practicing designer, archivist, and studying architecture (cofounder of Spaceus.co). Cai is a practicing artist and art historian. We were drawn to the space because we were attracted to its community-oriented mission. One quote that we always like to pass around here at EMW is: 53% of Boston’s population are people of color, but only 3% of arts foundation funding goes toward “culturally specific” groups. We think that this discrepancy is problematic and needs to change. We hope to be able to draw attention to the incredible work that culturally specific groups are doing around the Boston area.

Being that the gallery is a new development within the larger body of EMW Bookstore, how do you see it growing and developing, and what programming do you hope to facilitate in the near future?

Our vision for gallery is that we will continue to thrive while fostering a culture of reciprocity and solidarity. We wish to dissolve the barrier between artist and audience by developing our programming through hosting dynamic workshops, community discussions, and other general events.

In the past month we’ve been working on our new website EMWGallery.life which we are extremely excited to share. It will serve as an archive, calendar, and blog in which we curate local and international content, as well as our own written musings. Some future projects we’re excited about is our next call for art which centers around urban decay, property, and gentrification. Another show we’re putting together is about brown body economy, nudity + muses in collaboration with Rebel Cause. In conjunction, we’ll be hosting bi-weekly drawing sessions with Mirabelle Basquiat, where she will also train other POC interested in modeling.

Above images from Furen Dai’s exhibit Language Producing Factory, 2018