Watermill Center to Host Natacha Mankowski's Open Studio

The Watermill Center will be hosting an Open Studio on Saturday, April 25 where Natacha Mankowski will be presenting her project The Island.

The Open Studio will take place from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Watermill Center located at 39 Watermill Towd Road in Water Mill.

After the Open Studio, starting at 5 p.m., Mankowski will be holding a Q & A, which will be accompanied by a reception.

Mankowski will open her studio again on Monday, April 27 between 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. for those who cannot attend on Saturday.

In The Island, which is a ‘spatial opera’, Mankowski will display a collection of objects, sounds and paintings in the main studio of The Watermill Center and the connecting rooms.

Each painting will be presenting an unknown face of the Brooklyn Navy Yard; as part of a larger narrative process, offering her personal vision of this inner ‘island’ that is the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Through The Island, she critically examines how our digital and globalized era challenges past traces of identity, showing the struggle of maintaining heritage while adapting to a new era.

Seeking to tie together two temporalities, she recalls the story of the Shinnecock nation.

While the history of the Shinnecocks and the Brooklyn Navy Yard have two different origins, they both reflect on the continuation of oral history that allows them to survive, challenging our understanding of history as static and immutable.

Scenography and paintings are by Mankowski with sound in collaboration with Shane Weeks.

To make a reservation for the open studio, click here.

Photo: Natacha Mankowski

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