Diane Chang

CHRISTINA STAHR: “STUDY FOR GOING UNDER”

ommunity is a peculiar thing. For undergraduates at Columbia, there is a general sense that divergent communities rarely converge. The lively crowd that filled the basement of St. Paul’s chapel on opening night of “Expanding Perspectives” seemed a rare exception: the arts community, expansion activists, students of color, Harlem residents and other loosely affiliated individuals rubbed shoulders as they took in artistic works that provided “a visual representation of what Manhattanville actually is and what Harlem is,” according to exhibit coordinator Matt Clements, CC ’09.

After the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification’s February declaration of blight on South Lawn, the exhibit, a collaboration between SCEG and Postcrypt Gallery, continued a newfound creativity in tactics of raising awareness of the issues surrounding Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion plans. The content of the exhibited artwork demonstrated that interest in these issues doesn’t always stem from a deep -seated understanding of life in West Harlem. Some student works propagated romanticized images of a pastel-colored Harlem and cheerful residents, which problematically obscures the deep-rooted problems that have formed as a result of Harlem’s tenuous relationship with the outside world. Works by anthropology students were also particularly conspicuous for their visitor-in-a-strange-land tone.

A few pieces, however, were more explicit in their message. A paper sculpture of a fire hydrant, created by Miriam Rubin and another exhibit coordinator, Joanna Siegel (both CC ’07), contained two hoses labeled “197- C” and “197- A” to represent the university’s and the local community board’s different proposed expansion plans. The hose representing CB9’s 197-A plan hung limp and broken. Perhaps the best example of effective activist art was Sophie Monahon’s wheatpastes of dejected, blight-wracked owls. Monahon said that she created the owls last semester “as commentary on graffiti and blight, and how graffiti is passed off so often as vandalism [when] they’re always sort of commenting on themselves.” Finding that they were particularly pertinent to the Manhattanville expansion, Monahon posted the wheatpastes around campus to coincide with SCEG’s February action, for which her work received mention in the Gothamist.

Aside from student art, works by established professional artists and Harlem residents varied vastly. While some abstract pieces were chosen by the directors for the indirect expansion-related meaning that could be extracted, a few dealt graphically with the changes that artists observe in their neighborhood.

Christina Stahr’s “Study for Going Under” included a photograph of a view of the 12^th Avenue viaducts that is also captured in photographs used on the “neighbors” page of Columbia’s web site. Whereas the latter focused on peopleless streets and filthy cars, Stahr said, “My interest is not in documenting this amazing monument of engineering skill, but the life that takes place underneath the bridge.”

The series in development will display the different sections of life under the long subway bridge. By superimposing strips of delicate silvery paper across the top of the viaduct, Stahr uses the bridge “as a kind of frame or window to look at the street life on the sidewalks and in the shadows of the bridge,” which she said includes beauty supply stores, mechanics’ workshops and street carts that sell food to factory workers. These businesses flourished because the space under the subway was viewed as undesirable real estate for a long time. “The factories are all closing now, or moving to other places. They’re going to all disappear,” she noted.

Stahr and her husband Paul Hunter, one of whose works was also displayed, have worked from a studio in Manhattanville since 1981. Hunter’s “Cityscape Uptown” shows a black silhouette of West Harlem buildings—including the one that houses his studio on 132nd Street—underneath a turbulent bronze leaf sky. This piece was created almost presciently in 1993, considering that Stahr and Hunter are now uncertain whether they will be able to stay after their two years’ lease ends and rent rises.

Six photographs by Alexia Innis showed the effects of secondary displacement that is already taking place in lower Harlem, which will undoubtedly accelerate with the Manhattanville expansion. One photograph depicts the massive apartment building at 3333 Broadway, which has recently been taken out of the Mitchell-Lama Program for low-income housing. The numerous blank windows provide a chilling indication of how many people will be driven out of their homes by a merciless housing market.

Jose Taveras, a Hunter College freshman who attended the exhibit, lives in the building with his mother and two siblings. He wrote in an email, “The rents for a three bedroom apartment doubled in two years. Also, many businesses are leaving or raising their prices to keep up with the rent of the space that they have. So many people are leaving the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is changing too fast. My family is scared that we are eventually going to get pushed or bought out.”

Innis’ “Locked Gates,” a close-up of the campus gate behind Earl Hall, pointed to the kind of relationship the Morningside campus has with the outside community. Exhibit coordinator Clements commented, “There’s not going to be any gates on the new campus, but they’re all going to be glass buildings; the architecture won’t necessarily fit in with the surrounding area so it’s almost gated buildings. Columbia says, ‘We’re going to be big and open so you can see what’s going on inside.’ You can see what’s going on inside but you can also see that what’s going on inside is for students.”

Perhaps the most poignant piece at the exhibit explored the component of abandonment that is never included in discussions of blight. On two panes of glass from her apartment door that had been pierced by bullets after a shooting, Stephanie Mulvihill created ink drawings of children sitting on an apartment stoop and St. George slaying a dragon, creating a parallel between day-to-day life in Harlem and a tale in which an act of heroic violence ended a traditional sacrifice of the innocent. The piece, which Mulvihill dedicated to her students in her description, not only contextualized the images of Harlem that the university has presented in its planning, it emphasized the people that should rightfully be at the center of the debate on the expansion process: Harlem residents, and especially young Harlemites who will most deeply bear the impact of the changes that come with Columbia’s expansion.

Despite the varying levels of understanding of West Harlem and its residents, the buzz of the crowd at “Expanding Perspectives” made evident that activists are succeeding in keeping expansion issues on students’ minds. New York State Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Thompson from Bronx County, who visited the show and also creates poetry and photography of his own, said, “Artists have a high level of communication. That’s why people in the political realm really fear them.”

The “Expanding Perspectives” coordinators are following up the exhibit with discussions, an open mic and other artistic awareness-raising events for March and April in conjunction other campus groups. Considering the interest level at the exhibit, campus communities are increasingly joining Harlem communities in solidarity, all of whose concerns the university administration will have to contend with.