march 2 - march 31, 2024
opening reception: Saturday, march 2, 5:30-8pm

a room without a house

a plus/space installation by

Sarah crofts

Sarah Crofts documents the changing landscape of her Red Hook, Brooklyn neighborhood and re-maps her great grandmother Maria Marchio’s home which was demolished in a sweeping effort to modernize North Adams, Massachusetts in the mid twentieth century. 

In response to a series of nearby building demolitions in 2019, Crofts began to make lumen prints in situ, pressing sheets of analogue black and white photo paper against newly erected construction barriers and old overgrown fences, developing a personal way to map the changes in the environment, through a haptic approach that confronts problems of memory and the power of erasure, with fragile images that parallel the changing terrain. 

Several years into the project Crofts realized her concerns echoed the story of her hometown, North Adams, MA, where two major infrastructure projects razed huge swaths of the city and displaced people like her great-grandmother Maria Marchio, an Italian immigrant, and replaced their homes with parking lots and a highway bypass, a stark visual precursor to the city’s economic collapse. 

Through a series of lumen prints, visual research and family history A Room Without a House weaves together fragmented narratives across four generations of women in Crofts’ family in a documentary project moving at the speed of near stillness.

about the artist

Sarah Crofts is a multi-disciplinary artist working with time-based processes to examine power dynamics embedded in physical and social landscapes. These concerns grew from her childhood in North Adams, Massachusetts, a town which endured two significant erasure events whose impact echoes through multiple generations, having displaced elder members of Crofts’ family, it now informs her critique of real estate development in her home of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

GALLERY HOURS:

Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6pm, or by appointment. Please email hanne@fivemyles.org, or call 718-783-4438.

DIRECTIONS:

Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Crystal Hudson, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.