New York, NY - Artists Katherine Jackson and Suchitra Van take over the windows of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to address the idea of journeys and transitions in the daily lives of immigrants. Through etched glass and photographs, this multi-perspective installation explores transitions: between languages, between cultures, between expectations and reality. On exhibition through 7 January, 2009 in the Tenement Windows art space.

Jackson, a multimedia artist, and Van, a photographer and designer, collaborated with ESOL students from CAMBA, a non-profit organization serving diverse communities in Brooklyn, to develop content for the installation. Jackson etched glass panels with words, maps, and diagrams derived from discussions with the students, who hail from eight different countries, including Panama, Bangladesh, Haiti, and Yemen. Lit by LED, these panels are complimented by Van’s photography, which capture aspects of daily life among immigrant families in New York.

Jackson explains the project’s significance: " ‘Where am I going if not toward you?’ is a line from a poem by the contemporary poet David Weiss. We chose it because it beautifully expresses the passages of immigration, which involve not just transitions between places but between actual people."

Katherine Jackson ’s work has appeared in galleries, universities, and other venues in New York, Boston, London, and Berlin. Also a poet, she has contributed drawings and cover designs for contemporary poetry books, and poetry has featured prominently in her artwork. Her most recent work, two large-scale multimedia installations, were shown at Bennington and Hobart/William Smith Colleges. She has taught art in inner-city Boston schools and was a non-resident critic in the MFA program at the Maine College of Art.

Suchitra Van is a principal at Van Studio, a multi-disciplinary studio for design, photography, and fabrication. His photography has been exhibited in Austria, India, and the United States, and his fabricated work has appeared in shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of Art, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Mr. Van has taught at the Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture in Mumbai and at Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Vienna and has been a guest critic at Parsons The New School for Design, City University, and The Pratt Institute. Mr. Van received his architectural degree from The Cooper Union and studied photography at Parsons School of Design.

About CAMBA

CAMBA is a non profit organization with programs throughout the diverse neighborhoods of Brooklyn. CAMBA serves persons of low-income; persons moving from welfare to work; persons who are homeless, at risk of homelessness or transitioning out of homelessness; persons living with or at risk of AIDS and HIV; immigrants and refugees; youth; and other groups who are working to become self sufficient. Read more at www.camba.org.

About the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

The heart of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is its landmark tenement building, home to nearly 7,000 immigrants from more than 20 nations between 1863 and 1935. Anchored in a neighborhood that has long been home to thousands of poor and working class people, the Tenement Museum is dedicated to using the history of its site as a tool for addressing issues that are still pressing today, including immigration, urban housing and public welfare. The organization celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2008 and is a designated historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, an affiliated area of the National Park Service and National Parks of New York Harbor, and an accredited institution of the American Association of Museums.

LOWER EAST SIDE TENEMENT MUSEUM - 91 ORCHARD STREET - NEW YORK CITY T. 212.431.0233 VISIT : WWW.TENEMENT.ORG