Ridgewood, New York
Group Exhibition
Spirit Rules Secretly Alone the Body Achieves Nothing
TempestAnahita Akhavan, Nedda Atassi, Sadaf Azadehfar, Chris Baker, Miguel Bendaña, Angélica Maria Millán Lozano, Andy Marlowe, Richard Medina, April Soetarman "I am the Waters, unique, without second. That is where I evolved, on the great occasion of my floating that happened to me. I am the one who once evolved – Circlet who is in his egg. I am the one who began therein, (in) the Waters. See, the Flood is subtracted from me: see, I am the remainder. I made my body evolve through my own effectiveness. I am the one who made me. I built myself as I wished, according to my heart." —Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, spell 714, c. 2181–2055 B.C. "XI. HADES Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary. Spirit Rules Secretly Alone The Body Achieves Nothing" —Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red, 1998. Anahita Akhavan (She/her) is an Iranian Canadian artist based in Toronto. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of memory, ornament, architecture, and identity through abstract and decorative motifs that reframe personal and cultural narratives. Working across painting, sculpture, and site-specific installation, she draws from manuscripts and archival references to develop layered compositions that reflect the complexities of belonging and migration. Akhavan has recently attended residencies at the Casa Lü Parque, Mexico City (2026), NARS Foundation, New York (2025); AKA Artist-Run Centre, Saskatoon (2024); and the Banff Artist in Residence program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2024). Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. She holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and a BFA from the University of Tehran. Nedda Atassi is a Syrian-American artist and educator based in New York City. Her ceramics are inspired by nature, modern poetry, Levantine craft traditions, and Islamic philosophy. In her practice, she embraces material imperfection, exploring metaphors of land, body, and memory that emerge in the making process. Through a focus on sculptural vessels, she questions boundaries between art, craft, and design. Sadaf Azadehfar is an Iranian artist based in New York who graduated with an MFA from Hunter College in 2025. Working across ceramics, photography, and installation, their practice explores colonial control of water resources in the Middle East, architecture, and personal memory. Drawing from Persian gardens, archival imagery, and symbolic forms such as fountains and arches, their work examines relationships between power, landscape, and cultural histories. Chris Baker’s ongoing exploration and research of the metropolitan area coastline is the genesis of all his work- conceptual, sculptural and photographic. Every excursion is recorded using GPS and uploaded to Google Earth to create an ever expanding ring around the city’s landmass. Inspired by Dido’s bid for land to build Carthage (also known as the Oxhide Myth), Baker is encircling the city on foot to bring attention to this littoral environment- it’s history, physical changes, environmental condition and how it relates to the present. The treks are documented in photographs and materials for sculpture are gathered at or below the wrack line- the place where floating debris (including the ubiquitous broken reeds for which it is termed) is deposited along the shore by the changing tides. In the studio, Baker creates pieces built entirely of these found 18th and 19th century objects ranging from broken glass and ceramic shards to lost gold rings and silver medals to rusted canon balls and bullets. These archeological artifacts are assembled into artworks concerning Colonialism, Manifest Destiny and so-called Divine Rights. Miguel Bendaña (b. 1988, USA) lives and works. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at James Cope, Dallas (2022), as well as group exhibitions at Ensemble, New York; Chris Andrews, Montréal; Lomex, New York; Mercy Pictures, Auckland; and Lulu, Mexico City. Bendaña co-founded Queer Thoughts, a gallery active from 2012 to 2023. Angélica Maria Millán Lozano is an artist from Bogotá, Colombia currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She creates abstract and figurative compositions on distressed fabrics that explore the layered experience of migration, memory, and faith. Millán Lozano chooses fabrics for her work very carefully – opting for textiles that tell stories of resilience. The pre-worn fabrics reveal evidence of distress, wear and tear, deconstruction, and reconstruction. Millán Lozano received her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Angélica has been a fellow at Smack Mellon, an artist in residence at Bemis Center, Ox Bow School of Art and has shown nationally at Ortega y Gasset Projects, La Salita, Equity Gallery in New York, NY, Jacob Lawrence Gallery at University of Washington in Seattle, Oregon Center for Contemporary Art (formerly Disjecta), and Nationale in Portland, OR. Andy Marlowe (b. 2000) is an artist and writer from the Forgotten Coast of Florida. They have shown with Harsh Collective, All St Gallery, and the Cave Series. They were an artist in residence at the Peter Bullough Foundation and at ChaNorth, and they completed an apprenticeship at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. They are based in New York City. Richard Medina (b. 1999, Chicago, IL) is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited at Tempest Gallery, Field Projects, A Space, and 80WSE. He holds a BFA with Distinction from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2021) and recently received his MFA in Studio Art from New York University (2026). April Soetarman (b. 1990) is an Indonesian-American artist and writer who creates public art, immersive installations, games, and designed objects. Her work uses familiar design languages to explore personal systems and relationships, such as a bureaucratic form to articulate your longing, a museum about the life you might have had, or a board game about being a working artist under capitalism. Her work has been exhibited by the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and CultureHub NY/LA, among others. April also releases work under the name Weird Side Projects for her small experiments in words, code, street art, and feelings.