MULBERRY BEND PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Protocinema presents public programs co-sponsored by Protocinema and Independent Curators International (ICI), accompanying the group exhibition Mulberry Bend with new works by Canal Street Research Association, David L. Johnson, Sidian Liu, and Paul Pfeiffer. Mulberry Bend is curated by Dylan Seh-Jin Kim within Protocinema Emerging Curator Series 2025-2026, mentored by Mari Spirito, Jessica Kwok, and Christopher Y. Lew. Kim’s exhibition explores the relationship between art’s autonomy, use value, and civic function by contending with ongoing social struggles facing the neighborhood.

Tuesday, May 26
8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Canal Street Research Association, Pop-up Redemption Center with Sure We Can & Can Fortunes
at: Columbus Park, between Mulberry & Baxter Street

Canal Street Research Association stages a pop-up redemption center at Columbus Park in collaboration with local canner advocacy organization Sure We Can and artist Siyan Wong. Since the passage of the “Bottle Bill” in the 1980s, a limited assortment of beverage containers have been redeemable for 5 cents. To rally support for the Bigger Better Bottle Bill, that would officially double the refundable deposit, cans and all other beverage containers (except dairy and 100% juice!) will be redeemed for 10 cents each, vastly increasing the efficacy of this recycling program while also supporting our local canner community who make a living by gathering and sorting waste in the neighborhood.

Alongside this temporary redemption center, Canal Street Research Association leads a fortune-telling activity using melted tin to predict and call into being alternative futures for the site, which stands in the shadow of the new jail construction. Bring a can to get 10 cents… and your fortune!

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Canal Street Research Association, Canner Press Conference & Community Panel at: ISS Storefront for Ideas, 127 Walker Street

Join us in the afternoon for a press conference and panel conversation with Executive Director of Sure We Can Ryan Costelia, local artist and advocate Siyan Wong, and local independent recycler Ah Xim, as well as New York State Assembly Member Grace Lee and New York City Council Member Chris Marte.

Sunday, May 31
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Dylan Seh-Jin Kim, Curator Walkthrough with Art Against Displacement
at: ISS Storefront for Ideas, 127 Walker Street

Dylan Seh-Jin Kim gives a walkthrough of Mulberry Bend organized with Art Against Displacement, a collective of artists and cultural workers that opposes predatory development in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, as well as the in-progress megajail. Kim discusses each of the artists’ work in his exhibition, as well as shares his vision and conversations on “how art might lend its emancipatory tendencies informed by ongoing efforts of resistance and dissent that continue to unfold here and now.”

Saturday, June 6 & Sunday, June 7
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Sidian Liu, 照拂 reflect/brush Performances
at: ISS Storefront for Ideas, 127 Walker Street

For two durational performances marking the final phase of 照拂 reflect/brush, Sidian Liu activates “cleaning tools” created from the collected hair of participants who self-identify as local caregivers and use these tools in acts of caregiving. During the performances, audiences are invited to enter a designated cleaning zone where Liu enacts the tools through brushing, caressing, and grooming gestures learned from participants. As recorded oral histories play softly in the background, the activation of the tools leaves traces of both the participants and their caregiving, revealing the often invisibilized reproductive duties alongside societal and familial expectations to sustain the conditions for everyday life. Visitors are invited to participate as they wish.

Over the first four weeks of 照拂 reflect/brush, Liu invited self-identifying caregivers in Manhattan’s Chinatown to receive free haircuts and share their oral histories which touch on culturally specific hair care, sense of belonging, and gestures of caregiving.

ABOUT

Canal Street Research Association is a fictional office founded in 2020 in an empty storefront on Canal Street, New York City’s counterfeit epicenter. Delving into the cultural and material ecologies of the street and its long history as a site that probes the limits of ownership and authorship, the Association repurposes underused real estate as spaces for gathering ephemeral histories, mapping local lore, and tracing the flows and fissures of capital. They have occupied storefronts, empty office buildings, a storage unit, a basement, and a river bank. They collaborate with local artists, businesses, vendors and passersby and have worked with art and community spaces including Abrons Arts Center, Amant, Artists Space, Canal Projects, CARA, the Center for Canadian Architecture, Clemente Soto Velez, Cuchifritos, MoMA PS1, SculptureCenter, and Storefront for Art & Architecture.

Canal Street Research Association is operated by Shanzhai Lyric (Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky), a poetic research unit that studies the nonstandard language of counterfeit (山寨 shanzhai) garments as a challenge to dominant hierarchies, power structures, and ideas of property. Incomplete Poem, their roving archive of shanzhai garments, has been hosted in community centers, libraries, and art spaces, including Abrons Arts Center, Giselle’s, Henry Moore Institute, Kunsthalle Wien, MoMA PS1, Stuart Hall Library, and Women’s Art Library. Endless Garment, a transcription of the archive, has just been published in their first poetry book—out now with Pioneer Works Press.

Sidian Liu (b. 1997, Foshan, China) is an artist, translator, yarner, and nest builder based in New York City. Using "housewife skills," she makes social relationships to facilitate trust and intimacy from a respectful distance, exploring pathways to further solidarity in our challenging times. Living in flux as a Chinese woman and an immigrant in the U.S., her works often take forms in images, performance, light-weight installations, and socially-engaged projects. Sidian obtained her BA in English at Shanghai International Studies University in 2019, and her MFA in Photography at Parsons, The New School in 2023. In 2025 she participated in Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Some of the honors she received include: the 2025 Emerging Artist Grant by Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the 2024 Denis Roussel Fellowship, the 2023 Snider Prize, and Top 10 of 9th Annual Photography Rankings in China.

Dylan Seh-Jin Kim is a curator who lives in Brooklyn. He works as Curatorial Assistant at MoMA PS1 and the Programs Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI). He is the Protocinema Emerging Curator for 2025-2026 and a participant in the Asia Art Archive in America’s Leadership Camp VII. He was a participant in ICI’s New York Curatorial Seminar, a Bandung Resident at Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) & Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), and a Curatorial Fellow at NARS Foundation. He has organized and worked on exhibitions and programs at MoMA PS1, Protocinema, Unclebrother, FAR–NEAR, Gavin Brown's enterprise, Tutu Gallery, NARS Foundation, Columbia University, brownstones, restaurants, and elsewhere. He was a guest speaker for Pratt Institute’s Arts and Cultural Management, MPS program. He was a participant in the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program for 2024-25. He received a BA in Philosophy and Film and Media Studies from Columbia University.

Independent Curators International (ICI) supports curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement. Curators are arts community leaders and organizers who champion artistic practice; build essential infrastructures and institutions; and generate public engagement with art. We work with art spaces in the US and around the world to present exhibitions and public programs for broad audiences; and professional development initiatives for curators. Public programs in New York, including this collaboration with Protocinema, are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, ands by the William Talbott Hillman Foundation. curatorsintl.org

Protocinema is a non-profit arts organization that collaborates with artists and institutions to create artworks exploring the shared human experiences that connect us all. We build relationships across local and international contexts, bringing together individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. With a presence in both the US and Turkey since 2011, Protocinema advances this urgent and nuanced work through commissions, exhibitions, public programs, the Protocinema Emerging Curator Series (PECS) mentorship program, and Protozine exhibition texts. These initiatives are rooted in our belief in the common ground where we live, gather, and grow. Protocinema.org

Press Inquiries: Dylan Seh-Jin Kim, dylan@protocinema.org, or Mari Spirito mari@protocinema.org +1 917 660 7332

Supporters: The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator; Cowles Charitable Trust, New Jersey; Independent Curators International (ICI); Miyoung Lee; Michael Ito Edmonson; including Board of Trustees: Defne Ayas, Dillon Cohen, Blessing Way Foundation, David Howe, Jane Lombard, The Kettering Family Foundation, Ari Meşulam, Jason Heard, Sheldon La Pierre; Protocinema’s International Commissioning Committee: Haro Cümbüşyan and Bilge Öğüt; Adnan Yerebakan; SANATORIUM; Christian Stone, Abstract Insurance Brokerage LLC.

Special Thanks: Hamid Amini, Shuky Ayi, Morgan Becker, Gavin Brown, William Chan, Howie Chen, Jungmin Cho, Naz Cuguoğlu, Qingyuan Deng, Lars Fischer / common room, Cindy Hwang, Tamara Khasanova, Joy Kim, Justine Lee, Matthew Lyons, Gervais Marsh, Emilio Martínez Poppe, Serubiri Moses, Lila Nazemian, Liz Park, Manuela Paz, Philip Poon, Renaud Proch, Judy Reissmann, jess saldaña, Jon Santos, Caroline Taylor Shehan, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Alper Turan, Danie Wu, Simon Wu, Sarah Zhu.

Courtesies: Creative Time, New York; Fanta-MLN, Milan; Theta, New York; Skowhegan School Of Painting & Sculpture, Maine; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Thomas Dane Gallery, London