Edges and In-Betweens

Location: 2nd Floor, Library

Artists: Inés Yupanqui & Jessica Feingold

Edges and In-Betweens, is a block print of a Hutton Brick — mined from the Hudson River and kiln-fired to build to great heights along the river's shores. We present the brick for closer examination as an archive of unrepresented labor.

Our piece is less about what a brick can do and more about what it is, in physical form. One of the first things we noticed in reclaiming bricks from the ruin of a 100 year old upstate home was how individualized each one is. To begin, although each was a result of industry and mass production, it was also the product of human hands — the workers, first Irish and Italian, and later through the Great Migration largely Black workers who mixed and laid the raw materials. Later, time and weather produced dents, cracks and new textures, creating fingerprints that are at once imperfections, but also a reflection of uniqueness. No two bricks are alike, even if originally conceived as such.

The brick, a block of 6 sides, as a unit seems repetitive and insignificant. However, ink reveals a more complex story—of impressions and ridges, and of spaces in between. When placed into context, of the workers that made and laid it, and of the land that held and changed it over time, the brick becomes a microcosm of regional history. In this way, each brick is an act of representation, as the hands that shaped both the natural and built environment call out to us through history for recognition.

Artist Bios:

Inés Yupanqui is a Colombian-born and New York City based architect, educator, and the founder of A Space Unfolds Architecture. Her work and research inquire into how natural and man-made structures overlap in ways that can repair our relationship with the natural environment and cultivate cultural and social values.

Inés holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University GSAPP, where she received the Excellence in Design Award, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.

Jess Yupanqui Feingold is Co-CEO of Common Future, a national organization that invests in and co-designs fund structures alongside Black and Indigenous communities. Her work and writing consider issues of repair and redistribution, and how to rebuild mutuality through climatic, economic, and intergenerational lenses. She is also an artist working in ceramics and biomaterials, and is a member of Genspace, a community laboratory advancing the science of regenerative materials.

Jess holds a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelors of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Virginia.