Alexa Halaby
New York City, NY, USA
@alexahalaby
Emailed to Andrea Rosen on June 26, 2020:
"My first instinct was to install the piece in a “public” place where my neighborhood (Bed-stuy/Clinton Hill) could enjoy it, but I was then afraid of getting someone sick, or sending traffic to a certain place. So, I decided to keep the piece at home and find ways of sharing it differently. Mainly by Instagram and by leaving cookies at our building for pick up, plus by installing it on our windowsill so our neighbors could see it.
My partner and I got to enjoy the piece until last week when we decided to go away for a while. In the same train of thought as I had in the beginning, about the generosity of the piece, I left it to my dear friend and neighbor Laura Saenz (@laurasaenzom), so she could keep it alive until the end of the exhibition as we are all in such need of a good “fortune”. I will share more photos of the change soon.
The exhibition also came at a very timely moment for the work we do at The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), where we dedicate all our efforts to sharing material culture from Latin America via scholarship, exhibitions, editorial content, etc. That said, due to my work and personal interest, I have been collaborating with VoCA (Voices in Contemporary Art) - a non-profit organization that generates critical dialogue and interdisciplinary programming to address the production, presentation, and preservation of contemporary art – in helping them reach a broader audience, and a couple of weeks ago I took over their Instagram where in one post I highlighted the FGT Fortune Cookie exhibition. I’m sharing the post with you below."
