The photographer Future Mata’s love for the Decrease East Facet is familial and tender; the neighborhood is each her house and her muse. Actually: “It’s more than my home,” she informed Hyperallergic. “It’s a part of me.” Born in San Antonio, Texas, Mata grew up in New York Metropolis, the place she and her mom frolicked within the shelter system earlier than shifting to the Lillian Wald Homes, a New York Metropolis Housing Authority (NYCHA) challenge on Avenue D. Mata — whose mom is an artist, and father and late aunt each photographers — lives there at present, the condominium’s partitions painted quite a lot of heat colours. Her ongoing Decrease East Facet Yearbook challenge, introduced at Abrons Arts Heart as Decrease East Facet Yearbook: A Dwelling Archive, is definitely a report, however it’s additionally a love track.
The LES Yearbook Challenge started in 2023, impressed by a yearbook class Mata taught at Metropolis-As-College Excessive College, her alma mater, after which a black and white pictures course she provided to neighbors and her college students on the Decrease Eastside Women Membership. “I took over a mobile airstream darkroom, an open-door space where neighbors would stop by, share stories about the neighborhood, and reflect on how much it changed,” she mentioned. “That experience inspired the foundation of the project.” Within the airstream, she linked with Rosa Lee Rodriguez, Nadia Ramnarine, and Maylyn “Zero” Iglesias, neighbors, associates, and artists with whom she’d talk about the world’s hypergentrification and the danger of NYCHA’s impending privatization. To defend and memorialize their quickly altering house, they opted to make a collaborative yearbook, one that will, Mata defined, “honor the legacy and spirit of public housing residents here on the Lower East Side. It’d be a testament to us just being here — being heard and remembered.” They distributed flyers (“Calling All NYCHA Residents: Share Your Story, Share Your Roots!”) across the neighborhood, and Mata hosted workshops, inviting LES residents to share their private histories, household images, and reminiscences.
Cheryl Kirwan, Untitled (2001), archival pigment print (photograph courtesy the artist)
Making the yearbook put Mata in nearer contact together with her neighbors. The finished first version, made with the assist of a collaborative yearbook committee, combines their collages, archival images, and love notes to the place with Mata’s portraits, lovingly monitoring the LES’s historical past (in addition to introducing every contributor). A Dwelling Archive brings its pages to life, with photos and thematic excerpts positioned in a gallery context. The monumentality of NYCHA’s buildings is alluded to right away on the exhibition’s entrance, with a wall-sized vinyl of Mata’s “Brick by Brick” (2023), a black and white {photograph} of the Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and Baruch Homes, shot from above. It’s overlaid with a small picture of yearbook contributor Cheryl Kirwan, shared from her personal archives — a mirrored image of the challenge’s collaborative strategy. It’s 1981, and he or she’s dressed impeccably in canary yellow, beaming.
The show upstairs options contributions by yearbook members and some architectural motifs that recur all through the challenge, together with hallways, benches, and doorways. There’s a row of images of busy metropolis benches over the many years, drawn from the photographers’ archives. An precise metropolis bench, tagged by artists Al Diaz and Charlie Doves, sits throughout from filmmaker Aicha Cherif’s brief documentary, “HEAT” (2025), a portrait of three LES girls dealing with the privatization of their properties. There are photos by Kirwan, Maria Amaro, Zakaria Fofana, and different contributors of associates, households, and constructing residents posing in stairwells and entryways, illustrating the best way condominium life, particularly in NYCHA housing, encourages non-public areas to develop into public areas. The lounge, and the household who occupies it, extends past the door — talking of which, a burgundy one, with a peephole you possibly can look by means of to see extra photos, can also be on view as a part of Mata’s The Doorways of NYCHA (2020) sequence. In the course of the early days of the pandemic, Mata delivered groceries with the Baruch Homes Tenants Affiliation Pantry; she’d spend idle time ready for her neighbors to open their doorways, which have been embellished with vacation decorations, notes (“PRESS HERE”), or doodles. “I found myself learning about [my neighbors] through the unique ways they’d decorated, before I even met them,” she mentioned.
Cheryl Kirwan, “Hipolina (Polo) Gomez” (1982), archival pigment print (photograph courtesy the artist)
Mata’s expertise with the Tenants Affiliation prompted her to be taught extra concerning the privatization of NYCHA beneath the Everlasting Affordability Dedication Collectively (PACT) and Rental Help Demonstration (RAD) initiatives. In keeping with Save Part 9, a tenant-led coalition, RAD conversion and personal administration have elevated the price of utility payments, restricted entry to repairs, and eliminated succession rights. Developments beneath non-public administration skilled six instances as many eviction makes an attempt, with total eviction charges 3 times increased than the typical. The yearbook options photos from protests led by NYCHA residents, their indicators and masks emblazoned with calls to motion and warnings: “Give NYCHA the money,” “Public Housing is on Life Support.” The present itself, mentioned Mata, is just not merely about love, but in addition advocacy.
The previous could be one of the best catalyst for the latter. Alongside Abrons’s partitions are vinyl phrases, a part of a bit entitled Love Letter to the LES (2023–25), by numerous contributors; they’re drawn from each the yearbook and its attendant workshops. These are the phrases of the individuals who look after and form the LES, and who, if capable of keep there, will proceed to nurture it finest. “We come together as a community,” the notes learn. “Thank you, L.E.S., for making me a champion and not a loser.” “When I think of family, it’s you I think of.”
Future Mata, “Halloween: The Doors of NYCHA” (2020), archival pigment print (photograph courtesy Abrons Artwork Heart)
Future Mata, “Brick by Brick” (2023), adhesive vinyl
