Exhibition
October 28, 2025–February 20, 2026

Maya Jeffereis: Land of Eternal Summer

Join us for the Opening Reception on Tuesday, October 28 from 6–8pm.

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) debuts a new video and installation by Maya Jeffereis that reframes an overlooked history of Japanese migration to Brazil in the early 20th century, forming the largest Japanese diaspora in the world. Blending archival documentation, experimental film techniques, and firsthand accounts, Jeffereis captures transnational entanglements of migration, labor, and cultural inheritance in her fluid, dreamlike compositions.

Jeffereis’s art focuses on counter-narratives of diasporic Asian communities, including her own family’s experience working as contract laborers on Hawaiian sugar plantations after immigrating from Japan and later, their forced removal and incarceration in the U.S. during World War II. Starting from personal archives, her work expands outward, tracing shared struggles and legacies of resistance across geographies. Jeffereis finds inspiration from Pacific scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa’s vision of Oceania as a unified “sea of islands,” and imagines the ocean not as a barrier, but as a site of ancestral continuity.

For this exhibition, Jeffereis turns her attention to the wave of Japanese laborers that immigrated to Brazil to work on coffee plantations, a movement that began in 1908, in the wake of slavery’s abolition and shifting global immigration policies. Resisting conventional methods of presenting historical footage on this subject, she transfers images from Japanese Brazilian archives to 16mm film and uses a phytogram process—a cameraless technique in which plants develop the photograph or moving image. Plants from both Brazil and Japan, including açai, coffee, hibiscus and chamomile flowers, kariyasu (Japanese silver grass) and kihada (Amur cork tree bark), give visual form to the hazy images on screen, interrupting the documentary gaze. Jeffereis extends this practice in the gallery with an installation composed of naturally dyed fabric and anthotypes—prints made from plant extracts.

Throughout the video, fragmented images of passenger ships, families, and migrants in fields flicker alongside translated excerpts of tanka poems written by Japanese laborers in Brazil. Beneath these expressions of longing and resilience is an inquiry into the complex dynamics of national identity during Brazil’s Estado Novo dictatorship in the 1930s and ’40s, when Japanese Brazilians endured oppression and cultural erasure while still maintaining ties to imperial Japan. Jeffereis emphasizes the land—not only as a site of occupation, extraction, and destruction, but also as a place for reimagining belonging. Across her practice, Jeffereis asks what it means to reclaim the archive and envision new ways of seeing rooted in the environment, solidarity, and forms of community beyond the nation-state.

Maya Jeffereis is a New York-based artist and filmmaker working with video installation and experimental film. Jeffereis’s work has been presented in the United States and internationally, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Noguchi Museum, New York; and Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, among other institutions. Her work has screened in international film festivals including Images Festival, Canada; Third Horizon Film Festival, Miami, Florida; Cosmic Rays, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, United Kingdom. 

This exhibition is curated by Melinda Lang, Director of Programs and Exhibitions. It is supported by Alice and Lawrence Weiner; Danna and Ed Ruscha; Hartfield Foundation; Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; James Rosenquist Foundation; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

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Accessibility information: Please note that the entrance to ISCP has seven steps and a ramp, which is ADA compliant. There are seven artist studios and one exhibition space which can be accessed on the first floor of ISCP. There is an accessible bathroom on the first floor at the end of the hallway, up one step, where the artist studios are located. To access the second floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 22 steps. The second floor has 22 artist and curator studios, one exhibition space, and a lounge where remarks by our guest speaker will take place. To access the third floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 24 steps. The third floor has five artist and curator studios. ISCP can access a freight elevator to bring visitors between the first and second floors on request. 

ISCP can offer two reserved parking spaces on request for people with disabilities. Please email programs@iscp-nyc.org to request a parking space and/or freight elevator usage.

 

Participating Residents

ISCP Talk
October 14, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm

Artists at Work: Villiam Miklos Andersen in Conversation with Brecht Wright Gander

For this Artists at Work, ISCP artist-in-residence Villiam Miklos Andersen will be joined by writer and artist Brecht Wright Gander. Andersen will present on his practice, which spans sculpture and installation, and speak with Gander about his interest in how transportation infrastructures, optimization methods, and labor generate a visual and spatial order that quietly governs daily life. They will discuss how Andersen connects these logistical systems to questions around desire, queer perspectives, and care. A Q&A with the audience will follow.

Villiam Miklos Andersen is based between Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Coggiola, Italy; and Copenhagen, Denmark. Employing sculpture, installation, and relational formats, he reimagines standardized infrastructures—from transport industries to everyday architectures—through poetic, collaborative and queer transformations. Recent solo presentations include Services at Kohta, Helsinki, Finland; Caffè Crema at O—Overgaden, Copenhagen, Denmark; Rock Hard Milk for Una Boccata d’Arte, organized with Fondazione Elpis and Galleria Continua, Tuscany, Italy; areas of common interests at 1Shanthiroad, Bangalore; November at Simulacra, Beijing, China; and The Pawn Shop at documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany.

Brecht Wright Gander is a writer and artist based in upstate New York. His recent publications include fiction in Conjunctions and critical writing in Frieze, Spike, and BOMB. His upcoming solo exhibition will be at Marquez Art Projects in Miami, Florida in December 2025.   

This program is supported by Danish Arts Foundation; Hartfield Foundation; James Rosenquist Foundation; Joe Sultan; Lèna Saltos; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; Dr. Samar Maziad; Sarah Jones; van Beuren Charitable Foundation; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; and Woodman Family Foundation.
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This in-person event will be live streamed through Instagram: @iscp_nyc

Accessibility information: Please note that the entrance to ISCP has seven steps and a ramp, which is ADA compliant. There are seven artist studios and one exhibition space which can be accessed on the first floor of ISCP. There is an accessible bathroom on the first floor at the end of the hallway, up one step, where the artist studios are located. A temporary ramp can be installed to cover the step. To access the second floor, there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 22 steps. The second floor has 22 artist and curator studios, one exhibition space, and a lounge where remarks by our guest speaker will take place. To access the third floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 24 steps. The third floor has five artist and curator studios. ISCP  can access a freight elevator to bring visitors between the first and second floors on request.

ISCP can offer two reserved parking spaces on request for people with disabilities. Please email programs@iscp-nyc.org to request a parking space and/or freight elevator usage.

6:30–7:30pm

Participating Residents

Event
October 11–October 12, 2025

Walking Poetry: a guided poetry performance with Rebecca Haff Lowry and Inge Meijer in Inwood Hill Park

“History” is a collection of stories,
continually edited in circular time.
Facts adjusted.
Questions raised.
More voices found.
We loop back,
revise and jump to our shared future.

Poet Rebecca Haff Lowry (Delaware Tribe of Indians) and ISCP artist-in-residence Inge Meijer (The Netherlands) will present a poetry performance walk, visiting various locations in Inwood Hill Park in Lenapehoking (Manhattan). New voices are explored through movement and sound in performances that celebrate the return of Lenape peoples to their homeland, Lenapehoking.

The walk begins at 2:00pm on Saturday, October 11 and Sunday, October 12 at the Inwood Hill Park Nature Center, 600 West 218th Street, New York, NY. Please note that unpaved paths and inclines are present on the route. Space is limited. Please RSVP here for either date. 

Inge Meijer’s practice revolves around stories rooted in her mother’s youth on a tenant farm, a topography altered by generations from which a deep knowing arises of the interdependence we share with all forms of life. Through collaborations, performances, and publications Meijer seeks to translate this heritage into experiences, fostering an intimate connection between viewer and environment. She continues to research how familial memory can enhance our understanding of collective identity and the ecosystems we live in. 

Rebecca Haff Lowry is a citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, headquartered in Bartlesville, OK. Her poetry is featured in Lenapehoking, an Anthology, produced by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Lenape Center, and currently, her work The Cape of a Matriarch (2021), made from turkey feathers, beads and shells, is on view in Brooklyn Made at the Brooklyn Museum. Lowry is also a curriculum writer and project manager, who works with partners across the state of California to support the production of California’s K-12 Native American Studies Model Curriculum, a free open resource for all.

This program is supported by DutchCulture USA; Friends of Inwood Hill Park; and Mondriaan Fund.

2pm
RSVP

Participating Residents