Liminal Architecture
Curated by Emireth Herrera Valdés
October 18 - November 30, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, October 18, 2 - 4pm
“Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subjected to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.” (Gaston Bachelard, 1994).
The Lower East Side Printshop is delighted to present Liminal Architecture, a group exhibition curated by Emireth Herrera Valdés. Through the work of Andrea Cauthen, James Cuebas, Luis A. Gutiérrez, Gillie Holme, Eva Parra, Félix Plaza, Helen Quinn, Robin Sherin, and Michelle Weinberg, this show explores the mental and symbolic architecture of time and memory. As the exhibition took shape, the ensemble suggested the notion of a living architecture—continually reinvented and reconstructed through the language of each artist. Within this framework, the works function as imagined spaces, extending beyond material form to construct layered, symbolic environments that embody memory, resilience, and historical dialogue.
In Yemayá, estoy volviendo a casa (Yemayá, I’m Coming Home) (2025), Andrea Cauthen explores the African Diaspora and the spirituality of water through cyanotypes inspired by Regla Yemayá ceremonies in Cuba. Luis A. Gutiérrez’s Desde La Raiz 04 and Desde La Raiz 05 (2025) examine colonial legacies and manual labor, reinterpreting archival and found materials to produce multilayered paintings and videos that reveal everyday rituals and hidden memories. In Venere Nera-blu and Venere Nera-Rosado (2020), Félix Plaza addresses discrimination, representation, and cultural memory, focusing particularly on women of color by juxtaposing images highlighting social inequities. James Cuebas’s Abuela Jacinta, Puerto Rico (2024) and La Falcona, Bayamón, Puerto Rico (2024) use historical gum bichromate printing to evoke nostalgia, transforming each image into an intimate, imagined space where memory and perception converge.
Materiality and graphic experimentation guide the artists’ practices, creating spaces lived through imagination that evoke memory and perception. Eva Parra’s Dear Anna Atkins (Polyptych of 4) (2025) pays tribute to the pioneering 19th-century botanist and photographer Anna Atkins, exploring homage and “plagiarism-as-tribute,” emphasizing repetition, variation, and labor in acts of creative re-creation. Gillie Holme presents 17 Aspects of the Moon (White) (2025) and 17 Aspects of the Moon, Neon (2024), transforming maps, dictionaries, and alphabets into abstract explosions of symmetry and color. In Wall/Gray #3 and Obstruction #7 (2025), Robin Sherin constructs uninhabited visual architectures, sometimes obstructed or revealed through structured visual patterns.
Helen Quinn’s Ribbon (2025) depicts a ribbon in gray-to-black shades that floats and unfolds with deliberate control, as if time and space were contained and expanded within a single gesture. Michelle Weinberg’s Night Bloomers is a light box where layered marks form skeletal architectures, tracing time and recurring motifs while creating an intimate, imagined space shaped by memory and perception.
Liminal Architecture invites viewers into imagined spaces where memory, history, and perception converge. Through layered marks, repetition, and creative transformation, each work constructs a living architecture—active, reflective, and continuously reshaped by those who inhabit it with attention and imagination.
About the curator:
Emireth Herrera Valdés is an independent curator and writer based in New York. Herrera’s recent curations include: Inherited Labor at The Border Gallery, Jamie Martinez: The Shadow of Colonialism, Zac Hacmon: No Longer Me, Michael Eckblad:The Melt and the Glow at GHOSTMACHINE, Invisible Hands at 601Artspace in New York City; Invisible Bodies co-curated with The Border at Penn State University, Identity in Context at Kunstraum, Brooklyn, NY; and Whispers at Spring/Break 2023, New York, NY. Additionally, her articles have been published by The Brooklyn Rail, Arte Fuse, ISLAA's VISTAS and Cultbytes in New York. Herrera currently serves as the Associate Curator and Community Outreach Coordinator in the Arts in Medicine department at NYC Health + Hospitals. She holds an M.A. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and a B.A. in Architecture from the Autonomous University of Coahuila.
