RIVERS UNSETTLED: Gallery Walkthrough with Eto Otitigbe

Saturday, May 24
3-5pm | El Barrio’s Artspace Foyer Gallery

No registration required.

Hi-ARTS is thrilled to partner with Eto Otitigbe on Rivers Unsettled. Step into Rivers Unsettled, with Eto Otitigbe as your guide. This intimate walkthrough invites audiences to experience the exhibition not just as viewers, but as active listeners to the river, the materials, and the layered stories this exhibition carries.

Led by Eto, listen to the process behind each piece. Learn about the ecological data, historical research, and sensory experiences that informed each work. Explore how the Harlem River’s own rhythm helped shape EO’s work.

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About River Unsettled
The river is never still. It meanders, carves, swells, and recedes—an unsettled body of perpetual negotiation. Rivers Unsettled gathers sculptural, mixed media, and installation-based works born from field studies along the Harlem River. This exhibition engages the river, not as a passive subject but as a co-author, rhythms and residues shaping material and meaning alike.

Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of Dialogical Art, Rivers Unsettled rejects singular narratives in favor of polyphonic voices—human, nonhuman, organic, and constructed—coexisting in tension and dialogue. These works do not merely represent the river; they converse with it, absorbing its sedimented past while speaking into its ever-unfolding present. In this case, Eto is a listener and maker, allowing the Harlem River’s textures and shifting borders to articulate their own agency.