I Tried to Save Myself

Assembly x NYU Gallatin

Date:
October 28 – December 1, 2022

NYU: The Gallatin Galleries

Recess Assembly youth fellows and program educators present a selection of work confronting ideas of identity, the body, and radical beauty, tied together by the thread of fraternity and community. I Tried to Save Myself is a space built by and for community engagement–centering nourishment, hope, reckoning, and reconciliation. The exhibit approaches diverse identities, histories, and methodologies with care, representing a variety of mediums including video, photography, printmaking, digital painting, and mixed media work. Through these works, the artists in I Tried to Save Myself contend that only community care can save us in a world where liberation must be attained through human connection and collective action.

About the artist

Assembly

Artists

Founded in 2016, Assembly offers system-impacted young people aged 18-26 an inroad to art and connections to working artists, while serving as an alternative to incarceration and its intersecting systems of oppression. The curriculum empowers young people to take charge of their own life story and envision a future through art. The program diverts both misdemeanor and felony charges and in 2020 expanded to include a peer-to-peer referral model, allowing us to broaden our reach.