It was a crisp night in early October when Project for Empty Space (PES) unveiled its new expansion to Ironside Newark. The 2,500-square-foot space in the redeveloped warehouse had been transformed into a gallery displaying colorful still life paintings, photographs, and other works by New York artist Azikiwe Mohammed.
“Most of these I did with no brushes,” Mohammed confided in me. Instead, he uses a variety of different paint markers, delighting in the unexpected chemical reactions that occur when he combines different brands, such as alcohol-based ink and acrylics that start to bubble when used together.
The show represents the fruits of the first year of his 2023–2025 stint as an artist in residence at PES, which specializes in artists whose work hopes to have a social impact.
It’s been a busy year for the Newark nonprofit, run by Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Pauline Jampol. It also reopened its flagship at 800 Broad Street in September, following a yearlong renovation funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, plus assistance from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s Activation, Revitalization, and Transformation program.
Project for Empty Space’s renovated flagship. Photo courtesy of Project for Empty Space, Newark.
At the same time, the directors were also launching “Body Freedom for Every(Body),” a mobile exhibition promoting trans and reproductive rights currently crisscrossing the country in a 27-foot-long box truck. (The last stop will be at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.)
The new Ironside space is just down the block from PES’s main location, creating a new campus. It is part of what the city has dubbed Newark Grounds, an initiative meant to connect 75 of the city’s public artworks and arts and culture spaces through a walkable cultural corridor.
And while PES Ironside is technically on the second floor, the back of the building opens onto a plaza, letting visitors enter directly into the exhibition space.
“Azikiwe Mohammed: Trains, Buses, and the Four C’s” at Project for Empty Space Ironside, Newark. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“It’s this amazing thing where we can present art to folks who are not searching for art,” Jampol told me.
“Azikiwe Mohammed: Trains, Buses, and the Four C’s” is a particularly eye-catching show with which to inaugurate the space. The walls are painted in vibrant shades of orange, teal, and robin’s egg blue. The paintings are displayed in a charmingly mismatched array of thrifted frames, and the space is invitingly scattered with couches and chairs, some of which are painted sculptures by the artist.
For the opening, Mohammed had carefully planned out every detail of the evening, from the mason jar mugs he had hand-painted for each place setting to the tablecloths, featuring his photographs, which he planned to donate to a thrift store once the night was done. (The leftover food, meanwhile, Mohammed would offer to unhoused people in the neighborhood.)
Azikiwe Mohammed designed the tablescapes for the opening reception for his show at Project for Empty Space Ironside. Photo courtesy of Project for Empty Space, Newark.
He had enlisted a local restaurant owner, Kai Campbell, to prepare the dinner, with a menu that included lasagna and Jamaican rasta pasta. For dessert, artist Paul John, head of community at New Inc., and Elizabeth Cocco, the head of VIP relations for NADA, had brought a cooler full of their homemade vegan ice cream. (It was fantastic.) To serve it, Mohammed even thrifted porcelain bowls to match the colors of the saffron- and passionfruit-flavored treats.
I am embarrassed to admit that I initially mistook Mohammed for part of the event’s catering staff, dressed as he was in an apron and chef’s hat. But the apron featured more of the artist’s photography, and he was in character as Leroy, the proprietor of Leroy’s Luncheon, a project he’s staged at 1-54 art fair and Canada gallery, both in New York last year.
Feeding people, it turns out, is part and parcel of his practice. You see, Mohammed is a problem solver, and he sees art not as a vessel for his own artistic vision, but as part of his tool kit as an activist.
Azikiwe Mohammed’s New Davonhaime Food Bank fed 200 people at an event held at Project for Empty Space in Newark as part of the artist’s residency there. Photo courtesy of Project for Empty Space, Newark.
“I don’t believe in inspiration. It’s for lazy people,” Mohammed told me. “What’s the problem? Solve the problem. Nobody got no damn foods? Make paintings of food. Sell them. Buy food with the money from your fake food and then give it to people so they can have real food.”
Since 2019, the Tribeca native has run his own downtown food pantry, the New Davonhaime Food Bank, feeding the hungry through a combination of restaurant donations and food he buys in large part with the proceeds of his art career. (The name is a portmanteau of New Orleans, Detroit, Jackson, Birmingham, and Savannah—the five U.S. cities with the highest-density African-American populations.)
Its headquarters are the Black Painters Academy, Mohammed’s free art school that he opened in Chinatown in 2021, but the artist organizes food distributions across the city as his resources permit. And in June, for New Jersey’s North to Shore Festival, the food bank came to PES, operating for one day out of the new Broad Street galleries.
A painting by Azikiwe Mohammed. Photo courtesy of Project for Empty Space, Newark.
“It is one of the most impactful programs that we have ever done. To invite homeless people into our space even before it opened, give them an art show and a warm meal—it was a little eye-opening to me,” Jampol said. “We fed 200 people and sent them home with groceries.”
For Mohammed, it was all part of his mission as an artist—and his life’s work.
“People are hungry, and I can make up money where it doesn’t exist. Look, I just made a Jell-O cake,” he said, pointing behind me to a still life of the jiggly red dessert hanging on the wall. “I can go ‘magic wand,’ make that into real Jell-O. That’s crazy. It’d be irresponsible to not do something with that.”
“Azikiwe Mohammed: Trains, Buses, and the Four C’s” is on view at Project for Empty Space Ironside, 110 Edison Place, Newark, New Jersey, October 11, 2024– January 25, 2025.