The Incredible Scope of Site-Specific Installations: Panel Conversation with PHA’s 2025–2026 Artist Subsidy Recipients

You’re already a member. Thank you for your support! You’re already a member. Thank you for your support! You’re already a member. Thank you for your support! Text goes here that starts the relationship with the donor. Thank you for your interest in joining the President’s Guild. Your inquiry has been received, and a member of the Powerhouse Arts team will be in touch shortly with next steps. As a President’s Guild supporter, you help shape the future of contemporary art in Brooklyn: expanding access, deepening community engagement, and sustaining the artists who define our cultural landscape. We look forward to connecting with you personally. Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form. Make a contribution in any amount that feels meaningful to you. Your support directly strengthens Powerhouse Arts’ mission—advancing artist production, expanding public programs, and sustaining a creative community where art and craft thrive. Every gift makes a difference. As part of our Open House New York and Gowanus Open Studios programming, the 2026 Artist Subsidy recipients Bahar Behbahani and Coral Saucedo Lomeli join Powerhouse Arts fabricators Brenna Board and Biata Roytburd to discuss the possibilities and challenges of making site-specific work at scale. Bahar’s Damask Rose: A Gathering, a public project rooted in the traditions of the Persian garden, migration, and diasporic ecological knowledge, was developed with PHA’s Public Art team over the course of four months and presented on Governors Island on May 16, 2026. While Coral’s Agua Viva, a site-responsive ceramic installation inspired by drainage systems and overlooked infrastructure of Mexico City, was developed with PHA’s Ceramics Studio and presented as part of the At Sixes and Sevens group show at Bundy Modern in Waitsfield, Vermont Together, the artists and fabricators will share how these distinct projects moved from concept to installation, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the materials, processes, and problem-solving involved in bringing ambitious site-specific work to life, as well as the resources available through the Artist Subsidy program. This program will include live captioning. For accessibility accommodations, including ASL interpretation, please email Public Programs Manager, [email protected]. Image: Top row: Bahar Behbahani, Coral Saucedo Lomeli; bottom: Brenna Board, Biata Roytburd Bahar Behbahani is an artist, educator, and collaborator whose interdisciplinary work explores memory, erasure, adaptation, and the search for a sense of place. For over a decade, the Persian garden has served as a central metaphor in her practice—bridging personal history with wider histories of power, climate, and the futurity of ancestral knowledge. Her recent projects include a public commission for the 2024 Creative Time Summit and participation in the Sharjah Biennial 15. She has received awards from Creative Capital, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and The Drawing Center. A transplant from the land of sun, she has adapted New York as her home, where she teaches at CUNY and creates space for questioning dominant narratives through art and dialogue. Instagram: @baharbehbahani baharbehbahani.com Coral Saucedo Lomeli (b. Mexico City, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores material relationships, labor, and collapsing systems, drawing inspiration from domestic objects, the urban landscape, poetry, and craft. Through her practice, she recontextualizes overlooked objects and processes into poetic moments. She completed her MFA at Yale University and BFA at ArtCenter College of Design. Her work has been included at the National Academy of Design, New York City, and in the Sixth AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum, and exhibited at Proyecto Pícaro, Mexico City; Space Ten Gallery and Nan Rae Gallery, Los Angeles; the Hooverness Glass House, Fishers Island, NY; NYLAAT House, Governors Island; NARS Foundation, NY; and De Meldkamer, Maastricht, NL. She has done residencies at Yaddo; the Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship; the NARS Foundation; RUINA, Oaxaca, Mexico; the Lighthouse Works; and SOMA, Mexico City. She currently teaches in the Fine Arts department at Parsons School of Design. Instagram: @arrecifereef coralsaucedo.com Brenna Board is an artist and production professional based in Brooklyn, working across sculpture, fabrication, and large-scale public art. Trained as a painter, she has centered her career around the art of creative practice. She currently works as the Production Manager on the Public Art team at Powerhouse Arts. Brenna holds a BFA in Studio Art, Painting from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2007). Biata Roytburd is a classically trained sculptor, contributing over ten years of experience in ceramic fabrication and education. She received her BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in 2010. She studied anatomy and sculpture in clay at the S