ARTIST IN RESIDENCE | It can Happen…Still Time to Try: An exhibition by Curry J. Hackett Opening Reception

We are pleased to present It can Happen…Still Time to Try, an exhibition by Curry J. Hackett in collaboration with J.T. Roane, and Jona Alexander, as part of our 2026 Artist-in-Residence program (A!R) presented by Ace Hotel Brooklyn × Field Meridians.

It can Happen…Still Time to Try extends both a reminder and an invitation for us to think more abundantly about collective relationships to land. Borrowed from June Jordan’s proposal for her unpublished novel OKAY NOW, this exhibition showcases a multimedia suite of recordings, films, and collages that gesture toward a [Black] built environment liberated from the dark histories and ongoing harms of property. 

Merging their respective practices in a first-time collaboration, Hackett, Roane, and Alexander spent the monthlong residency gathering resources  from their personal libraries, interviewing peers, and documenting real-world land stewardship efforts in Brooklyn. Ultimately, the exhibition seeks to be in dialogue with June Jordan’s career as a spatial thinker, as well as the everyday cultural practices that shape Black landscapes.

About The Artist

Curry J. Hackett is a multimedia artist and educator whose work explores Black relationships to land, media, and memory. A native of Farmville, Virginia, his practice speculates on the histories, and ecologies of the American South. His work has been featured in the “Making Home” Smithsonian Design Triennial, and will be featured in the 2026 Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Currently based in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Curry serves as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU Steinhardt, and was named a 2026 United States Artist fellow. 

J.T. Roane is from Tappahannock, Virginia and lives in Philadelphia. He is an African Studies scholar and Geographer at Rutgers University, where he co-leads the Black Ecologies Lab. His award-winning book Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place (2023) maps relationships between Black rural and urban placemaking tactics in the American South and Philadelphia.

Jona Alexander is a Philadelphia-based Black geographer, documentarian, and educator working across film, poetry, and soundscape. As lead documentarian for the Black Ecologies Lab at Rutgers University, and the Black Geographers on Film project, Jona’s films incorporate environmental science, oral history, and urban studies to reveal the ecological consequences of slavery’s afterlives, and how they shape Afro-diasporic communities.

On view August 6 – October 31, 2026