Toward a Sentence runs through June 16 at NARS Foundation

The exhibition Toward a Sentence, running through June 16 at the NARS Main Gallery, 201 46th St., brings together the Season II 2026 International Residency artists in a collective presentation exploring how individual practices form meaning through structure, proximity, and connection.

The exhibition is curated by Curatorial Fellow Vu Thien An Nguyen and features 13 international artists working across distinct visual and conceptual approaches.

At the opening reception, held June 5, Nguyen explained the crossword-like grid structure of the exhibition and how it highlights the artists’ engagement with ideas of connection, perception, and personal experience through distinct practices.

“I wanted to draw on something familiar to everyone — from childhood and common sense — and how each intersection of the crossword puzzle allows each artist’s work to create new meaning,” Nguyen said.

Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Obadah Aljerfri explores identity, perception, and diasporic experience through a conceptual practice spanning painting, sculpture, installation, and performance.

Speaking about their work, Aljerfri reflected on how the exhibition’s interconnected structure mirrors broader questions surrounding visibility, identity, and collective interpretation.

“With this idea of connection, in order to experience the work, the viewer has to insert themselves into it,” Aljerfri said. “There’s an inherent connection to the strange body you’re not familiar with. The work is solitary; it’s something you experience on your own. No two people can experience it at the same time.”

When asked what they hope viewers take away from the work, Aljerfri said they want audiences to leave with questions about bodies and internalized ideas of what bodies are.

Erika Choe works across sculpture, performance, video, and installation, using abstracted bodily forms to explore movement, memory, grief, and physical constraint.

Choe described her sculptural process as deeply tied to gesture and physical presence, with each work functioning as both an object and a trace of performance.

“The work itself is an abstract portrait of the body; everyone has different ways of relating to how the body feels,” Choe said. “My work aims to capture a collective experience of how we exist in our human bodies. What I’m most excited about is seeing different people’s interpretations of this work; seeing how we all learn through various eyes is the most important thing in the exhibition.”

Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Jisoo Chung investigates translation, mistranslation, and linguistic omission through video, installation, drawing, and performance.

“Mediation can be seen as a form of connection,” Chung said. “I think of myself as mediating a kind of idea, historical reference, or lived experience in the real world. I want the viewers to not see art as divided from life. I view art as close to life, which includes friendship and people around us.”

Together, the works in Toward a Sentence resist easy interpretation, encouraging viewers to move through the exhibition slowly and relationally. Through its emphasis on dialogue, intersection, and collective presence, the exhibition becomes a space where individual practices converge into something larger than themselves.