- Participating Organizations: Artistic Noise, Children’s Art Carnival, Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture, Inc., Sisters in Sharqi / Harlem Hafla, While We Are Still Here, and AHL Foundation, Inc.
- Curator: Jiyoung Lee
- Exhibition Dates: February 13 – March 14, 2026
- Location: AHL Foundation, Inc. (2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd., New York, NY 10030)
- Opening Reception: Friday, February 13, from 6–8 PM
Curatorial Statement
2026 Space Uptown: Community (for) Fair | Curated by Jiyoung Lee
In 2022, AHL Foundation opened its gallery on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem. As a nonprofit organization that has long supported Korean artists, relocating to Harlem naturally raised new questions about place, responsibility, and reciprocity.The Space Uptown project emerged from this question: How can we respond to the surrounding community and its layered cultural histories?
The early editions of Space Uptown (2022-2024) focused on artistic practices across Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Bronx alongside Korean artists working in New York. These exhibitions established a shared language around place, labor, and cultural identity, and served as not only an exhibition to display different artwork from individual artists but a foundation for building relationships gathered together beyond the gallery space.
This year’s edition of Space Uptown: Community (for) Fair, brings that history of relationship-building into focus. AHL Foundation invites art and cultural nonprofit organizations with whom it has formed sustained connections over time since its relocation. Some of these relationships developed through direct collaboration, such as Artistic Noise, which presented an exhibition of new works by system-impacted youth artists through a space partnership program and created a community mural for display outside the gallery. Others—including Sisters in Sharqi / Harlem Hafla, While We Are Still Here, and Wabafu Garifuna Dance Theater & Garifuna Dance Center—grew through long-term dialogue and shared learning through the HueArts Leadership Cohort, where year-long conversations around cultural work, resources, and community engagement shaped ongoing exchange. Still others, such as Children’s Art Carnival, represent art education institutions whose histories, openness, and generosity—welcoming AHL Foundation into their spaces just blocks away from the gallery—have informed its understanding of Harlem’s cultural landscape.
The participating organizations in this fair operate within distinct yet interconnected cultural ecologies. Their work spans youth advocacy, diasporic performance, historical preservation, and community-based education. While each organization carries a unique mission, all are engaged in the vital labor of sustaining cultural memory and access within communities historically underserved by dominant institutions.
The word “Fair” is used here with deliberate openness. It gestures simultaneously toward fairness, toward gathering, and toward the historical notion of the fair as a site of exchange—social, cultural, and economic. Community (for) Fair asks what it means for institutions to come together to share space, attention, and presence. What does equity look like when it is practiced through a relationship among community-focused art and cultural nonprofit organizations? By bringing these organizations into a shared exhibition framework, Community (for) Fair emphasizes creating proximity together. Visitors are invited to encounter not only cultural expressions, but the relationships, labor, and infrastructures that make them possible. In this way, Space Uptown reimagines the exhibition-as-fair: a moment of gathering where community is not assumed, but where fairness remains an open question, shaped collectively through presence, conversation, and time.
[Press Release]
NEW YORK, NY — AHL Foundation announces Space Uptown: Community (for) Fair 2026, on view from February 13 to March 14, 2026, at its gallery in Harlem. Curated by Jiyoung Lee, Director of Programs and Development at AHL Foundation, the exhibition brings together Harlem- and Bronx-based arts and cultural nonprofit organizations in a collective presentation. The exhibition highlights each organization’s mission, work, and contribution to the local cultural ecosystem through objects and materials selected by each participating organization.
Since relocating to Harlem in 2022, AHL Foundation has developed the exhibition project ‘Space Uptown’ as an ongoing initiative responding to the cultural, historical, and artistic landscapes of Harlem, Upper Manhattan, and the Bronx. Previous editions connected artists and organizations across these neighborhoods with Korean artists working in New York, fostering cross-cultural dialogue around community, identity, and place.
The 2026 edition, Community (for) Fair, builds on these relationships by centering arts and cultural nonprofit organizations that sustain community-based cultural work across Harlem and the Bronx. Participating organizations represent a wide range of practices, including youth advocacy, diasporic performance, historical preservation, arts education, and experimental support for emerging artists.
Participating organizations include Artistic Noise, Children’s Art Carnival, Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture, Inc., Sisters in Sharqi / Harlem Hafla, While We Are Still Here, and AHL Foundation, Inc.
Each participating organization contributes objects and materials representing its mission and cultural practice. These include archive materials, artworks by resident or affiliated artists, performance costumes worn on stage, musical instruments, performance videos, and historical objects that reflect Harlem’s cultural legacy. Together, these materials expand the definition of exhibition objects beyond traditional artworks, foregrounding the practices, labor, and relationships that sustain community-based cultural work.
The term “Fair” is used intentionally, not only as a conceptual framework but also as an exhibition format. Community (for) Fair brings together organizations in a shared exhibition that emphasizes gathering, exchange, and visibility, foregrounding how equity and community are practiced through proximity and ongoing relationships.
“AHL Foundation is pleased to present an exhibition that brings together such a diverse group of arts and cultural organizations. We are honored to share space with our partners and to celebrate the collective work that sustains our communities.”
— Sook Nyu Lee Kim, Founder & President, AHL Foundation
The opening reception for Space Uptown: Community (for) Fair will be held on Friday, February 13, from 6–8 PM, at the AHL Foundation gallery (2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd., #C1, New York, NY 10030). Free admission.
Press Contact
AHL Foundation, Inc.
This exhibition is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) Arts Fund.
Participating Organizations (Listed in alphabetical order)
AHL Foundation, Inc.
Founded in 2003, AHL Foundation is a New York City-based nonprofit organization committed to supporting artists of Korean heritage through exhibitions, public programs, archives, and educational initiatives. Their mission is threefold: 1) to seek, identify, and promote talents Korean and Korean-American artists active in the United States; 2) to provide the artists with a platform and resources to further develop their talents; and 3) to host educational, cultural, and artistic events with the goal of building wider public awareness of contemporary artists of Korean heritage.
Over the past 20 years, they have hosted more than 140 exhibitions and supported over 400 artists nationwide––including Korean American adoptees, LGBTQ+ artists, recent immigrants, and emerging creators navigating language and cultural barriers. Since their inception, they have also awarded an average of $50,000 annually in grants to more than 150 artists, curators, and researchers. In addition, they offer over 40 art history lectures each year, enriching the public’s understanding of contemporary art and operate the Archive of Korean Artists in America (AKAA), a public digital archive documenting Korean and Korean American artists in the United States. www.ahlfoundation.org
Artistic Noise
For 25 years, Artistic Noise has built community with system-impacted young people to enhance lives through the empowering and therapeutic potential of art making. Located on Adam Clayton Powell and 129th street, our organization has created art in collaboration with thousands of young people who are incarcerated, on probation, in foster care, or otherwise impacted by the juvenile court system. Through visual arts, therapeutic, and entrepreneurship-based programs, participants give voice to their experiences, build community through collaborative projects and explore a variety of valuable life skills in the process. https://www.artisticnoise.org/
Children’s Art Carnival
Originally founded in 1969 by renowned artist, the late Betty Blayton Taylor, as a community outreach program of the Museum of Modern Art, the Carnival has served Harlem and the New York community as an autonomous center for the education of young people in the arts since 1972. CAC has been a safe space for young people, community members and artists to gather to actively explore the arts and hone their creative voices. Today, CAC continues to build on that history by supporting artists in the development of new work and in direct engagement with community through visual arts activities, arts workshops, for young people and area residents of all ages, exhibitions and professional development opportunities for emerging artists. CAC is committed to the idea that the arts are a bridge to understanding, and critical to healthy communities. Its work extends the vision of its founder and her legacy of cultural advancement. https://childrensartcarnival.org/
Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture, Inc.
Garifuna Heritage Center for the Arts and Culture, Inc. (GHC) is a Bronx-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and advancing Garifuna culture (an Indigenous people of West African and Arawak descent) through the performing arts. Founded in 1992 by Executive Director Luz F. Soliz-Ramos, GHC uses dance, music, song, theater, and language as living tools for cultural transmission, education, and community empowerment. GHC creates accessible, intergenerational programming including classes, workshops, performances, festivals, and public cultural events that strengthen identity, historical awareness, and creative expression. Cross-cultural connection is important in our work, participants always relate to some part of the culture. Through partnerships with schools, cultural institutions, parks, and community organizations across New York City, GHC ensures that Garifuna traditions remain visible, relevant, and alive for future generations. The arts are a pathway to cultural pride, wellness, historical awareness, and long-term cultural preservation. https://garifunaheritagecenter.com
Sisters in Sharqi / Harlem Hafla
Sisters in Sharqui, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that focuses on sharing the diversity of North African Dance, commonly known as Bellydance. We recognize these dances as part of the African Diaspora so we share workshops and shows in underserved communities like Harlem and The Bronx. Harlem Hafla’s Executive Director, Brandy Heyward, uses her backgrounds in Art, Education, Dance and Writing to pour into the organization. We share the dances nationally and internationally in Illinois, Missouri, California and in Bermuda to name a few locations. Our most recognized contribution is with our annual show, Harlem Hafla—Bellydance with SOUL. Since 2017, Harlem Hafla has staged Harlem shows with people of color but predominantly Black dancers who may otherwise not get chosen nor paid for our work. Harlem Hafla, 2026 will take place at Harlem School of the Arts on June 27, 2026. We offer open level classes by day and a gala show at night that reflects the Harlem community. We hope you’ll join us at the presentation. To learn more, please go to http://www.sisters in sharqui.com and for show tickets, please visit www.harlemhafla.com.
While We Are Still Here
While We Are Still Here (WWSH) will educate, enshrine and preserve the extraordinary legacy of Harlem as an influential incubator that was vital to the intellectual, cultural, social, and political advancements of the Harlem community as well as the African Diaspora. While We Are Still Here ensures that the “post-gentrification” community of Harlem and beyond will honor and find a meaningful connection to the legacy of African American achievement, and its paramount importance to world culture. https://whilewearestillhere.org/
Jiyoung Lee 