Stephanie Acosta by Jessie Young.
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Nature and the organic world inspires and instigates an evening of live works and conversation featuring Andrea Soto, Matt Rossi, and mun (Justin Wong), curated by Stephanie Acosta for CPR’s OPEN STUDIOS. Playing with scale, perspectives and approach, nature takes us into itself, embedded in and emboldened by the landscapes and layers that make up our world.
PROGRAM
Andrea Soto: NÉCTAR
Silly knowledge of a woman, the silhouette of a dream that looks up to the world as its mother.
To sit still at the top of the Sun and attempt to believe in every perfection. Morphing as a condition of survival, adapting as both an instinct and a negotiation. Move towards extraction, further away from perfection; surrender, as they say.
Matt Rossi: The Memory of Soil
The Memory of Soil is a collage of three short pieces of hybrid narrative writing representing early sketches for a longer meditation on the relationship between soil communities, migration and movement, ants, and deep time. Images of mosses, fungi, rhizomes, and tiny creatures are included as a bonus.
mun (Justin Wong): COBALT
COBALT is an intervention into a history of collecting chinese porcelains in early 1900s New York. mun is joined by composer and performer Joey Chang.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Stephanie Acosta is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist and curator, placing the materiality of the ephemeral at the center of their practice, questioning meaning-making and manufactured-limitations. Acosta blends performance with practice-based research in facilitated processes, creating fleeting performance works that challenge site, space, and perception, to bring about shared experiences. Acosta works extensively with unseen histories with both the AUNTS and Jo Andres Archives, and has presented works with and for Museum of Art and Design, MCA of Chicago, OutFest, Knockdown Center, Montpellier Danse Festival, LMCC, La Mama, and has long-time collaborations with many artists and curators including Miguel Gutierrez, Alexis Wilkinson, Isaac Pool, Alexa Grae and Yanira Castro. Recently Acosta made their MoMA debut as director of Lugar de Consuelo (Place of Solace), a play conceived by Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa and written by Wingston Gonzalez. Currently their interdisciplinary exploration Lichen Baby, It’s Me Moss, looks at multitudes in fracture through melodrama with recent residencies through MacDowell, Danspace and Triangle in NYC. stephanieacosta.org
Andrea Soto is a Mexican American movement artist from Juárez. Her practice moves through dance, physical theater, and embodied research. Working with the body as a visceral temple, she investigates memory, displacement, and the body’s entanglement with landscape and the non-human world.
Her work spans genres and media, migrating between museums, galleries and performance spaces. She has performed at institutions and venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, MSN Warsaw, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, UNTITLED Miami, Centre national de la Danae in Paris, and Women’s Project Theater, as well as in Judson Church and RZA’s Ballet Through Mud. Andrea’s work has brought her into dialogue with an expansive range of artists, including Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, John Jasperse, Julie Mehretu, Julie Tolentino, Yusha Marie-Sorzano, EYIBRA, Dimitri Chamblas, JOJO ABOT, Sam Wentz, Gerard & Kelly, Erick Benítez, Alexsa Durrans, and Annalee Traylor, among others.
She studied at the California Institute of the Arts and was honored with the Barbara Ensley Award from the Merce Cunningham Trust (2024). She works as a director and performer in New York, Los Angeles, and London.
Matthew Rossi is a writer, a performer, a cormorant, and a marsh creature. His work explores the anxious emotional space of the Anthropocene through stories about the lives of ignored and unobserved creatures, ghost landscapes, and the entanglements found within communities of soil. His work is published in Gigantic Worlds, NY Tyrant, Bennington Review, and he has received support from residencies through the Breadloaf Environmental Writers Workshop, the Eastern Frontier Foundation, and Playa. Matthew currently lives directly uphill from one of the former marshes of NYC.
mun (justin wong) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and educator. he makes work that addresses the idea of "material cultural heritage": how things are made, how they flow around the world, and how, why and when they become designated as objects of value over time. he was a 2025 artist in residence at the pottery workshop in jingdezhen, china, and a 2026 merit scholar at the art students league of new york. he is a nyc public high school teaching artist, and has held administrative positions at the shed, foundation for contemporary arts, and the high line.
OPEN STUDIOS is a series of work-in-progress showings held regularly throughout the year, organized by guest curators, and serves as an incubator for new work, inviting the public into the artistic process.