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On Location with Artichoke Dance | Robin Michals
October 3 @ 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
On Location with Artichoke Dance is a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based photographer Robin Michals. Curated by Pam Wong, the exhibit showcases photographs of Artichoke Dance Company performing the Immersive Performance Tours of Gowanus conceived by Lynn Neuman in 2021, and co-hosted annually with various environmental and social justice organizations.
The photographs on view feature Artichoke dancers moving through Gowanus in space and time and include images at the defunct Salt Lot in 2021 and the new 420 Carroll Street development in 2026. Michals merges the genres of dance photography and urban landscape photography in vibrant shots that capture the performances as well as the evolution of the neighborhood. The photos juxtapose the dancers as they work together to create patterns and shapes against a backdrop of the transforming waterfront. The photos offer an interpretation of the performances as a positive vision of urban life that values art, collaboration, and environmental awareness.
In addition, there is a portrait of Neuman, in costume, on the tipping floor at SIMS Municipal Recycling, taken for Michals and Neuman’s collaborative project Waste Side Story. Michals and Neuman met in 2018 through a residency offered by Works on Water and Underwater New York on Governors Island. Michals, who had been working on environmental issues for 15 years, was struck by Lynn’s upcycling of plastic bags into costumes, and the pair began to work together to make images of a dancer wearing the costumes at locations that reflect the lifecycle of plastics from production to various end points including landfills and oceans. Several of these images were exhibited at The Old Stone House in 2021. Robin shifted her focus to dance photography after the pandemic, starting with her work with the Times Square Project in 2020 and 2021.
For Robin, photographing the Artichoke Dance tours is an incredible opportunity to bring together her longstanding love of urban landscape photography and her much more recent, but no less profound, love of dance photography.
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ON LOCATION WITH ARTICHOKE DANCE
On view Saturdays: Sept 12, 19, 26 and Oct 3 from 1-5pm
ON LOCATION WITH ARTICHOKE DANCE Programs:
Sept. 12 (2:00–2:30pm): Video screening of Immersive Performance Tour Highlights: 2021–2026 with Artichoke Dance Company
Sept. 12 (2:00–2:30pm): Video screening of Immersive Performance Tour Highlights: 2021–2026 with Artichoke Dance Company
Sept. 12 (2:30-4:30pm): Join a guided tour using the Gowanus Augmented Reality Walking Tour App featuring animated virtual environments of the past as visual overlays on the canal-scape, as well as the Underground Waterways Soundwalk where voices from the past murmur and sing, led by Sarah Drury, Project Director. iPads and headphones provided, or download to your iPhone. The 20-minute tour will be available from 2:30-4:30pm.
Sept. 19 (2:00pm): Pop-up performance by Artichoke Dance Company
Sept. 26 (2:00pm): Pop-up performance by Artichoke Dance Company
Sept. 26 (2:30pm): Role of the Arts in Change Making: A Conversation with Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts of New York
Oct. 3 (2:00pm): Pop-up performance by Artichoke Dance Company
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About the Artist:
Robin Michals is a photographer who specializes in dance and performance. She is completely omnivorous when it comes to dance with an interest in all forms from folkloric to street dance. Her clients include the international Human Rights Arts Festival and the Queensboro Dance Festival among many others. In 2025, she had a public installation of photos of dancers at the party Vinyl Nights in Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn, sponsored by Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Her work has also been in numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Queens Chronicle, and Time Out. Before shifting her focus to performance, she spent 15 years documenting environment issues including climate change and the fossil fuel industries. She was raised in Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn in the last century. Robin has taught photography at City Tech, CUNY, where her students are from all over the world, for 23 years. For more info: www.robinmichals.com
Robin Michals is a photographer who specializes in dance and performance. She is completely omnivorous when it comes to dance with an interest in all forms from folkloric to street dance. Her clients include the international Human Rights Arts Festival and the Queensboro Dance Festival among many others. In 2025, she had a public installation of photos of dancers at the party Vinyl Nights in Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn, sponsored by Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Her work has also been in numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Queens Chronicle, and Time Out. Before shifting her focus to performance, she spent 15 years documenting environment issues including climate change and the fossil fuel industries. She was raised in Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn in the last century. Robin has taught photography at City Tech, CUNY, where her students are from all over the world, for 23 years. For more info: www.robinmichals.com
About Artichoke Dance:
Artichoke Dance Company, based in Brooklyn, NY, is known for innovative and engaging performances paired with environmental activism, education, community building and civic engagement. Previous large-scale projects have addressed plastic pollution mitigation on Coney Island, single use plastic bags in New York, sea level rise and climate migration, the remediation of the Gowanus Canal, river revitalization in Los Angeles, and water use and rights in the desert southwest. Under the Direction of Lynn Neuman, Artichoke Dance Company also annually produces an Eco-Arts Festival during NYC Climate Week on Governors Island, bringing visual and performing arts and climate consciousness together through participatory workshops, exhibitions, and performances. Neuman began Artichoke’s Immersive Performance Tours of Gowanus drawing on her many years of experience organizing with the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice. Artichoke’s ecoarts activism training program, Artichoke Ambassadors, and fellowship program, Arts Incubator for Change Making, trains and mentors the next generation of ecoarts activists. Incorporated as a non-profit in 1999, Artichoke Dance has held 23 New York seasons and toured nationally and internationally. For more info: www.artichokedance.org.
