Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space

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Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space provides exhibition opportunities to hundreds of independent curators and emerging underrepresented artists.

Its location inside the Essex Street Market creates a distinct opportunity to directly engage with the local community about contemporary art. Artists Alliance Inc is interested in promoting contemporary artwork in all media, to be shown within a local community setting, though we do not promote community-based art. Through an annual open call, we seek exhibitions featuring the work of emerging and underrepresented contemporary artists and the curators who seek to exhibit these artistsʼ work in a clear and concise context. In addition, we are particularly interested in exhibits that convey relevance to the local community.

“Reality can be stranger than fiction”–Sunny LeerasanthanahThere are only a couple of days to catch “Wild Things,” a new...
10/16/2026

“Reality can be stranger than fiction”–Sunny Leerasanthanah

There are only a couple of days to catch “Wild Things,” a new solo exhibition by AAI’s LES Studio Program alum Sunny Leerasanthanah, don’t miss it!

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

🎉AAI is proud to participate alongside 25 local organizations in this year’s LES Arts & Culture Open House, organized by...
10/09/2026

🎉AAI is proud to participate alongside 25 local organizations in this year’s LES Arts & Culture Open House, organized by the amazing folx at FABnyc 🫶🏽

Join us next Saturday, Oct 17, on the final day of Sunny Leerasanthanah exhibition “Wild Things” and get a tour of the show from AAI’s Director herself, , from 12-3p.

For more info on the day’s events, check out fabnyc.org

We’ll see you there!

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026. Public tours from 12-3p!
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p | LES Open House: Oct 17 from 12-5p 
📸Brad Farwell FABnyc

❣️Last few weeks to see “Wild Things” at Cuchifritos Gallery!Join us for a screening of two films by Sunny Leerasanthana...
10/05/2026

❣️Last few weeks to see “Wild Things” at Cuchifritos Gallery!

Join us for a screening of two films by Sunny Leerasanthanah (Sunny Leerasanthanah), Certain Aliens (2023, 32min) and Wild Things (2026, 9 min), followed by a conversation with the artist and NY-based curator Dylan Seh-Jin Kim (Dylan Seh-Jin Kim).

From natural history dioramas to campaigns against “invasive” species to the artist’s own experience with U.S. immigration policy, we’ll explore who gets to belong, and who decides.

🔗Link in bio to RSVP.

🎬 Wild Things: Screening & Conversation, Oct 15 from 6:30-8:30p
📍Cuchifritos Gallery, 88 Essex St [Stall 21 inside Essex Market]
🗓Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📸Sunny Leerasanthanah

“Someone had recommended to me many years ago and asked me if I knew about Saidiya Hartman’s work with ‘critical fabulat...
10/02/2026

“Someone had recommended to me many years ago and asked me if I knew about Saidiya Hartman’s work with ‘critical fabulation’ and at the time I had no idea, but that’s been a concept that I’ve really grappled with. So thinking about what’s lost in [the] archives, whose voices were lost over time and using fabulations like fictions, storytelling, to fill in those gaps and invent [...] I think that’s what I found and those are the works I really enjoyed seeing by so many different artists and filmmakers and writers are people who blend the two together in a critical way, not meant as censorship or erasure, but rather to surface a third or unseen narrative.”–Sunny Leerasanthanah (Sunny Leerasanthanah)

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

🥟Join us for an evening of making, tasting & connecting! For this The Immigrant Artist Biennial edition of Pinch of Us, ...
09/30/2026

🥟Join us for an evening of making, tasting & connecting! For this The Immigrant Artist Biennial edition of Pinch of Us, curated by Sofia Thiệu D’Amico (sofia thiệu d’amico) and Anna Khimasia (Anna Khimasia), and conceived by LuLu Meng (LuLu Meng). Together, we’ll learn from artists Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya) and Rujuta Rao (Rujuta Rao) how to make vegetarian and pescatarian Thai Miang Kham and vegetarian Goan Patoleo!

Pinch of Us is more than a cooking class; it’s an invitation to explore the multicultural self through a playful, communal art-and-food experience. 

Pinch of Us will also be part of this year’s Talk & Taste program Essex Market! Get your tickets to join this pivotal biennial art experience and food adventure, and to listen in on special chats with the artists, curators, and food stewards themselves. Link in bio 🔗

🗓 Pinch of Us, Oct 22, 2026
📍Essex Kitchen @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market Mezzanine]
⏰7:00 - 9:00p
📸Manuel Molina Martagon and The Immigrant Artist Biennial

“My research and collecting of materials have spanned many methods. The in-person documentation, going to the Everglades...
09/25/2026

“My research and collecting of materials have spanned many methods. The in-person documentation, going to the Everglades, to the Natural History Museum, the library, reading material [from] both the archives at [the] New York Public Library and picture collection [...] I didn’t end up using any images from that, but even just going through their tab labeled snakes—Amazing! So fun! Reaching out to field experts, the internet, the National Park Service website, that material is in the binder because I’m interested in how they’ve presented talking about even eugenics over time and the founding of the parks.”–Sunny Leerasanthanah

Artist and AAI’s LES Studio Program alum Sunny Leerasanthanah connects the founding of the American Museum of Natural History amid an influx of immigration to America in the late 1800s, with eugenics and narratives of a “natural world order,” to current invasive species policy and government-sponsored hunting initiatives, to sift out the roots of xenophobia in their exhibition “Wild Things”.

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

📣Our 2027 Curatorial Open Call is now open! The call invites applicants to engage with the theme (Re)Building—an inquiry...
09/24/2026

📣Our 2027 Curatorial Open Call is now open! The call invites applicants to engage with the theme (Re)Building—an inquiry into how artists reconstruct, repair, and reimagine the forms and systems that shape collective life. Selected proposals will collaborate with the AAI team to realize an exhibition in Fall/Winter 2027-2028. If you’re an independent curator, cultural worker, or arts professional with a stellar exhibition in mind, please consider applying. Link in Bio 🔗

🧑🏽‍💻Application opens: Now!
🔒Application closes: Nov 6, 2026
🎉Applicants notified: Jan 2027

“I wanted to drive home and emphasize that I’m not literally concerned about the Python here. It’s a stand in and that’s...
09/23/2026

“I wanted to drive home and emphasize that I’m not literally concerned about the Python here. It’s a stand in and that’s why I quite literally put in a green screen fabric for the Python to invite people to insert their quote unquote monster of choice [...] basically it to emphasize that point.”–Sunny Leerasanthanah

More and more language about immigrants is directly borrowed from the alien and invasive species analogy, and Sunny Leerasanthanah work examines this false rhetoric through research, re-enactment, humor, and docufiction, allowing us to make our own associations. “Wild Things” is on view at Cuchifritos Gallery through the fall; be sure to stop by and offer your own perspective or shift into new ones.

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

“There’s a Ron DeSantis Clip Montage that’s from YouTube. There’s a supercut of an old TV show called ‘The Everglades’ t...
09/16/2026

“There’s a Ron DeSantis Clip Montage that’s from YouTube. There’s a supercut of an old TV show called ‘The Everglades’ that’s from the Internet Archive [...], and lastly, there’s material from a workshop I did with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They have a virtual workshop for people who want to hunt Pythons, and I signed up for it [...] the way they talk about handling snakes and the imagery they show, I think to me it’s kind of jarring, seeing very unintentionally on their part, a hunter who’s kneeling down on a Python and pinning its head. We’re in the age of content where I think most people would have a relationship to that image, thinking about ICE, thinking about Black Lives Matter, that type of [...] candid video of people, of authority figures capturing somebody and something…” –Sunny Leerasanthanah

Dig into the research and discover your own associations in this exhibition by AAI’s LES Studio Program alum Sunny Leerasanthanah.

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

We’re back again with Sunny Leerasanthanah “Wild Things” at Cuchifritos Gallery inside Essex Market ! Curious about the ...
09/09/2026

We’re back again with Sunny Leerasanthanah “Wild Things” at Cuchifritos Gallery inside Essex Market ! Curious about the show 🧐 ? Check out this thoughtful review from Laura 雨華 in IMPULSE Magazine 🙌🏽

Read more with the link in bio🔗⚡️

📢The exhibition has been EXTENDED to Oct 17, so be sure to stop by to experience these provocative, humorous, and timely works!

🗓 Wild Things on view through Oct 17, 2026
📍Cuchifritos Gallery @ 88 Essex St [inside Essex Market]
⏰Gallery hours: Wed - Sat from 12–6p 
📸Brad Farwell
🤲 Supported by Artists Alliance Inc. and the Fdn. for Contemporary Arts

Address

88 Essex Street
New York, NY
10002

Opening Hours

Tuesday 12pm - 6pm
Wednesday 12pm - 6pm
Thursday 12pm - 6pm
Friday 12pm - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 6pm
Sunday 12pm - 6pm

Telephone

+12124209202

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