In a Vulgar Language: When Your Childhood Wasn’t Invited

Last Thursday, the multi-hyphenate creative Zazu Swistel unveiled a series of new works at A.I.R. Gallery, an artist-run organization based in DUMBO and dedicated to women and nonbinary artists. The exhibition, In a Vulgar Language: When Your Childhood Wasn’t Invited, is sandwiched between concurrent displays by Yvette Drury Dubinsky and Maya Jeffereis. (All three artists are current A.I.R. Fellows.) At the center of In a Vulgar Language are pieces from Swistel’s Spatial Portrait series of large-scale, diagrammatic wax-pastel drawings. Their imagery, while abstract, pulls on snippets of conversation Swistel had with participants, whom she asked to describe a space that triggered a personal memory.

“The portraits are just trying to create a third space—another point of access to what the candidate told me about their memory and what I pulled from it,” explained Swistel (a sometimes NYRA contributor). The spatial translations warp architectural conventions and linger in the esoteric “third space” of human connection.

Accompanying the drawings are textual and aural su…