Staging Area: A Barn Raising in Two Parts (Part One), Erin Besler
March 15–June 8, 2025
Art Omi
Few structures have been as intensely labored over as the barn. From community raising weekends and feminist pedagogical projects to back-to-the land conversions and acts of preservation, across the rural United States barns are sites where commonly held distinctions break down: between amateur participants and expert practitioners, nature and culture, individuals and collectives, manual trades and intellectual pursuits, and the discipline of architecture and the practice of building.
While American barns are often tied to romantic myths of isolation, self-sufficiency, and pragmatism, the collective efforts of barn raisings emphasize exchange, skill sharing, and more ubiquitous building practices. Here, catering kitchens, woodcraft workshops, and informal childcare unfold at the edges of the building process, weaving everyday life into construction. These practices challenge conventional notions of property and innovation, instead fostering systems of reciprocity and community over individualism and profit.
Curated by Julia van den Hout for Art Omi, Staging Area unfolds in two parts and through an ongoing, layered program of events. Over the course of five months, visitors are invited to join in social gatherings, site-specific interventions, and creative activities, including raising suppers, barn model workshops, and lumber parades.
Part One of Staging Area opened on March 15, 2025 inside the Newmark Gallery at Art Omi. Part Two, taking place in Summer 2025, features an outdoor installation of a barn frame in the Sculpture & Architecture Park, staged as a public raising that brings together participants and visitors to collectively realize the construction process and further celebrate the barn as a site of collaboration and shared labor.
Exhibition Design: Erin Besler, Ana Rico Rubio, Yohana Ansari-Thomas, Chandler Shan, Rob Williams, Mason Magemeneas, Aonor Washington, Nneoma Onyekwere, Shravan Arun, Tyler Gray, Emilio Olivas, and Michael Adams.
Erin Besler (she/they) is a co-founder of Besler & Sons, a studio that designs buildings, software, objects, exhibitions, and interiors. Erin’s interests focus on architecture as a collective project, exploring the social, pedagogical, and material aspects of construction, social media, and other means of producing and sharing content that rely less on expertise and more on ubiquity.
Their work has been recognized by the Architectural League of New York, a United States Artists Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Architecture, and the Graham Foundation. They have exhibited internationally, including at The Tallinn Architecture Biennial, MODEL Barcelona Architecture Festival, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism as part of the group exhibition “Now, There,” which was awarded the UABB Bronze Award. Erin’s collaborative design work and writing have been published widely in e-flux, Future Anterior, Perspecta, Log, PLOT. Alongside practice, Erin teaches at Princeton University in the School of Architecture.
Art Omi’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Installation views © Olympia Shannon, courtesy of Art Omi