TEMPEST GALLERY @ ONE EYED STUDIOS:

My Armor Thinned To A Silken Scrim | A Group Exhibition

Tempest Gallery at One Eyed Studios is pleased to present My Armor Thinned To A Silken Scrim, a group exhibition of sculpture and installation using textiles and glass.

The exhibition is on view from June 26, 2025 – July 26, 2025.

Details

On View: June 26th, 2025 – July 26th, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 26th, 6-8pm

Artist Talk & Gathering: Saturday, July 26th, 3pm

TEMPEST Gallery @ ONE EYED STUDIOS,

1639 Centre St,

Studio 179,

Ridgewood, Queens, 11385.

Enter via Weirfield St

Regular gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday, 1-6pm. TEMPEST is open to scheduled visits outside of regular hours, please direct message us on Instagram @tempest.gallery

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Latif is an Arabic word that means fine, delicate, tender or kind. In a reading by poet Haleh Liza Gafori, who has translated from Farsi poems by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, or more familiarly, Rumi, one line reverberated:

My armor thinned to a silken scrim

Defenseless, but somehow possessing an inner integrity that will endure.

She went on to describe ‘Latif,’ another word for god, as a lightness – delicate, silky, translucent, ephemerality as a strength, and the shedding of armor as a process of becoming. It’s not easy, she said. It’s not easy. War is an industry and one which feeds the empire we live in. To exist within this world and be secure in our humanity, enough to be able to feel our heart break and not turn off our empathy, to keep giving of ourselves to this craven world, we need spaces to rest, enjoy beauty and share our gifts with others.

Gafori said, “..the feeling of being latif.. of opening, of relaxing.. if mysticism is supposed to do anything.. it’s supposed to untie the knots.”

Ængel’s wax paintings and glass sculptures, Khalifeh’s textile installations, vee’s generous, fragile soundscapes, Yudasto’s glass and silk dovetail sculptures, carry with them softness, permeability, and readiness to transform. Textiles and glass have special qualities which lend themselves to flexibility and eternal movement. Sound and light heighten our enjoyment and add texture to our experiences of the physical realm. This suite of works inscribe memory and personal experience upon material and create a place which opens our defenses and leaves us soft, liberated, allowing us to experience our full range of humanity; merciful and compassionate, able to see and enjoy the world.

I’m reminded of this line from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, from 1979:

“Softness is great and strength is worthless.”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Earth Ængel

Earth Ængel (they/them) creates from their own fluid experience, navigating a fantastical queer ecology through the dysphoria of hetero-centric late capitalism. Earth does not attempt to shame and scold these man-made values into submission but instead ingests them. They launder their consumption, laying by its deathbed—grieving, consoling the outcome—its funeral—and then resurrect it into the archive of predetermined aesthetics, bringing it into the queer afterlife. By examining the roots of aesthetics and material use in their empirical value, Earth Ængel uses heat-related practices to melt it all down. Heat plays a pivotal role in Earth Ængel’s practice, acting as both a literal and symbolic force for transformation.

Heat doesn’t just melt materials; it disintegrates rigid structures—whether societal expectations, cultural systems, or personal identity—and creates the possibility for new forms to emerge. Just as materials are softened, restructured, and remade, so too are the binaries of gender, identity, culture, and even economic or political systems reformed into something more fluid, open, and expansive. This process of melting and remaking allows for the regeneration of new possibilities for existence, where identities, systems, and ideas can be seen as dynamic, evolving, and resistant to fixed categories.

The totchkey, surface, or decorative elements, play an essential role in this vision. These often intricate embellishments go beyond ornamentation; they are markers of human complexity, resistance, and identity. The totchkey directly challenges the erase or simplify identity and experience into a uniform, isolated form. Instead, Earth Ængel embraces decoration as a form of storytelling, a means of reclaiming space for the complexities and nuances of being. This decorative act speaks to a rejection of the exclusionary tendencies found in Modernism and Contemporary Art, and instead celebrates the fullness of human experience in a more Activated Art movement.

Earth Ængel is a recent MFA graduate of Goldsmiths University in London, having completed their undergraduate BFA at Parsons School of Design. They have received awards from The Arts Council of England, Cerf+, Goldsmiths University, and the NYC Parks Department to develop their work. Their pieces have been exhibited in New York, London, Mexico City, Chicago, and Cyprus. Earth Ængel lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, with their partner Rob Rose, where together they form the art duo Ængel-Rose.

Rhonda Khalifeh

Rhonda Khalifeh is a Syrian-American artist working with textiles to investigate surface and the ways in which it negotiates with, protects, and betrays the human body. She utilizes printmaking, dyeing, sewing, and digital collage to create site-responsive installations, multi-layered assemblages, and artist books. Drawing from her personal experience with assimilation in the U.S. and from stories of the Syrian Diaspora, Khalifeh uses materials with intentionality to invoke feelings such as comfort, belonging, and loss. As she layers and reworks different materials, she reflects on safety, security, and the right to movement while questioning what or who gets left behind and what endures.

Rhonda Khalifeh is a Syrian-American interdisciplinary artist based in the Hudson Valley. She received her MFA from the fiber department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2017 and has been an artist in residence at SVA Bio Art Lab, Textile Arts Center, and Center for Book Arts. Khalifeh’s work has been exhibited across the country and can be found in several public collections including the Met Museum, New York Public Library, and Fine Arts Library at Harvard University. She published Project Z (2018) and Project Z Book II (2022) with Open Projects Press.

joell vee

joell vee – “My broader practice moves across media—visual art, sound, performance, and text—because I often don’t feel at home in just one form. I’m interested in what happens in the spaces between: between languages, between disciplines, between ideas of self. My work often explores embodiment, perception, and the liminal—what is sensed but not always named.

The work presented here began as a desire to share something that moved me deeply: Dysphoria Mundi, a book by Paul B. Preciado. When it came out in French in late 2023, I started casually translating pieces of it in conversation, impatient for others to read it. What emerged from those small, friendly translation sessions—especially with my collaborator Earth Ӕngel—was the seed for this sound-based piece.

I think of this piece as both a kind of spell and a kind of essay. It’s informed by theory, but it’s also deeply felt. It’s about the struggle to find a voice—not just literally, but metaphysically. About how voice is shaped in relation to others. About how it can hold contradiction, vulnerability, and power at once.”

joell vee is a visual and sound artist, actor, and translator from Brooklyn, NY. Her work moves between sound collage, performance, and works on paper, exploring themes of embodiment, gender trouble and liminality. She approaches voice as a site of instability and transformation—layered, relational, and always in flux.

Angelica Yudasto

Angelica Yudasto is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores bodily impressions and the vulnerability inherent in fragility and dissolution. Her site-sensitive installations are temporary recreations of her internal psyche, using fragmented forms and residual traces to transform the environment. Her works are often momentary and transient.

Recently, Yudasto has been experimenting with flame-worked glass and digitally printed fibers to expand her internal meditations in response to physical space. The resulting autobiographical pieces map and trace her memories, reflecting her attraction to soft objects, drawing, translucency, and mirroring.

Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, Yudasto’s experiences inform her artistic practice. She has held solo exhibitions at Tutu Gallery and Ki Smith Gallery in 2022, and participated in group exhibitions, including shows at the Blackfish Gallery in Portland, OR, the Art on the Vine Art Auction at the Portland Art Museum, and “If I know 3 languages then I can laugh 3 times as much,” curated by Claire Foussard as part of Spring Break LA in 2024. Her residencies include Boyd’s Station Residency, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, the Wassaic Project, and Studio Kura, where she held a solo exhibition in Itoshima, Japan, in 2023.

ABOUT TEMPEST GALLERY

At TEMPEST, we want to talk about art in a maelstrom. We invite artists to be unafraid to broach difficult conversations and address colonial structures of violence through their practice in textiles, sculpture and installation. Our main desire is that each monthly show present layered themes where multiple cultural references intersect and tussle.

Launched in 2024, Tempest Gallery is located at Rockella Space’s One Eyed Studios in Ridgewood, Queens. Through our programming and events, we aim to create community and a space for gathering, presenting work and building relationships.

Please visit us at 1642 Weirfield Street, Ridgewood Queens, NY, during our regular gallery hours Wednesday-Saturday, 1-6pm.

We are open to scheduled visits outside of regular hours, please direct message us on instagram