Geography of Life #3
Lizania Cruz

GALLERY I

Lizania Cruz, Geography of Life #3 New York City, 2025, risograph, wallpaper installation detail. 

May 31–June 29, 2025

Opening reception: Saturday, May 31, from 6–8pm

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Geography of Life #3, a continuation of A.I.R. New York Artist Lizania Cruz’s research-based site-specific works documenting the relationships of interdependency between humans and nature and the effects of an expanding tropic globally. For Geography of Life #3, Cruz explores the impacts of raising temperatures in New York City through installation, a ready-made sculpture, participatory drawing exercise, and a pedagogical curriculum for artmaking with children and youth. 

The past ten years have been the hottest on record for the planet. In 2020, New York City was reclassified from a humid continental climate zone to a humid subtropical climate zone.¹ According to the NYC Panel on Climate Change, in 2050 New York City could become as hot as Alabama,² potentially impacting the number of heat-related deaths and exacerbating the “urban heat island effect” in the city. At the center of the exhibition is a site-specific wallpaper installation compiling images found in the New York Public Library Picture Collection under the folders of New York, heat, mosquitos, power plants, water supply, hurricanes, and floods, elements the artist considers to be causes and effects of the rising temperatures. A ready-made sculpture acts as an experiment for the concept of water thermal expansion by showcasing how increases in temperature cause water molecules to increase in volume, leading to rising sea levels.  

Following Cruz’s interest in inviting diverse voices into her practice, for Geography of Life #3, Cruz has partnered with Cafeteria Culture, a national environmental education non-profit, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, a non-profit supporting young women and gender-expansive youth of color throughout New York City. For this collaboration, Cruz created a curriculum and series of artmaking workshops for fifth-grade girls that explore the New York City water supply system, the urban Heat Island Effect, and the effects of extreme heat on their daily life. The resulting drawings, flow charts, and heat awareness flyers created by the workshop participants will be displayed in the gallery. Cruz extends her collaborative practice to visitors as well, inviting them to participate in a new Interdependency Exercise, 2025 bydrawing their relationships of interdependency, solidarity, mutuality, and intimacy between themselves, natives, strangers, and nature.

Lizania Cruz (she/her) (b. 1983) is a Dominican participatory artist and designer interested in how systems of oppression, mythmaking, and historiography shape our understanding of otherness and belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience engagement, she creates projects that expand and highlight pluralistic narratives in the public sphere. Cruz is a 2024-2025 Fellow with US Latinx Art Forum and in 2023 she received the New York City Artadia Award. A commissioned installation was presented by The Shed’s Open Call program in 2023. She was part of 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Museum and ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21, the first national survey of Latinx artists at el Museo del Barrio. Her work has been exhibited at Sharjah’s First Design Biennale, Untitled, Art Miami Beach, The Highline, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more. She has presented solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, CUE Art Foundation, International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP, Alma Lewis, and Proxyco gallery, and has been featured in Hyperallergic, Fuse News, KQED arts, Dazed Magazine, Garage Magazine, and the New York Times.

View Lizania Cruz’s page here.

View the Press Release here.