News and Press Releases

For Immediate Release: December 19, 2025

Contact: publicaffairs@culture.nyc.gov

MATERIALS FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS “THE USEFUL LIFE OF OBJECTS,” FEATURING RONEN GAMIL, BASEERA KHAN, ARMITA RAAFAT, AND JUSTIN STERLING, CO-CURATED BY KENDAL HENRY AND SARA REISMAN

“The Useful Life of Objects” will be on view in the Materials for the Arts gallery from January 15 through March 12, 2026, beginning with a free public opening on January 15 with an artist and curator talk at 6:30 PM, followed by a reception from 7:30 to 9:00 PM

Photos of the artists’ works are available here.


Armita Raafat, Untitled, 2024. Handmade paper, pigmented paper pulp, embroidered textile (khoos doozi), mesh, mirrors.15 x 11.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

Queens, NY – Materials for the Arts (MFTA) presents “The Useful Life of Objects,” a group exhibition featuring recent work by New York–based artists Ronen Gamil, Baseera Khan, Armita Raafat, and Justin Sterling. Opening January 15, 2026, and co-curated by Kendal Henry and Sara Reisman, the exhibition explores the aesthetic, conceptual, and emotional potential of objects diverted from waste streams and given new life through creative reuse.

Drawing from MFTA’s 35,000-square-foot warehouse — one of New York City’s most expansive resources for surplus materials — the artists were invited to engage in individual residencies during the fall of 2025. The resulting exhibition demonstrates how discarded and overlooked items can be transformed not only into art, but into catalysts for reflection on value, memory, labor, and material abundance.

“In co-curating this exhibition with Sara Reisman, we thought expansively about experimentation and about what becomes possible when artists are given the freedom to respond to the materials around them,” said Kendal Henry, Co-curator and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Assistant Commissioner for Public Art. “Materials for the Arts is an invaluable resource and cultural hub for creative workers across our city, and we look forward to this exhibition and the conversations it inspires around the role of art in civic dialogue.”

"The title for our exhibition, ‘The Useful Life of Objects,’ came to mind while visiting the artists' studios, where we witnessed firsthand the recuperation of objects and materials found in the MFTA warehouse,” said Co-curator Sara Reisman. “I love how Materials for the Arts extends the useful life of objects in ways that challenge capitalist culture's emphasis on the new and shiny over what is old and storied."

“Materials for the Arts operates at the intersection of material circulation, consumption, and creative practice. In developing this group show, we sought to explore what might emerge when the works by these artists, reflecting on the current political climate, capitalism, culture, equity, and social justice, converge,” said MFTA Executive Director Tara Sansone. “Each one of these artists has important stories to share, and we wanted to give them the platform to do that. In ‘The Useful Life of Objects,’ their art speaks volumes, both as standalone works as well as in conversation with one another.”

Featuring works in sculpture, installation, painting, and hybrid forms, “The Useful Life of Objects” examines what it means to extend the lifespan of waste material. Whether reconfiguring scraps from the fashion industry, reframing household remnants, reconfiguring commercial surplus, or incorporating found elements from the public realm, each artist approaches material as both physical matter and cultural record. Their works reveal the poetic qualities of the provisional — and the many ways that objects persist, accumulate meaning, and inform the stories that the remains of our consumption tell.

In the development of this exhibition, Materials for the Arts becomes more than a resource; it is a catalyst. In this way, the artworks function as sites where personal and collective histories converge, where the overlooked debris of daily life becomes a means to confront, complicate, and sometimes repair the narratives that shape our communities. Through these acts of transformation, the artists show that material reuse is not merely an aesthetic choice, but a cultural and political gesture.

Together, the four artists activate MFTA’s mission at the level of lived material experience: art emerges not in spite of scarcity, but through an abundance of material at hand.

MFTA will celebrate the opening of “The Useful Life of Objects” with a free public event on Thursday, January 15, 2026, from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM with an artist talk led by curators Kendal Henry and Sara Reisman. “The Useful Life of Objects” will be on view at Materials for the Arts Gallery (located within the MFTA warehouse at 33-00 Northern Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens 11101) through March 12, 2026, welcoming visitors Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission to this exhibition is free and open to the public.

Public Program & Opening Reception
Thursday, January 15, 2026
6:30 PM — Artist + Curator Talk
7:30–9:00 PM — Opening Reception

Exhibition Dates

January 15 – March 12, 2026
Materials for the Arts Gallery

33-00 Northern Blvd, 3rd Floor

Long Island City, NY 11101

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About Ronen Gamil
Ronen Gamil is a Brooklyn-based, multi-lingual, Yemenite-Israeli artist raised in Palestine-Israel after his early childhood years in Brooklyn. They lived or traveled extensively in Italy, Spain, South America, and Mozambique. Gamil’s recent works have been colorful, immersive installations made of textiles, copper, beads, aluminum, steel, and plants, engaging with themes of ethnic identity, housing and gentrification, migration, and the Zionist project. He had a solo exhibition at FiveMyles and group shows at the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, Gallery Particulier, Summit Public Art, NJ, Clio Art Fair, Brooklyn Central Library, and Prospect Park. Trained in art, architecture, urbanism, and horticulture, they earned a BA in studio art and a Master of Urban Planning from the City College of New York. Gamil is currently a New Yorkers for Culture and Arts artist advocate resident, and was a Brooklyn Fashion Academy fellow (2024), a Bronx Museum AIM fellow (2022), a Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellow (2018), and was selected by Smack Mellon as a Hot Pick (2020). Learn more at ronengamil.com.

About Baseera Khan
Baseera Khan is a New York-based visual artist interested in materials, color, and their economies. From public art installation to sculpture, painting to performance and music, Khan collages the effects of these relationships to labor and family structures, religion, and spiritual well-being. Khan has performed and exhibited at several locations in the past years sharing this diverse practice. Their public art commission for The High Line Park, NYC, "Painful Arc II, Shoulder High," was installed from 2023-24, and a permanent public art commission, "New Leaf," was installed for Help USA, Brooklyn, NY in 2025. Khan has mounted museum solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. (2023), Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY (2021-22), and a solo touring exhibition at Moody Arts Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH (2022- 23). Other recent solo exhibitions were at Simone Subal Gallery, NYC and 10 & Zero Uno in Venice, Italy (2024), also in London, U.K., at Niru Ratnam Gallery (2025). Their works are part of several public permanent collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, MN, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA. Khan received an M.F.A. from Cornell University (2012) and a B.F.A. from the University of North Texas (2005). Learn more at baseerakhan.com.

About Armita Raafat
Armita Raafat is a New York-based sculptor and installation artist. Born in Chicago and raised in Iran, she earned a BFA from Al-Zahra University in Tehran and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the MCA Chicago, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the Noyes Museum of Art, New Jersey; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York; High Noon Gallery, New York; Art in Buildings; New York and Florida; HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin; and Al-Zahra University, Tehran. Raafat received the Peter S. Reed Foundation grant for Sculpture and a NYFA fellowship for Crafts/Sculpture. She has been in residence at LMCC Swing Space, AIM at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Winter Workspace at Wave Hill, and Workspace Program at Dieu Donné. Her work has been written about in publications such as Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, artcritical, and others. She currently has a studio with the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York. Learn more at armitaraafat.com.

About Justin Sterling
Justin Sterling is a New York City-based visual artist and trumpet player born in Houston, Texas. His primary medium is an archive of reclaimed municipal objects; through recycling and civil disobedience. He appropriates the built environment to create an often overlooked world within the urban and domestic. He aims to unravel the way we view authority by revealing various truths about spirituality, protest, urban ecosystems, collective memory, and bad-faith policy, to craft new stories beyond our present moment. Sterling’s practice meanders through drawing, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. Sterling holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio (2015), an MFA in Fine Arts from The New School: Parsons School of Design, New York (2017), and is a 2018 alum of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, New York. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions including “Chapel of the Rocks” at the San Diego Museum of Art (2022), “Windows of Opportunity” at RedBud Gallery, Houston (2022), “Orange Chapel” at Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn (2020), “Solo Performance” at Parallel Performance Space, Brooklyn (2019), “Broken Windows” at The Olympia Project, Williamsburg (2019), “Images of Power” at Freight Gallery, San Antonio (2018), and “A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch” at Our Neon Foe Gallery, Sydney (2017). Learn more at justintoart.com.

About Materials for the Arts (MFTA)
A program of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, with support from the Department of Education and Friends of Materials for the Arts, MFTA is NYC’s largest reuse center supporting nonprofits with arts programming, public schools, and City agencies. MFTA collects millions of pounds of supplies each year which it provides, free of charge, to its member organizations. In addition to providing materials, MFTA has the MFTA Education Center, Gallery, Artist-in-Residence and Designer-in-Residence programs, and Third Thursday public programming, which are supported by Friends of Materials for the Arts. Learn more at nyc.gov/mfta.