DUMBO Projection ProjectNeighborhood-Wide Video Art Series, Projected onto the BQE And Bridges of Dumbo

Series is Brooklyn’s Most Expansive Video Art Series Ever, With Three Exhibits Between March 5 to May 25, 2025 

Projections are Viewable Wednesday through Sunday from Dusk to 11pm

Dumbo, Brooklyn (February 11, 2025) – The Dumbo Projection Project — Brooklyn’s largest-scale projection series ever — will return for its second year with a neighborhood-wide, outdoor video art exhibition projected onto Dumbo's most iconic infrastructure, the Manhattan Bridge on both the Pearl Street and Adams Street sides, and along the BQE in Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park. Presented by the Dumbo Improvement District, projections will run on Wednesdays through Sundays from dusk to 11pm from March 5 to May 25, 2025. This year’s projections will include three new volumes of projected video art, curated by Dumbo-based cultural organizations, which will each run for four weeks, appropriately set in Dumbo, Brooklyn’s longest-established arts district. 

Highlights include charming videos of people and their dogs for Volume Four by Palestinian American artist Kholood Eid, and Matthew Gilbertson, curated by Photoville, a non-profit organization founded in 2011 that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all; curation for Volume Five by Smack Mellon, a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1995 with the mission to nurture and support emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work; and content created by Interactive Telecommunications Program students at NYU in Professor Gabe Barcia-Colombo’s course, Special Outdoor Video Art: Projection in Dumbo, for Volume Six.

The Dumbo Projection Project will continue annually each winter. The full schedule is available here and listed below. Video stills available for usage are linked here.

"Last year was the debut of the Dumbo Projection Project and we were so thrilled with the response,” said Alexandria Sica, President of the Dumbo Improvement District. “People stop and stare at the BQE — it's such an unconventional platform for art and it works so well! We are excited to be working with local arts rockstars Photoville, Smack Mellon, and NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program for our second iteration. Expect a very Dumbo program — combining fine art, technology, and some adorable dogs!”

"Public art enlivens New York City’s iconic infrastructure, transforming our public realm to be even more beautiful and vibrant,” said NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. “We are grateful for the Dumbo Improvement District's partnership for bringing exciting artistic projections to millions of New Yorkers and visitors.”

In 2024, Dumbo launched The Dumbo Projection Project, an evolution of its previous video art projections programming. The Dumbo Improvement District has a long history of pioneering projection art at a monumental scale — including one hundred installments of the popular, single-channel series Light Year, which ran on the First Thursday of every month from 2015 to 2023, and previously the Dumbo Arts Festival, among other projects. Dumbo is home to many of Brooklyn’s storied studio residency programs, including Sharpe Walentas Studio Program and programs at Triangle, A.I.R. Gallery, and Smack Mellon, and to arts organizations including Brooklyn Arts Council, Photoville, and St. Ann’s Warehouse, as well as a dozen art galleries and more than 165 artist studios that open annually for Dumbo Open Studios.

Projection tours will be given monthly during the neighborhood’s First Thursday Gallery Walks. Details will be posted on the Dumbo Improvement District’s website, www.dumbo.nyc.

This project is made possible with support from the New York City Department of Transportation's art program (NYC DOT Art), the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and Leo Kuelbs Collection.

The full schedule is listed below and additional information on all of the artists and works is found here: https://dumbo.nyc/projections/.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

VOLUME FOUR: PUPS AT PLAY
March 5 to 30, 2025 
Wednesdays through Sundays from Dusk to 11pm
Presented by Photoville in collaboration with Kholood Eid, Matthew Gilbertson, and Professor

Volume Four brings the Wet Nose Pawject to Dumbo, showcasing and celebrating the local pups who walk the same sidewalks, ride the same transportation, and sniff the same air as we do. Dogs are as integral to New York City's culture and community as the people that make up this great city. Whether they are new to the city, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, or born right under the Manhattan Bridge, dogs always find their way to our hearts. Dumbo’s dog community is wonderfully diverse, full of tricks, and always a howling good time — and all are invited to delight in their antics, beauty, and joyful essence on the largest of screens, the BQE and Bridges of Dumbo. “Making dogs happy makes us happy,” says artist Kholood Eid. “We don’t deserve them.”

Kholood Eid is a documentary photographer, educator, and filmmaker based in New York. Regular clients include National Geographic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. In February 2023, Eid — along with husband and fellow photographer/videographer Matthew Gilbertson — launched Wet Nose Pawject as a way to intentionally incorporate more joy and levity in their lives. Their dog Professor, a 14-year-old Westie Terrier mix, is LTO — Lead Treats Operator.

Photoville is a New York-based non-profit organization that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all. Founded in 2011 in Dumbo, Photoville was built on the principles of addressing cultural equity and inclusion by ensuring that the artists it exhibits are diverse in gender, class, and race. In pursuit of its mission, Photoville produces an annual, city-wide open-air photography festival in New York City, a wide range of free educational community initiatives, and a nationwide program of public art exhibitions.

VOLUME FIVE: SMx30 OUTDOORS 
April 2 to 27, 2025 
Wednesdays through Sundays from Dusk to 11pm
Presented by Smack Mellon

Coinciding with the organization’s 30th anniversary year, Smack Mellon’s contribution to The Dumbo Projection Project is a nod to their past and future with video works by the Barnstormers and Juan Jose Cielo. For six weeks in 2001, the Barnstormers, a roving collective of artists, created a rapidly changing, multi-layered painting on the floor of Smack Mellon’s gallery. Titled No Condition is Permanent, the exhibition was documented only by a time-lapse camera. This video documentation will be shown simultaneously across four screens in Dumbo’s Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park. Juan Jose Cielo is a current resident of Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, which provides early-career artists with studio space and resources in order to establish their practices. On either side of the Dumbo Archway, Smack Mellon will show two video works that Cielo made during his 2017 residency at The Mars Desert Research Station, a full-scale analogue research facility that simulated the conditions of Mars in the Utah Desert. 

Smack Mellon is a nonprofit arts organization located in Dumbo. It was founded in Dumbo in 1995 and moved to its current location on Washington Street in 2005. Smack Mellon’s mission is to nurture and support emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work by providing exhibition opportunities, studio workspace, and access to equipment and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects.

Juan José Cielo (b. 1996, Medellin, Colombia) is a Colombian American artist, based in New York working in painting, photography, and short films. In 2017, Juan was selected as an artist-in-residence with scientists and researchers at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Hanksville, Utah. MDRS is a full-scale analog facility simulating living on Mars that receives partial research funding from NASA. Juan is a graduate of The Cooper Union in New York, with studies at the École nationale supérieure beaux-arts in Paris. His work has been featured in group exhibitions in New York, Bogota, and Miami. His work has been exhibited at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Consulate of Colombia in New York, the Alliance Français in Bogota, and the XVII Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia. His work was featured on Univision 41 news and published in National Geographic Traveler magazine, El Heraldo Newspaper and ARTnews. 

VOLUME SIX: UNEXPECTED DELIGHT!
May 1 to 25, 2025
Wednesdays through Sundays from Dusk to 11pm
Curated by Gabriel Barcia-Colombo for NYU

Volume Six features a collection of made-for-Dumbo works by a cohort of students in the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), taught by the mixed-media artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo. Students applied to the class, Special Outdoor Video Art: Projection in Dumbo, specifically to create content for Volume 6, and were chosen by Gabriel along with the Dumbo Improvement District. Collectively, the works created in 2025 play with the theme of “unexpected delight”, exploring both medium and place in ways that will surprise passersby, encouraging us to once again marvel at the spaces we occupy, and at the infrastructure we share those spaces with.

The NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program is a two-year, full-time graduate program at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where the students explore new forms of communications and expression using interactive media technologies. The program focuses on critical thinking, creative exploration, and the ability to learn how to learn.

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo is a mixed-media artist whose work focuses on collections, memorialization, and the act of leaving one's digital imprint for the next generation. His work takes the form of video sculptures, immersive performances, large-scale projections, and vending machines that sell human DNA. In all of his projects, Gabe explores and plays with the digitization of memories, our changing relationship to technology in society, and the virtual and physical identities we create across platforms.

About the DUMBO Improvement District
The Dumbo Improvement District, founded in 2006, is a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing and promoting DUMBO, Brooklyn — a bustling enclave on the waterfront where quintessential old New York charm meets creative Brooklyn at its very best. The DUMBO Improvement District showcases DUMBO as a world-class destination, advocating on behalf of DUMBO's businesses, property owners, and residents, and amplifying its creative and innovative vibe through The Archway programming, public art, free WiFi, public space maintenance & beautification, and the #DUMBOVIP card, among other initiatives. @dumbo_brooklyn

About NYC DOT Art
The New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program (NYC DOT Art) partners with community-based not-for-profit organizations and professional artists to present temporary public art on NYC DOT property throughout the five boroughs for up to eleven months. Artists transform streets with colorful murals, dynamic projections, and eye-catching sculptures. A variety of public spaces serve as canvases for temporary arts, including sidewalks, fences, triangles, medians, bridges, jersey barriers, step streets, public plazas, and pedestrianized spaces. Since 2008, NYC DOT Art has produced over 475 temporary artworks citywide. For more information, visit nyc.gov/dotart and @nyc_DOTArt on Instagram.

Photo at top by @mingomatic

###

Contact: Katlyn Morahan | Morahan Arts and Media
katlyn@morahanartsandmedia.com | (646) 378-9386