The Untitled Space gallery is an art gallery in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City founded by curator, photographer, magazine editor, and multidisciplinary artist Indira Cesarine in 2015. It exhibits the work of contemporary artists working in various media including painting, sculpture, photography, video, printmaking, mixed media, and performance art.
The gallery's exhibitions often focus on work by women artists that incorporates themes of feminism, political and social equality, and female empowerment.
Founding
Indira Cesarine founded The Untitled Space art gallery in 2015 after building a career as a fashion photographer and artist. She attended Choate Rosemary Hall and studied at Parsons School of Design from the age of 15. After earning a triple degree in art history, women's studies and French literature from Columbia University, Cesarine worked as a fashion photographer in London and Paris as well as in New York, beginning with modeling agencies Elite Model Management, Ford Models, and Wilhelmina Models and later gaining commissions for magazines including Marie Claire, British Vogue, Glamour, InStyle, GQ, and Harper's Bazaar and advertising campaigns for clients including Dior, Kenzo, Charles Jourdan, and Cerruti. She was Editor-at-Large at Don't Tell It and Fashion Editor-at-Large at Lush Magazine, and over the years her commissioned work appeared on over 5,000 editorial magazine pages.
As a fashion photographer she appeared on television shows including Entertainment Tonight and Bravo's Make Me a Supermodel UK and US editions (season 2). She ventured into film directing, with her first short film City of Love featured at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Her artwork has been exhibited in group and solo shows at museums and art galleries such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the French Embassy Cultural Center in New York, Mattatuck Museum, Hudson Valley MOCA, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, The Watermill Center, Fabergé Big Egg Hunt at Rockefeller Center, ARTWALK NY, The Parlor NYC, and A.I.R. Gallery.
In 2009 Cesarine founded print and digital publication The Untitled Magazine, which covers art, fashion, entertainment, and culture, and which she continues to publish.
She opened The Untitled Space gallery in 2015 “as a platform for women in art and to promote feminist art as a genre.” After struggling to find American representation because “most of the galleries in New York represented 90 percent male artists,” Cesarine began curating her own exhibits of all-female artists “because there weren't that many opportunities for women unless you created them yourself,” Cesarine stated in Asha Dahya's book Today's Wonder Women: Every Day Super Heroes Who are Changing The World. The gallery has hosted (as of April 2023) more than 50 exhibitions showing the work of more than 500 artists. It has become known for controversial and boundary-pushing exhibitions.
In 2019 Cesarine launched a nonprofit, Art4Equality, which supports art exhibitions and other projects, such as film and public art, on the theme of equality. Art4Equality projects include a public art billboard exhibition throughout New York City during the 2020 presidential election, presented in collaboration with The Untitled Space and non-profit SaveArtSpace.
Focus: Women's Art
The gallery has featured numerous exhibitions of art by women, art celebrating women and inspired by women of accomplishment, female self-portraiture, politically activist art, and art addressing sexuality and gender. Its exhibitions explore female empowerment, intersectionality, the female gaze, reproductive rights, and other feminist themes. For Cesarine, the gallery's exploration of female sexuality is part of a broader mission to “[eradicate] the double standard that women can't enjoy and celebrate their sexuality” that still exists “despite the women's sexual liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s.”
The Untitled Space has garnered attention for its sustained emphasis on artistic activism. In 2017, Cesarine stated that opening The Untitled Space was part of an effort to “expose the gender bias that takes place in the art world” and that it represented “a response to an industry that remains permeable to rampant sexism.”
Group exhibitions
“The ‘F’ Word: Feminism in Art” was a group show in October 2015, curated by Cesarine and Denise Krimershmoys in celebration of The Untitled Magazine's “#GirlPower Issue.” It featured the work of 20 female artists, including CocoRosie, Elektra KB, Frances Goodman, Hye Rim Lee, Mari Kim, Natalie White, Sophia Wallace, Vexta, and Zana Briski.
"In The Raw: The Female Gaze on the Nude" was an exhibit at The Untiled Space May–June, 2016, of 20 female artists and their intimate vision on the female nude. Curated by Indira Cesarine and Coco Dolle, the exhibit included works of photography, painting, sculpture, mixed media and video. Juxtapoz stated of the exhibition, "'In The Raw' creates a cultural discourse of women on women, a female intervention, so to speak, on patriarchal culture.” Bedford + Bowery stated of the exhibition, “does the fact that women artists are depicting female nudes automatically make the work revolutionary? Unfortunately, yes. As an all-women art show, 'In the Raw' is automatically (and sadly) a rarity.” The exhibition featured works by Victoria de Lesseps, Kelsey Bennett, Amanda Charchian, Leah Schrager, Maria Kreyn, Lynn Bianchi, Marie Tomanova, Marianna Rothen, Meredith Ostrom, and Sophia Wallace. "I think it's really interesting how the nude is in many respects still considered taboo by society, yet is such an integral part of the history of art," Cesarine told Priscilla Frank of The Huffington Post, continuing, "I think it is extremely important for women to be liberated from perceiving themselves only via the eyes of men. A one-dimensional view of the world is not reality. There are so many more points of view that are relevant aside from that of the heterosexual male, and it's time for those voices to be heard."
Immediately following Donald Trump's election, Cesarine began putting together an exhibit in protest, titled "UPRISE/ANGRY WOMEN." The exhibition was presented in collaboration with ERA Coalition, an equal rights non-profit led by founder and President Emerita Jessica Neuwirth, with a percentage of proceeds going to the organization's Fund for Women's Equality. The gallery called for submissions from female-identifying artists and received more than 1,800 submissions from 400 artists. A final selection of 80 works, including a work by Rose McGowan, constituted the exhibit, which ran in January and February 2017. An exemplification of “art as activism” and reflecting on “the future of women's rights in America in light of the ‘Trumpocalypse,’” the exhibition received attention from Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, New York Magazine, W Magazine, Dazed, Harper's Bazaar, Teen Vogue, and other publications for its “radical” themes. Cesarine told Newsweek about this exhibit, “Art can be an act of protest in itself. It can be a catalyst for change." In addition to McGowan, Ann Lewis, Fahren Feingold, Rebecca Leveille, Sophia Wallace, and Cesarine were exhibiting artists.
A year later the gallery presented a follow-up exhibit, "ONE YEAR OF RESISTANCE," on the theme of artists responding to the political climate in America since the election of Donald Trump.; submissions were open to all genders, with the selected works reflecting themes including immigration rights, reproductive rights, climate change, transgender rights, white supremacy, gender equality, gun control, and sexual harassment. The group exhibition was curated by Cesarine, who also exhibited artwork. It was widely recognized for its reflection of art as a means of political protest, with the Guardian noting that it “[evoked] the kind of hand-in-hand solidarity that's been on display in the last 12 months.” It was featured on CNN and in Vogue US, Vogue Italia, Interview and other publications. Vogue described it as "a collective meditation on a year of rage that pushes mediums to the extreme.” Among the exhibiting artists were Alexandra Rubenstein, Alison Jackson, Ann Lewis, Leah Schrager, Grace Graupe-Pillard, Michele Pred, Olive Allen, Parker Day, Rebecca Leveille, Signe Pierce, and Tatana Kellner.
“LIFEFORCE” was an all-female group show in 2016 curated by Kelsey and Rémy Bennett, granddaughters of Tony Bennett. The sisters each contributed original work to the exhibition, alongside notable artists Hein Koh, Juno Calypso, Maisie Cousins, Monica Garza, Nadia Lee Cohen, Panteha Abareshi, Parker Day, Sam Cannon, and Signe Pierce. In an interview with Vice, the Bennetts stated that the show's cyberfeminist themes were inspired by Donna Haraway's 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in which Haraway described “the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender. The exhibit featured artworks that explored “the feminine in the context of a genderless future.”
“SHE INSPIRES,” curated by Cesarine in May 2017, presented work by 60 artists honoring historical women and women's contributions to history and culture. The exhibit was presented in collaboration with She Should Run, a non-profit organization that encourages women to run for office. The exhibited works included a painting by Cesarine inspired by women's suffrage figurehead Victoria Woodhull, in addition to works by Ann Lewis, Fischer Cherry, Lynn Bianchi, Jess de Wahls, Rebecca Leveille, and Sylvia Maier. The gallery described the exhibition's aim as “not only [to] explore themes of inspiration of present day female role models, but also the legacy of women who have paved the way, and to inspire and empower others with visual art on the subject.” Vice quoted Cesarine saying the intention was to “honor and celebrate women who have impacted our culture and tell their stories which should be rightfully included not just as 'women's history,' but everyone's history."
Another major exhibition in 2017 was the June–July show "SECRET GARDEN: The Female Gaze on Erotica," featuring 40 female artists curated by Cesarine. It presented figurative works of nudes and erotic art by female-identifying artists. The title was inspired by Nancy Friday's book My Secret Garden, with the exhibition's themes identifying with Friday's history as a figurehead in the feminist sexual liberation movement. The Cut noted its depictions of “contorted, vulnerable, and simultaneously empowered women as subjects whose sexuality cannot be deduced or simplified to fit stereotypical criteria.” It included works by artists including Fahren Feingold, Hiba Schahbaz, Julia Fox, Betty Tompkins and Joan Semmel.
The 2018 exhibition "(HOTEL) XX" was an immersive hotel-room installation at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, for which Indira Cesarine curated the artwork of 20+ female-identifying artists including Alexandra Rubenstein, Fahren Feingold, Julia Fox, Kat Toronto aka Miss Meatface, Meredith Ostrom, Myla Dalbesio, Suzanne Wright as well as works by Cesarine, on the subject of what happens behind the closed doors of hotel rooms. A syntactical play on female sex chromosomes, “(HOTEL) XX” emphasized female sexuality outside of the male gaze; Dujour noted that it “reimagined a seedy motel as a site for openly exploring female sexuality and excess rather than sexual subterfuge."