Lower East Side Yearbook: A Living Archive by Destiny Mata at Abrons Arts Center

The Lower East Side Yearbook is an archive started by photographer Destiny Mata about Lower East Side public housing residents and the importance of community memory.

Overview

The exhibition brings together Mata’s photographs with images from the personal archives of local residents Camille Napoleon, Promise Jimenez, Cheryl Kirwan, Aicha Cherif, and TC Rosario, who are all contributors to the Lower East Side Yearbook collection. Lower East Side Yearbook: A Living Archive is curated by Ali Rosa-Salas, Vice President of Visual and Performing Arts at Abrons Arts Center, with exhibition design by Anzia Anderson.

As part of the exhibition’s program, a guided tour and workshop will take place on November 13 at 6 p.m. (tickets required). On November 19 at 12 p.m., visitors are invited to “Come to the Table: An Interview with Destiny Mata,”a free event with RSVP. The program concludes on November 22 at 4 p.m. with a screening hosted by the Henry Street Movie Club at Metrograph, for which tickets are available.

Destiny Mata is a Mexican American photographer and filmmaker based in her native New York City, focusing on subculture and community. She comes from a family of photographers. Her grandfather was a part-time wedding photographer, her aunt Chayo, a fashion photographer, and her mother documented family moments, instilling in her the power of photography from an early age. Mata found her voice as a photographer capturing live music, the everyday life of her Lower East Side neighborhood, and stories of home. Her work explores themes of gentrification, housing rights, and the underground NYC punks of color music scene.

Mata studied photojournalism at LaGuardia Community College and San Antonio College, before serving as Director of Photography Programs at the Lower Eastside Girls Club from 2017-2019. Her work has been exhibited widely, including La Vida En Loisaida: Life on the Lower East Side at Photoville Festival Presented by: Abrons Art Center (2020) and her recent solo exhibition PULSE at Transmitter Gallery (2024). Mata has been published in The Nation “Behind The Doors of Public Housing” and The Culture Crush published her first book The Way We Were dedicated to NYC punks of color. She is a recipient of the Magnum Foundation Fellowship (2023), the WORTHLESS Studios Residency (2022), the Magnum Foundation US Dispatches Grant (2020), and this year awarded the En Foco Artist Fellowship. Rooted in the Lower East Side, Mata continues to preserve and celebrate her community through collaborative storytelling.