What’s Happening: Voguing is interwoven throughout Rashaad Newsome’s ambitious new exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, especially when instructed by an AI robot that encourages us to challenge cultures of dominance.

The Download: Even if you’ve never heard of “voguing” or find yourself stiff-limbed on the dance floor, there’s a chance you’ll feel much more confident after visiting “Assembly,” Rashaad Newsome’s sensorial new solo exhibition at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory through March 6. Voguing informs nearly every aspect of the show, which puts Newsome’s multidimensional practice on full display and beckons visitors to rethink the roots of American culture. Video-mapped walls pulsate with projected imagery of computer-generated patterns inspired by African geometries. A 30-foot-tall hologram sculpture, meanwhile, morphs and mutates into various performers. In the evenings, a collective of dancers, musicians, and gospel singers stages a lavish performance in an immersive theater designed by local firm New Affiliates.

So what exactly is voguing? The dance originated in Harlem’s ballroom scene of the 1960s but reached a zenith two decades later, when the Black and Latino queer community competed against one another by striking magazine-ready poses in dance-offs. The pageant-like drag performance brought together communities historically marginalized by gender, sexuality, or race. It permeated the mainstream through Jennie Livingston’s award-winning (and controversial) documentary Paris Is Burning (1990) and Madonna’s equally dicey hit song “Vogue” that same year.

The breakout star of “Assembly” is Being, a virtual femme AI robot based on the African griot, a storyteller, artist, and healer. Designed by Newsome, the supermodel-like entity’s head references Pho masks from Congo’s Chokwe peoples, traditionally worn by male dancers in celebration of femininity. Being offers lessons that nurture visitors into embracing voguing’s distinct movements. (“Left hand on right shoulder; left hand on left shoulder,” Being instructs. “Roll wrist forward; roll wrist back.”) It also leads three workshops that inspire thought that challenges what it deems the “capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist patriarchy.”

In Their Own Words: “‘Assembly’ will offer audiences a new way of thinking about rights, liberty, and humanity, using the so-rarely-explored paradox of the Black experience and the advancement of technology as a jumping-off point,” Newsome says. “Through explorations into the connections between quantum energy, Black sociality, and Black liberation movements, one thing becomes clear: the only way we’ll get to the future is together. This type of beloved togetherness starts with a real reboot.”

Surface Says: For another deep dive into the origins of voguing, check out this brief clip about Crystal Labeija, the queen who not only reinvented ball culture but became a mother figure for homeless LGBTQ youth in New York.

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In celebration of Women’s History Month, Surface is excited to present “Woman Made,” a group exhibition of contemporary female artists, designers, and creators at Surface Area in the Miami Design District. Select participants include: Hannah Polskin, Cindy Hsu Zell, Arielle Assouline-Lichten, CK Reed, Lujan Candria, and more. We’ll be sharing artist profiles and previews of selected works in Design Dispatch over the course of the next few weeks for those who can’t join us in Miami.

Untold stories are embedded into the Colombian-born painter’s evocative timeworn canvases, which combine lost love letters and torn posters found abroad with his own musings about decay and the passage of time. His first stateside solo show, “The Curse of Knowledge” at Galerie Ground Los Angeles, plumbs the depths of identity and permanence while questioning what lies beyond humanity’s realm of knowledge.

What’s the premise of your latest exhibition and what was on your mind when making the artworks?

The main themes of my work and the exhibition are open questions about the nature of permanence, identity, and our need for certainty. Much has happened in the world that makes it hard to preserve the illusion of control. Hence, “The Curse Of Knowledge” is a paradox about not always knowing really what lies ahead.

Your canvases often accumulate sources of knowledge from disparate places—love letters, posters, notebook clippings…

I’m always looking for ways to reflect the passage of time and show evidence of decay and past lives. I’ve been collecting these elements over the years and waiting for the right cue to incorporate them. It’s usually very self-referential, but I feel most excited about stuff I find along the way that belongs to a different person, a different time, a different place. I think of my own experience as part of a bigger whole, and try to bring in anecdotes and stories from others to make it about a more universal place rather than only from my own.

Since forte_forte first debuted in 2002 with a small collection of hand-finished T-shirts, the Italian label has blossomed into a beloved purveyor of artisan-made clothing in cheerful tones that reflect co-founder Giada Forte’s approach to knitwear. The brand operates boutiques in London, Milan, Paris, Madrid, and Rome, but now calls Los Angeles home in an artful Melrose Place storefront designed by Forte and art director Robert Vattilana. Much like the label’s other locations, the L.A. outpost reflects the sensibilities of its surroundings by means of a slick Modernist daybed affixed with golden studs, recessed ceiling fixtures that reference James Turrell and the Light and Space Movement, and two giant stones meticulously balanced atop one another that nod to Fischli/Weiss and the Palm Springs desert.

Lizzie Gill is a multimedia artist whose work explores the relationship between object and place and how perceptual reversal creates imagined landscapes. Gill’s works are an archeological exploration, geographic and cultural, actual and mythical, that she has seen and reimagined, or imagined without having seen.

Influenced by surrealism and working with the found material of an art historical language, she translates these elements to canvas, creating portals to new vistas. Challenging preconceived spatial relationships, her mixed-media paintings are layered investigations of found imagery. Sourcing references from museum archives, vintage magazines, and geotags, she utilizes collage as a metaphor for material improvisation and escapism. Moonflower, 2022 is a still life with a twist; a mixed-media work comprising acrylic, image transfer, and oil on canvas.

Moonflower, 2022 will be on view in “Woman Made” at Surface Area in the Miami Design District starting March 8.

New & Notable is a cultural catchall that highlights interesting new products and projects from our brilliantly creative members of The List. With new releases, events, and goings-on, the below moments indicate the power they have to move the needle in so many realms, including architecture, design, fashion, and art.

In 2015, the libertarian Czech politician Vít Jedlicka founded the Free Republic of Liberland on three square miles of uninhabited and disputed land between Croatia and Serbia. The micronation lacks infrastructure, diplomatic recognition, and entry from its neighboring countries, but is taking shape in the metaverse thanks to a dramatic virtual scheme by Zaha Hadid Architects principal Patrik Schumacher.

In his eyes, the would-be country is a futuristic oasis sporting a buzzy NFT trading room and sweeping office towers, all rendered in Hadid’s trademark style of parametricism. “It was time to turn ideas into something more concrete,” Jedlicka says. “It’s important to show to the world that we’re serious about starting development in Liberland.”

Inhabiting a historic building in Bangkok’s energetic Talat Noi neighborhood, Mother is a two-story restaurant and bar inspired by four elements of nature. Thai practice Taste Space employed an organic design language as a tribute to Mother Earth, including four abstract paintings behind the second-floor bar depicting fire, air, earth, and water. Patrons entering the cavernous space will notice a massive tree root suspended from the ceiling above the entrance, while clay-colored walls recall the sun-dried bricks of adobe dwellings.

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Driven to document her ongoing subconscious and spiritual journeys, Brianna Lance paints fantastical environments that are rich in detail and spontaneous in form. Lance’s paintings have been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and the East Hampton Star.

Brianna Lance will be participating in “Woman Made” at Surface Area in the Miami Design District starting March 8.

MVRDV adds a hot pink rooftop to Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Scientists propose that Tyrannosaurus had three species beyond just the “rex.”

Do you think Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel is worth $5,000 a night?

A former Filipino first lady’s secret stash of gems is being recreated as sculpture.