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Immanuel Oni

@immanueloni

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• space doula • HOU •📍NYC • LAG
@njmmlofficial Monument Artist
@vcpalliance African Burial Ground
@nyculture Residency

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Dyeing means to change colors.

People every now and then have asked me what the African-themed pattern means in acknowledging the former Chrystie St. African Burial Ground adjacent to the M’finda Kalunga @mkgarden_ in the Lower East Side. The fence pattern is a wayfinding visual language referencing African and Indigenous textile patterns to provide a sense of identity to the site and it’s unknown history. The mesh material lined with lighting softens the steel framing and illuminates the site. This combination also makes the pattern feel apart of the existing spatial fabric, as if this memorial was always there opposed to a stand alone object. The dots accent the pattern but are also tombstones of the roughly 400 names only found and registered from the original burial ground.

I particularly referenced the “adire” cloth or fabric for it’s “tie dye” nature and universal connection to other countries. Adiré is a type of indigo-dyed cloth practiced in the Yoruba region of Nigeria, as well as other Western African countries. However, multiple cultures globally have practiced similar dyeing methods for cloth and attire including “shibori” in Japan, “zha ran” in China, “Batik” in Indonesia, etc. Considering that the garden is connected to an Asian senior community center that hosts programming in the garden and is situated within a Chinatown context, I thought about a universal but recognizable language that characterizes the overlap of Black and Indigenous Lower East Side history with present day residents. The visual language ties both these diverse narratives with the garden as the colored, dynamic fabric background itself. In order to shift the perception of burial grounds from death to shared cultural practice, my aim was to outline and highlight this transformation of place and it’s inhabitance but also unearth the constant fabric that remains.

Dyeing means to change colors..
-Oni, space doula

Thankful to the support of @_fabnyc @beamcenter @buro_happold @laundromat_proj by @immanueloni

Bivalve, thank you! ⛵💙

We loved spending Second Friday at the Bayshore Center at Bivalve with Immanuel Oni’s Flagship.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to experience the work, connect, and be part of the evening. 🎨

🚚 Flagship’s journey continues. Stay tuned for where it heads next!

#NJMML
#Flagship
#BivalveNJ
#PublicArt by @immanueloni

📣 One week to go!

Join us for Monuments to Migration and Labor: Interventions, Legacies, and Futures, bringing together artists, scholars, and community voices for conversations around migration, labor, public memory, and monuments.

📅 Save the date and register now to join us.

Over the next week, we’ll be sharing speaker spotlights, schedule highlights, and everything you need to know before the event.

🔗 Register at the link in bio.

#NJMML
#PublicArt
#LaborHistory
#NewJerseyArts by @immanueloni

One week to go! ⛵

Next Friday, Flagship makes its next stop at the Bayshore Center at Bivalve for a special Second Friday Celebration.

Come see Immanuel Oni’s traveling public artwork in person and spend the evening exploring the stories and histories at the heart of the project.

📍 Bayshore Center at Bivalve
📅 Friday, October 9

🔗 Plan your visit at the link in bio.

📸 Natasha Cohen-Carroll

#Flagship #ImmanuelOni #NJMML
#BivalveNJ #PublicArt by @immanueloni

Our current exhibition "Keeping Community" features an exhibition of works from Crossroads Juvenile Center youth—curated in collaboration with @ImmanuelOni, Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) Public Artist-in-Residence (PAIR).

Here, Oni talks about the works created by the youth in response to his question: "What kind of space would help you become what you're meant to be?"

Learn more and plan your visit at the link in bio.

#KeepingCommunity #CenterForArtAndAdvocacy by @immanueloni

Register at the link in our bio for this free, online talk focusing on the New Jersey Monuments to Migration and Labor ( @njmmlofficial )project. Monday September 28 at 4pm ET.

The New Jersey Monuments to Migration and Labor (NJMML) project unveiled three new temporary public monument installations across New Jersey this summer, in New Brunswick, Paterson, and Atlantic City. NJMML is supported by funding from the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project.

Join Andy Urban, project director and Rutgers University professor, along with the project’s public art consultants Emily Blumenfeld and Aliza Schiff from Via Partnership, for a conversation with the three monument artists, Immanuel Oni, Michelle Angela Ortiz and Chat Travieso. They will discuss what it means to honor labor and migration in a variety of contexts throughout New Jersey and how their community-centered installations share the many stories of these diverse communities.

The three monuments — En Root by Chat Travieso in Central Jersey, Carriers of Light and Labor by Michelle Angela Ortiz in North Jersey, and Flagship by Immanuel Oni in South Jersey — mark a major milestone in NJMML’s statewide, three-year effort to recognize the histories, labor, culture, and contributions of immigrant and migrant communities across New Jersey.
#publicart #newjersey by @immanueloni

🚍 Join us on Friday, September 18 for Flagship: Remembering Seabrook Farms at the Upper Deerfield Pavilion.

🖼️ Step inside Immanuel Oni's Sailbus, a mobile museum featuring oral histories and archival photographs, create a 🚩 Legacy Flag to become part of the monument, and hear stories that honor the communities who shaped South Jersey's history.

✨ Join us for an evening of remembrance, reflection, and community. Click the link in our bio.

#NJMML
#Flagship
#PublicArt
#ImmanuelOni
#RememberingSeabrookFarms by @immanueloni

New Jersey Monuments to Migration and Labor (@njmmlofficial) is an art initiative putting immigrant and workers’ histories in fuller view.

Across the state, residents collaborated with artists to decide how they wanted their stories to be commemorated.

“This project began with a basic point: There are few existing monuments to immigrants and migrants, let alone to their labors,” says Andy Urban, project director at NJMML.

The result: Three new monuments across North, South, and Central Jersey.

⭐ Paterson, New Jersey

Created by Michelle Angela Ortiz (@michelleangelaortiz), “Carriers of Light and Labor” honors the city’s industrial history and the textile-making traditions of Paterson’s immigrant communities. Five new monuments are located in front of Paterson City Hall, at the heart of the city.

⭐ South Jersey

“Flagship” by Immanuel Oni (@immanueloni) hits the road as a mobile museum. The “Sail Bus” honors the experiences of maritime laborers and modes of transportation that brought migrant farmworkers to the region.

⭐ New Brunswick, New Jersey

Chat Travieso’s (@chattravieso) “En Root” creates a vibrant sculptural gateway to War Memorial Park/Parque Oaxaca, a public greenspace in New Brunswick lined with native pollinator gardens. The work pays homage to the monarch butterfly, a symbol for immigrant rights in the U.S.

Visit the installations today and participate in on-site programming.

Learn more at NJMML’s website—link in bio.

📷 Chrys Davis (@dolo_foto), courtesy of NJMML
🎥 Jon Kaufman (@kaufdrops), Aiden Un, and Natasha Cohen-Carroll (@natasha_cc), courtesy of NJMML by @immanueloni

Ahoy! ⚓ Last weekend we launched the Flagship Sailbus beside the Atlantic City Boardwalk - the first of many journeys across South Jersey.

Over the past year, we gathered with residents and descendant communities through workshops, mapping sessions, and regattas to imagine a new kind of monument: one that moves. Inspired by stories of migration, labor, waterways, and belonging, the Sailbus celebrates the histories that connect South Jersey. Starting from the Great Migration, Seabrook Farm’s Black, Japanese, and Eastern European global village, Bivalve’s oyster industry, Atlantic City’s boardwalk culture, Millville’s glassmaking heritage as well as many other recent diverse communities that have made South Jersey home.

We called it Flagship Sailbus because it’s both the first of its kind and a reflection of two powerful symbols: the flagship, representing the first to migrate, identity and belonging, and the ship, representing migration through boats or bus that have connected this region for generations.

Every element of the Flagship Sailbus carries meaning: a reflective exterior, like water or glass, that invites you to see yourself in the monument, community-designed legacy flags, a sail that transform the bus into a gathering space, and audio stories that bring local voices to life. Our hope is that the Sailbus becomes a traveling gallery, for festivals, schools, family reunions, and neighborhoods, connecting communities through shared history and collective pride.

Deep gratitude to the descendant communities, local partners, and everyone who shared their stories and imagination with us. And thank you to @evoupfitting and @pneuhaus for bringing this challenging but exciting fusion of sail and bus to life.

Here’s to many more miles, memories, and conversations ahead. ⛵🚌

🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
@njmmlofficial
@viapublicart
@artsgarageac
@talkingeyesmedia
@emilyblumenfeld
@alizalizak
@acfern
@howtallareyou
@chungfanchang_studio
#seabrookculturalcenter

📷: @kaufdrops by @immanueloni

The Youth Art Space features an exhibition of works from Crossroads Juvenile Center youth—curated in collaboration with @ImmanuelOni, Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) Public Artist-in-Residence (PAIR). The space features work created by youth ages 12 to 21 who are held in pre-trial detention at the Crossroads Juvenile Center, Brownsville, Brooklyn. The works were produced in workshops led by teaching artists from @BklynCombine and the Crossroads Art Club, as well as Oni.

Through its focus on creative practices, the presentation explores how art reclaims selfhood when detention disrupts a young person’s identity, family connection, and sense of place. By highlighting the nuanced, everyday acts of imagination and creativity that persist for those held within a punitive system, the presentation challenges dominant narratives on detention, asking viewers to reconsider how justice-impacted youth are seen, represented, and remembered.

"Keeping Community" is on view through September 25 at 22 Bancroft Place.

#KeepingCommunity #CenterForArtAndAdvocacy by @immanueloni

Flagship
A monument by Immanuel Oni

Inspired by a year of community collaboration, Oni's Flagship transforms a repurposed school bus into a Sailbus, a traveling monument and mobile museum that carries the stories of migration, labor, and community across South Jersey.

Through art, oral histories, and shared memory, the project honors the people and journeys that continue to shape the region.

Learn more at the 🔗 in our bio.

#NJMML
#Flagship
#PublicArt
#MigrationStories by @immanueloni

What happens when we invite young people in detention to reimagine their surroundings, beyond their current reality?

Last week, the @centerforartandadvocacy opened the Youth Art Space, a pop-up gallery curated by artist @ImmanuelOni, as part of their “Keeping Community” exhibition. The space showcases artwork created by youth at the Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, Brooklyn, through workshops led by teaching artists from @BklynCombine and the Crossroads Art Club, including Immanuel Oni as part of his residency with the Administration for Children’s Services (@NYCACS) through @NYCulture’s Public Artist in Residence (#PAIRnyc) program. The resulting exhibition shows how art can expand the imagined possibilities for youth, expanding their hopes and dreams.

At the heart of the Youth Art Space is “When God is Touching You” (slide 7), a photograph taken by a youth resident at the juvenile center of another youth leaping into the air and ascending beyond the frame. This striking image suggests hope, resilience, and the possibilities of life outside of confinement.

Workshops led by Oni feature a series of architectural drawings and models that invited youth to imagine their current space, their ideal room, and the environments they hope to inhabit in the future. Through drawing, model-making, 3D scanning, and material exploration, the project encouraged youth to envision possibilities outside of detention. Mirrored surfaces invite viewers to see themselves alongside the work, creating a dialogue between detained youth and the broader public.

The Youth Art Space is one of three collaborations within the “Keeping Community” series. On view at the Center for Art and Advocacy through September 25, 2026, “Keeping Community” also features a Reading Room curated by @sojourners4justice with rare books and VHS tapes, and a Listening Room curated by @freer_records that engages the history of music created by formerly incarcerated artists.

#NYCulture #NYC #PAIRnyc

📷:

1, 3, 6, 8. Photos by Itzel Alejandra Martinez.
2, 4, 11, 13. Photos by Ruvan Wijesooriya.
5, 9, 12. Courtesy of NYC ACS.
7. “When God is Touching You” by TH.
10. “Helping Hands” by L. by @immanueloni