Nuevayorkinos

Homeroom amplifies and celebrates the work of collectives, organizations, artists, and activists that are connected to MoMA PS1’s public programming and community allyship initiatives.

From October 22, 2021 through January 3, 2022, Nuevayorkinos partners with key members of the Fund Excluded Workers Coalition, Make the Road, New York Communities for Change, and the Street Vendor Project to transform Homeroom into a site of celebration in honor of immigrant culture and labor in New York, particularly in Queens.

Nuevayorkinos is a digital project by filmmaker and archivist Djali Brown-Cepeda dedicated to documenting and preserving New York City’s Latinx culture and history through family photographs and stories. This counter-archive empowers participants to tell their own stories as a radical act of self-determination and liberation.

As an extension of Nuevayorkinos’s commitment to amplifying stories of migration, this activation of Homeroom centers on the hunger strikers, organizers, and decision-makers who secured the historic Excluded Workers Fund in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At $2.1 billion, this New York state fund represents the largest economic assistance program for essential immigrant workers, who were originally excluded from state and federal unemployment or pandemic relief.

Featuring photography, film, installations, testimony, and visual materials used as tools for organizing, the activation highlights the collective labor and triumphs of excluded worker organizing. The space honors the migration stories of these workers, while celebrating the power and creativity of their collective struggle.