Rockaway 2097 in the Artist’s Tent

Facilitating a community-based art installation by the beach

Last weekend I got to be the artist in the tent at the 3rd Annual Afro-Diasporic Ocean Festival here in the Rockaways. The festival celebrates African, Afro-Latinx, and Afro-Caribbean cultures through music, performance, food, vendors, and community activities. Throughout the day, there was capoeira, Garifuna-style aerobics, live music, a DJ, and lots of people moving through the festival.

Inside the Art Tent, I created Rockaway 2097, a participatory community art installation that invited people to imagine what the Rockaways might look and feel like 71 years from now. I set up a shady creative space where residents, beachgoers, kids, parents, performers, and visitors could sit down, choose a prompt, and draw or write their vision of the future.

I love speculative futures, so this felt like a perfect way to bring that part of my practice into the community. Throughout the day, the clothesline behind the table slowly filled with different versions of Rockaway’s future.

The Prompt Cards

I made a series of prompt cards that invited people to write, draw, or respond to a question about the Rockaways in 2097. I also created a map people could color, annotate, and reimagine.

Prompts included:

• What would housing look like?

• What kind of food would we eat?

• What is happening with the beach and the ocean?

Inside the Art Tent

Throughout the day, people of different ages and backgrounds stopped by to draw or write—some still in their wet bathing suits from the beach. At times, entire families sat down together, with kids drawing on their parents’ laps and talking about what they hoped to see in the future.

Some children wanted to know exactly how many years away 2097 is. One little boy asked if I would still be alive then. I told him probably not. 😂

Abstraction Adds to the Community

One of my favorite things was seeing people use abstraction as a way into the project. Both kids and adults did this. One of the singers came down to the tent and told me she wanted to make art, but she didn’t want to answer any of the questions. I told her she could answer a prompt abstractly. She seemed surprised, then sat down and started working. She came back several times throughout the day to keep adding to the piece.

Once her abstract card went up on the clothesline, I noticed other people beginning to work that way too. Kids saw adults making nonrepresentational work, adults saw children experimenting freely, and suddenly abstraction became part of the installation’s visual language. The abstract cards added color, movement, and texture to the more literal drawings and written responses. They didn’t explain the future of Rockaway in a straightforward way, but they still became part of how that imagined future felt.

Literal cards were wonderful too

I also loved the more literal responses, because they got into the actual meat and bones of what a future Rockaway might need. People started thinking about education, sustainability, transportation, ecology, and how we might coexist with wildlife. Some imagined the Rockaways becoming a place for scuba diving and new kinds of ocean activity. Others drew solar panels, wind turbines, and ideas for better schools and infrastructure. I was especially struck by how often sustainability came up, and by how many people imagined the future not as separating ourselves from nature, but as finding better ways to live alongside it.

Nushy

One of my favorite repeat visitors was a young girl named Nushy, who kept coming back and forth between the beach and the art tent throughout the day. She made five different prompt cards, though she insisted on taking some home with her—much to her mother’s dismay.

She told me she was nervous about starting middle school in a few weeks, and during one of her visits she asked if she could make a portrait of me. Then she asked if it was okay to make it colorful. I almost cried when I saw it. I think I’m going to frame it.

My least favorite piece of artwork from Nushy, a future alien invasion where the aliens take all of our cats! Sounds like a nightmare to me.

Jeffery and a Two-Hour Commute!

My super-loving, super-stylish bestie Jeffery surprised me after spending the morning telling me how busy his day would be. He traveled two hours from the Bronx to come out and support me, then imagined a direct shuttle bus from the Bronx to the Rockaways. So grateful for him!

Rockaway is such a delightful place, but for many people across the city, getting here takes a long time. That came up again and again in the prompt cards. One participant wanted teleportation because the trip took so long. Others imagined a tram running over the water, direct shuttles, and entirely new ways to reach the peninsula.

My additions to Rockaway 2097

I also couldn’t resist adding some of my own ideas to Rockaway 2097. As a resident, climate change and flooding are always somewhere in the back of my mind, so I kept imagining a future Rockaway that adapts by building upward. In my drawings, homes, walkways, and the boardwalk sit on elevated arches above the water, creating a kind of Venice-like landscape where people move across skybridges above and boats below.

I also imagined the elevated structures made from a new material—something lightweight, porous, maybe mixed with some kind of algae, slightly spongy, but incredibly strong—that could absorb water, withstand storms, and make walking easier on the body.

I think my favorite drawing was the A train submarine traveling underneath the water, with Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train” lyrics. Imagine the A train running underneath Jamaica Bay! And being able to look out the window and see all of the sea life swimming by? Every time I ride the A train through Jamaica Bay, I always imagine it slowly transitioning down into the water.

Taken together, my cards became a little vision of a future Rockaway shaped by adaptation. I kept imagining ways we might live with more water rather than simply trying to hold it back — elevated homes and walkways, new materials that can withstand storms, boats moving underneath us, and even an A train that slips beneath Jamaica Bay. Climate change is part of that future, but so is resilience, invention, and the idea that people here will keep finding new ways to live, move, and make a home by the water.

Stay Tuned for Next Year

It was such a privilege to participate as an artist and to watch Rockaway 2097 grow throughout the day. I loved seeing people stop just to look, photograph the clothesline, or talk about the ideas appearing on the cards. I especially loved watching kids and adults make art side by side and seeing how the installation became more layered as more people added their visions.

I’m already thinking about where Rockaway 2097 could go next. I’d love to compile some of the artwork into a small zine or magazine, keep developing my own drawings of future Rockaway, and bring the project back next year with a few new ways to participate. I have lots of ideas now that I’ve seen how people actually interacted with the tent.