NADA New York 2026 Best Booths

Forgotten Lands, from St. Croix, is making its debut at NADA, showcasing the work of two artists who embody the gallery’s projects, which often explore Caribbean identities and subjectivities, said curator and sales manager Azi Jones. Born in Jamaica and now living in Massachusetts, Greene’s paintings blend Surrealism, Cubism and Figuration, depicting people in the process of transformation, often jumping into the ocean. Greene’s figures defy easy categorization, often blurring beyond recognition or blending into highly stylized backgrounds reminiscent of color negatives.

The paintings are combined with architectural works that transform breeze blocks (typical concrete blocks used in Caribbean architecture) into sculptures made from “heirloom fabrics,” the artist’s description of materials from the personal collections of his mother and grandmother. These blocks are core symbols of the visual language of the Caribbean and are used for their durability, elasticity and temperature-regulating properties. Here they are layered with paint, paper, netting and other found materials to become vessels for personal and collective history.

This striking work by New Orleans painter Ruth Owens appears in the NADA Projects section. The installation centers on an incident from Owens’ childhood, when she was kidnapped by her German grandmother on the eve of her family’s immigration to the United States from Germany. The artist recounts the event in delicate, dreamy watercolors that highlight her racial differences (Owens’ father is African-American and her mother is German). Placed in a shadow box and surrounded by layers of Nigerian batik and European floral fabrics that appear to mimic batik, these watercolors appear to be intimate reminders of Owens’ unique upbringing. An audio installation further deepens this feeling, in which a voice narrates the abduction, while two video works depict black families playing in the water and fishing, recalling the jarring Super-8 home movies of the artist’s childhood. It’s rare to find a presentation as complete and engaging as Owens’ at an art fair. It’s worth taking the time to let this carry you.

Brooklyn’s Tappeto Volante Gallery will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Friday by opening a new space in Tribeca, but first it’s New York’s NADA gallery. For this fair, the gallery has dedicated an entire booth to new works by Keiko Narabashi, whose clay sculptures and ceramics straddle the line between the whimsical, the weird, and even a little sinister. Gallery co-founder Jared Deery, a painter himself, told us art news Most of the works were inspired by Herman Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre; or, ambiguity, Many scholars believe that this is the author’s “spiritual autobiography.” This is reflected in the sculpture through allusions to psychological complexity and interiority, a reading further deepened by the fact that the body of work was developed during COVID-19 isolation. This melancholy and ambivalent mood is evident in the muted colors and shapes, which seem to wither or bend under their own weight.

Another inspired pairing comes from Miami’s Baker Hall, where Jen Clay’s quilted “Wild Dogs” hangs alongside Alissa Alfonso’s sculptures made from discarded basketballs. as clay said art news Raised by her grandmother in North Carolina at the fair, she was an unruly child who was always mischievous. To keep her in line, her grandmother would warn that wild dogs common in the state would come to get her. The phrase became a running joke between them over the years, and when her grandmother died, Clay began to see the dogs as a symbol of her grief. She created these animals from her grandmother’s sheets, using fibers whose bright patterns and soft edges eliminate their threatening poses. Alfonso’s sculptures, meanwhile, originate from basketballs, beach balls, and other debris found during walks in Miami; she creates flowers, mushrooms, and other plants from hand-dyed fabrics found in discarded items. Both artists found new energy, beauty, and strangeness in what others had left behind.

At Gramercy’s Con Altura, founder Steve Rivera brought together New Orleans-based self-taught painter Auudi Dorsey and Philadelphia-based sculptor George Rodriguez. Dorsey’s paintings are loose, lively, and full of energy: you can almost hear the music to which the characters dance, as shown above prairie and Savannah 2. On the opposite wall are several black-and-white watercolors depicting various jazz figures, such as Miles Davis emerging from the speakers of an old record player, their energetic figures unable to be contained by the music. These works are joined by Rodriguez’s intricately decorated guardian figures and tomb sculptures, which draw on his Mexican-American upbringing and global travels, forging novel connections between seemingly disparate ceramic traditions. The artists’ works do juxtapose one another, showing a palpable joy in both practices.

Los Angeles-based Central Server Works also made its NADA New York debut, exhibiting a series of works by Los Angeles-based Moldovan artist Elena Roznovan. The works consider motherhood as an embodied experience, expressed in intimate watercolor paintings produced after childbirth and surrounded by concrete in which various personal maternal totems are embedded, such as breast milk, memory cards of newborn photos, umbilical cord corn stumps, nail clippings, and postpartum medications. Subtle and deceptively calm, the paintings depict Roznovan with her child reflected in a mirror, or Roznovan with a newborn baby on her chest, contrasting with the messy material lurking around the painting. Roznovan reminds us that motherhood is a messy form of physical labor that is not easily integrated into society’s structures of belonging.