Free Emporium & Gift Exchange
For the gallery Cuchifritos, we created the Free Emporium & Gift Exchange, specially designed for the space located in the Essex Street Market on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The Free Emporium & Gift Exchange was a franchise of our earlier project Global Free Store and presented both an exhibition and interactive storefront experience. In a boutique-like setting, the work showcased Global Free Store products, tags, prints and seeds, as well as photographs and video produced in conjunction with the Global Free Store. In addition, as the exhibition occurred during the holiday gift-giving season, Free Emporium & Gift Exchange offered a special opportunity for visitors to bring in their unwanted and unused holiday gifts to exchange for other items/unwanted gifts in the store. Many participated, resulting in a display of gifts that rotated daily.
As part of the exhibition, we invited artist Rosa Ruey to produce Gift of Cookies, a special bake swap event. Participants brought canned and baking goods to the Free Emporium. Ruey made and packaged mechanical-themed cookies from the ingredients, which were available to visitors for exchange.
The Global Free Store and its emporium is a roving, artist-run collaborative project based on demonstrating principles of generosity, self-sustainability and a gift economy in art. Its debut on Nassau Street attracted worldwide press and TV coverage in March 2009.
