Jennifer Tobias: Fish Tank

In the Sun Porch installation Fish Tank, Jennifer Tobias draws on Wave Hill’s history, particularly the legacy of Bashford Dean (1867–1928), an American polymath who specialized in ichthyology and medieval and modern armor. Dean lived at Wave Hill House from 1909 to 1928 and built Armor Hall to display his extensive armor collection. 

Tobias suspends corrugated cardboard figures that merge animal and armor forms, evoking an aquarium, diorama, or museum display. Helmets and body armor echo Dean’s prototypes, fused with the bony plating of fossilized fish. A pig-headed fish references a sculpture from the 1920 Berlin Dada exhibition critiquing World War I violence. Made from tree pulp, the cardboard nods to both protection and impermanence. And nearby in the gardens, Atlas poppies (Papaver atlanticum) recall the wild poppies that bloomed on WWI battlefields. Together, these elements suggest fragility and resilience in the face of natural and human-made threats—a resonant metaphor for our era of compounding crises. 

Saturday, August 2, 1:15PM, Meet the Artist: Conversation with the artist and Corrugated Cardboard Bird Feeder Workshop.

Organized by Curator of Visual Arts Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, the Sunroom Project Space is an open call opportunity for New York-area artists to develop and exhibit a site-specific project as a solo exhibition. The 2025 applications were reviewed by a panel of arts professionals including Jordany Genao, a Dominican interdisciplinary artist and educator; Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, an artist whose practice unfolds performatively through creative experiences within the quotidian, and the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism at the intersection of creativity and healing; and Gugelberger.