Lower East Side Biography Project - Stemming The Tide of Cultural Amnesia

08/16/2026

Tomorrow is the last day of Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking at Participant Gallery at 116 Elizabeth Street.

This has been a nearly 30 year effort of mine to fulfill Sheyla’s request and a promise I made to her to caretake, preserve and bring her work to the public in a professional way and give her the visibility she deserves but was never afforded her and one she could not afford. It took a dedicated team of people who put their resources, skill and experience to bring this exhibition into this bejeweled moment, a moment not just celebrating Sheyla’s photography but her community - a lost world of integrity, glamour and decay. I’m grateful to Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez, Steve Zehentner, Chelsea Spengemann, Marie Warsh, Lia Gangitano, Andrew Jarman, Chris Tanner, Ricky Lee, Joan Moosey, Ken Angel Davis, David Brockman, Lance Cruce, Garry Hayes, Al Giordano, Marina Ruiz Molina, Agosto Machado and many others I can’t remember right now, who volunteered to be in the trenches with me for years and years to preserve Sheyla’s legacy and schlep and art handle and video, clean, caretake, catalog, research, write, digitize, print and display. It’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience to see the fruits of this collaboration in 3D at Participant, all in service to Sheyla and her intentions.

Tomorrow the final public program with me and writer and researcher Lilia Rocio Taboada about my writing, social practice, and stewardship of artists’ legacies. Please come.

Here’s a 2 minute video of an interview I did with Sheyla as we were organizing her archive. xoPenny

08/15/2026

Tomorrow, Sunday, August 16, 6pm, the final public program of Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking - Penny Arcade in conversation with Lilia Rocio Taboada at Participant Gallery, 116 Elizabeth Street, ground floor.

Join us for a conversation between performance artist Penny Arcade and writer and researcher Lilia Rocio Taboada about Arcade’s writing, social practice, and stewardship of artists’ legacies.

Lilia Rocio Taboada is an arts researcher, writer, and curator specializing in archival research and collaborative artistic practices since 1945. She is currently Associate, Programs and Editorial at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and was previously Curatorial Associate in the Department of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a BA in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA, an MA in Art History from UT Austin, and is the recipient of a 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected performance artist, actress, poet, and theater maker. Her text-based work is known for its humor, high content, and highly quotable wit and focuses on community building as the goal of performance and performance as a transformative act. Her dedication to social practice and activism began in 1977 when she identified herself as an advocate for other artists. She continues in this role as an international community elder and icon of artistic resistance. Penny Arcade is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking was curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade and Soft Network. https://www.softnetwork.art/ https://www.participantinc.org/

Sheyla Baykal, Jackie Curtis, Sheyla Baykal, printed 2026, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy Sheyla Baykal Archive and Soft Network.

08/12/2026

This coming Sunday, August 16, 6pm, the final public program of Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking - Penny Arcade in conversation with Lilia Rocio Taboada at Participant Gallery, 116 Elizabeth Street, ground floor.

Join us for a conversation between performance artist Penny Arcade and writer and researcher Lilia Rocio Taboada about Arcade’s writing, social practice, and stewardship of artists’ legacies.

Lilia Rocio Taboada is an arts researcher, writer, and curator specializing in archival research and collaborative artistic practices since 1945. She is currently Associate, Programs and Editorial at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and was previously Curatorial Associate in the Department of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a BA in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA, an MA in Art History from UT Austin, and is the recipient of a 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected performance artist, actress, poet, and theater maker. Her text-based work is known for its humor, high content, and highly quotable wit and focuses on community building as the goal of performance and performance as a transformative act. Her dedication to social practice and activism began in 1977 when she identified herself as an advocate for other artists. She continues in this role as an international community elder and icon of artistic resistance. Penny Arcade is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking was curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade and Soft Network. https://www.softnetwork.art/ https://www.participantinc.org/

Sheyla Baykal, Taylor Mead, printed 2026, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy Sheyla Baykal Archive and Soft Network.

08/10/2026

This coming Sunday, August 16, 6pm, the final public program of Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking - Penny Arcade in conversation with Lilia Rocio Taboada at Participant Gallery, 116 Elizabeth Street, ground floor.

Join us for a conversation between performance artist Penny Arcade and writer and researcher Lilia Rocio Taboada about Arcade’s writing, social practice, and stewardship of artists’ legacies.

Lilia Rocio Taboada is an arts researcher, writer, and curator specializing in archival research and collaborative artistic practices since 1945. She is currently Associate, Programs and Editorial at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and was previously Curatorial Associate in the Department of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a BA in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA, an MA in Art History from UT Austin, and is the recipient of a 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected performance artist, actress, poet, and theater maker. Her text-based work is known for its humor, high content, and highly quotable wit and focuses on community building as the goal of performance and performance as a transformative act. Her dedication to social practice and activism began in 1977 when she identified herself as an advocate for other artists. She continues in this role as an international community elder and icon of artistic resistance. Penny Arcade is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking was curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade and Soft Network. https://www.softnetwork.art/ https://www.participantinc.org/

Sheyla Baykal, Jack Smith, 1988, printed 2026, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy Sheyla Baykal Archive and Soft Network.

08/09/2026

Just posted to my Patreon, a 1995 interview with Tony Zanetta. In 1995 with the international success Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, Swiss filmmaker Yves Kropf decided to make a documentary about me. Along with filmmaker Thomas Halaczinsky, they undertook two interviews with me. 30 years later, I was completely surprised to learn that in our archive, we had an audio interview that they did with Tony Zanetta about me, my work, the 60s, the 80s, theater and culture and more. xoPenny

Please consider joining my Patreon. All my shows, performances are there plus interviews from The Lower East Side Biography Project. Hundreds of unique posts for Patreon subscribers. You can support my work with a monthly contribution and stop anytime. It is high content entertainment, a balm in trying times and a wonderful place to get lost in!

Tony Zanetta Interview, August 16, 1995 by Yves Kropf and Thomas Halaczinsky - AUDIO ONLY by Penny Arcade Performance on Patreon. Join Penny Arcade Performance's community for exclusive content and updates.

08/08/2026

My morning coffee brought to me by Fly Orr's fabulous ABC No Rio coffee mug. I bought one for Penny Arcade for her birthday. Lots of excellent art with Lower East Side history.....great prices....great gifts! Support our local artists. https://fly-0-art.printful.me

08/02/2026

Join us tonight Sunday August 2nd 6-8pm for our second public program at Participant Gallery, 116 Elizabeth Street, ground floor. Gabriella Mirabelli on John Eric Broaddus with Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez as part of Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking show at Participant Gallery, curated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez with Penny Arcade and Soft Network.

In the late 1990s, while interning at Other Pictures, artist Gabriella Mirabelli was given a box of materials pertaining to the book artist John Eric Broaddus: hours of audio recordings and several minutes of footage that were remnants of an unfinished documentary begun by filmmaker Jonathan Mednick. Work on the Broaddus film began in the late 1980s and production stopped due to lack of funding and time. After Broaddus’ death in 1990, research and film production was further complicated due to the fracturing of his archive. Moved by what was in the box, Mirabelli took on the project to finish the documentary, completing Books of Survival: The Art of John Eric Broaddus in 2000. Mirabelli’s film still stands as the most expansive historicization of Broaddus's work to date. Beyond its monographic approach, it also uses Broaddus’ story to document how AIDS dismantled the interdisciplinary arts community of the Lower East Side in the 1980s and 1990s. Join us for a conversation between Mirabelli and exhibition curator Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez wherein they will discuss, with film and audio clips, Broaddus’ street performances, costumes, and artists' books.

It’s going to be a wonderful conversation and a great time to see Sheyla’s portraits. https://participantinc.org/

Gabriella Mirabelli is a painter based in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, working primarily in acrylics. Her work centers on water and waterways explored through landscape and natural subjects that move between impressionist and abstract realist approaches. She returned to studio practice after an eighteen-year pause during her tenure as CEO and co-founder of ANATOMY, an Emmy Award-winning creative agency. Since resuming her practice, she has exhibited widely across the Northeast, and her paintings are held in private collections in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez is an art historian, photographer, and archivist based between New York and Puerto Rico. He is the author of The Disappearance of Landscape: Paul Thek in Oakleyville, forthcoming from MATTE Editions and The Watermill Center in September 2026 and Newspaper (Brooklyn: Primary Information, 2023). He is currently compiling a small edited volume titled The Gate Hill Cooperative Tapes. He works part-time between the Archives of American Art and the Department of Art History at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University.

Photo: Sheyla Baykal, John Eric Broaddus, 1981, printed 2026, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy Sheyla Baykal Archive.

07/28/2026

07/28/2026

Hi…as many of you know our Paul Bridgewater film, Man From Pretentia, premiered at DOC NYC. Since then we’ve had the film in other festivals but now we are exploring self distribution channels. Part of that effort is to build the film’s profile on IMDb - the on-line database for films.

If you saw the film, it would be helpful to us if you could visit IMDb and write a very short review with your honest thoughts. You can also just rate the film.

Your review will help us as we introduce the film to new audiences and to independent theater programmers.
Man From Pretentia - IMDB link
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32898113/

Thanks for your efforts here - it will help us a lot.
xoPenny

To jog your memory, here’s the trailer of the film.