This weekend in Manhattan, amid a bustling crowd of the city’s cool kids, Strada opened a new exhibition, at the same time celebrating its one-year anniversary. Just behind noisy Washington Square Park, the gallery was making noise all its own.
Founded by 23-year-old Paul Hill, Strada is first and foremost an art gallery and online marketplace prioritizing transparency, fair representation, and equal opportunities for its band of emerging and established creatives. (Strada counts more than 400 artists and collectors in its orbit.)
As a recent student of Grinnell College, Hill decided to leave school to pursue Strada full-time. He began his own art career selling screen prints to afford rent in New York. “I realized how many disadvantages there were for artists who sell their own artwork. The only options really available were through art dealers or galleries, and the spaces that I found myself entering were not spaces designed or built for people like me or from people from similar backgrounds as me,” says Hill. “I thought, Let’s design a space and a new path for artists to take within the art world.”
Although based in New York, Strada has no fixed address, hosting its first in-person exhibition in the Lower East Side in 2021 and another in Los Angeles last month. At the entrance to its latest show, “Culture II,” a sculpted head with a painted face by artist Sydnie Jimenez surveys the room with a stern squint, adding a sense of lightheartedness and humor to the ambiance. Elsewhere, a suite of canvases by Timothy Bair depicts a person operating a power chair in different parts of their home, providing a window into the problem of accessibility and how it’s represented in art.
“The first show we had was an all-Black exhibition celebrating Black artists and the fluidity within the Black diaspora,” Hill says. “Now, for ‘Culture II,’ we had a joint exhibition between Black and Asian artists whose work serves as a landmark in time, defining what our creative future looks.” Strada meets its community where it is by offering artists an opportunity to display their work IRL, educating its followers about disparities within the art world, and validating young artists by amplifying them. In an effort to support first-time collectors, Strada is also introducing capsule collections of prints and ceramic mugs by its artists, creating a more accessible price point for would-be buyers.
Through his young gallery, Hill is working to remove the intimidation that often accompanies white-box art spaces, and an important part of his vision is supporting makers of all kinds. For the first time, Strada staged a live performance this week, welcoming Teezo Touchdown to do a set. “He fully identifies with the theme of ‘Culture II,’” Hill says of the Texas-born singer. “He is an artist who is actively shaping our creative future as one of the younger musicians in the [industry] and who is also working with some established artists like Tyler the Creator—but he’s still successful in his own right.”
