Collective Mobilities is a socially engaged mobile project facilitating redistribution and mutual aid for people experiencing homelessness. First exhibited at Pratt Institute's DeKalb Gallery in Brooklyn (February 3–March 9, 2025), the work challenges the tendency to frame homelessness as a municipal problem to be solved, instead foregrounding New Yorkers' shared responsibility to one another amid systemic inequity and housing insecurity. Through partnerships among students, mutual aid groups, city workers, and researchers, the project demonstrates the transformative potential of community-driven care and alternative economies.

At the core of the project are the Mutual Aid Mobiles, a series of five colorful, portable sculptures designed with architect Ekin Bilal to gather and redistribute lightly used clothing and essential goods. Throughout the exhibition, the gallery functioned as an active collection site: donated items were cleaned and repaired as needed, and visitors could come to "shop" at no cost during open hours. Each week, I collaborated with students and volunteers to wheel the mobiles, loaded with donations, to a nearby mutual aid group serving people living in migrant shelters for direct redistribution. The back of each sculpture is mirrored, reflecting the city as the objects move through it, while also offering a practical surface for people to hold clothes up to. Over the course of the exhibition, more than 8,000 items were collected and redistributed.

When displayed in the gallery, the mobiles were adorned with plants cultivated by participants in a horticultural therapy program grounded in harm reduction at Project Renewal’s Recovery Center, at the Third Street Men’s Shelter in Manhattan. The plants were available for sale, with all proceeds going directly to support recreational activities chosen collectively by the program participants.

Lining the walls of the exhibition were maps conveying critical information for understanding houselessness in relation to apartment vacancy, the segregated locations of shelters across the city, and non-emergency 311 complaints throughout 2024 that were tagged with “homeless.” I worked with data scientists John Lauerman and Yuanhao Wu to collect and synthesize this information. The printed GIS and hand-drawn maps on view mirrored the palette of the mobiles, situating data as inextricably linked to action.

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<sup>Adapt/Evolve, 2025, curated by Fawz Kabra, Fashion Institute of Technology Art and Design Gallery, New York, NY


311 Calls Tagged with “Homeless”, 2025, vellum, inkjet print, archival pen and pencil, 6x5’</sup>

The mobiles have been activated at Recess Art and were included in the Adapt/Evolve exhibition at FIT, a group exhibition focused on interdependence and access. All items collected during these iterations are redistributed to mutual aid networks in support of people experiencing homelessness.