WATER, AGENT OF LIFE / MEMENTOS OF A LIVING PRACTICE
Betsy Damon & Nicole Peyrafitte
June 18 – July 3, 2026 Gallery 198 | 198 24th Street, Brooklyn, New York
About the Exhibition
Gallery 198 is pleased to present WATER, AGENT OF LIFE / MEMENTOS OF A LIVING PRACTICE, a two-person exhibition featuring artists Betsy Damon and Nicole Peyrafitte. Though working through distinct practices, both artists share a sustained commitment to observation, lived experience, and the dynamic relationships that connect humans to larger ecological systems.
Together, the exhibition brings into dialogue Damon’s decades-long engagement with water as a life-giving force and agent of social and environmental change, and Peyrafitte’s ongoing investigations into embodied perception, interspecies relations, and place-based practice.
Betsy Damon: WATER, AGENT OF LIFE For more than fifty years, Betsy Damon has explored the cultural, ecological, and political dimensions of water through public art, community engagement, education, and environmental advocacy. This exhibition presents works that reflect her enduring commitment to water as both subject and collaborator, emphasizing its central role in sustaining communities, ecosystems, and collective futures.
Nicole Peyrafitte: MEMENTOS OF A LIVING PRACTICE This collection brings together paintings, drawings, photographs, films, notebooks, and texts emerging from Peyrafitte's long-term projects Bird-State and Karstic-Actions. Grounded in direct experience, repeated observation, and full-body engagement, the works function as traces and reports of ongoing encounters with birds, landscapes, weather, movement, and the other-than-human world.
Together, Damon and Peyrafitte invite viewers to consider attention as a form of participation and awareness as a living practice. Moving between environmental engagement, artistic inquiry, and embodied experience, the exhibition offers complementary perspectives on how we inhabit, perceive, and care for the worlds we share.
Public Programs & Events
Opening Reception & Performance Thursday, June 18 | 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM Featuring a live Action Painting Performance by Nicole Peyrafitte & Betsy Damon, accompanied by Ben Chadabe on percussion.
Collective Action Conversation Saturday, June 20 | 4:00 PM A dialogue on greening the community featuring Lauren Bon of Metabolic Studio.
Living Practices: Short Films & Conversations Friday, June 26 | 7:00 PM Short films and conversations with Betsy Damon & Nicole Peyrafitte, moderated by Alex Jones.
Bird-State: A Performative Reading Tuesday, June 30 | 7:00 PM A special performance by Nicole Peyrafitte.
Gallery Hours & Information
Exhibition Dates: June 18 – July 3, 2026
Additional Weekend Hours:
Sunday, June 21 | 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Saturday, June 27 | 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Also available by appointment.
Location: 198 24th Street, Brooklyn, New York
Contact: hello@gallery198.com | (718) 635-0430
Press Inquiries: For high-res images, interview requests, or additional information, please reach out via email or phone.