What does it mean to experience art? An Afternoon at Work in Progress NYC
by Brittany Bruce, Head of Digital Strategy for Seen
After spending an afternoon exploring Work in Progress at The Blanc in Manhattan over the weekend, this is the question I found myself returning to.
Work in Progress is an interactive art festival where attendees can watch artists work. But it goes beyond that — two floors of the Blanc were dedicated to creating alongside the artists, not just spectating.
I've attended several "traditional" art fairs, including Art Basel Miami, Untitled, Scope, Intersect Art & Design and Plural. But this was the first time I had the chance to talk to artists, on-site, about their process, while simultaneously also participating in their work. Work In Progress offered a level of interactivity I've never experienced at an art fair. And maybe more art fairs should follow suit?
Here's what stood out to me from Work In Progress.
Everything Good Studio
Everything Good Studio is an experiential art and design studio based in Brooklyn. Part of their light sculpture, Allium, was on display at Work in Progress, and to activate it, you needed to hold hands with another person and place your other palm on two orbs simultaneously, effectively closing the circuit.
Allium was one of the few pieces in what was called "The Speculative Floor" that required human intervention to exist. I thoroughly enjoyed that I couldn't get a photo of Allium in its full expression, because it meant I was experiencing it in the moment. Given how pervasive performative content is on social media right now, this felt like a meaningful choice by the studio.
The Making Floor
On this floor of The Blanc, making rang supreme. From creating collages on painted canvas with other fair goers to learning about cyanotypes and breaking pottery, this floor was all about engaging with the artists in their process.
Our first stop was From This Scraps with Brooklyn-based artist Tucker Eason. After some simple instructions, we were told to add scraps from old newspapers and magazines to three differently coloured canvases on the wall. I've always been drawn to collage work, so maybe that's why Eason's booth resonated so much. But it was also a thrilling, contradictory activity - at most art fairs, "touching the art" is a hard no-no.
Our masterpiece taking shape
We then moved over to Process Interrupted with Flo Mena, a Chilean multidisciplinary artist based in LA.
Mena's energy was absolutely electric as she walked us through how she creates her cyanotype works. I couldn't help but wonder: if more people understood what goes into these vibrantly layered works (Mena does 40+ test layers in some cases), the price would feel self-explanatory.
Works by Flo Mena.
The Loft (aka the Social Floor)
The top floor of Work in Progress opened on the Hand-Beaded Bar Intervention work of Jennifer Daniel, a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice explores language, iconography and digital communication through beadwork and sculpture. Daniel also sits on the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, which has created a reciprocal relationship between the art she makes and the emojis she champions for development (she's particularly proud of her apple-core work).
I immediately struck up a conversation with Daniel about Lucy Sparrow, how she went from 2D to 3D beading, and whether mayo is an acceptable condiment on a corndog - the jury is still out on the latter. On this particularly hot NYC day, the colourful beaded and non-beaded produce brought some levity to the fair and was a welcome start to this floor.
No Shoes = Better Art?
We started our post-shoe exploration at Mapping the City with Ifeoma Ebo, a Brooklyn-based designer and urbanist whose practice connects architecture, public space and cultural justice.
Mapping the City is Ebo's first map project in quilting, and fair goers were invited to cut fabrics in the West African indigo tradition and place them in different neighbourhoods across the city. I hope my contribution of Greenwich Village shines on in perpetuity.
What struck me most about Ebo was her generosity with her time. The quilting process was a multi-step one: cutting, tracing, cutting, tracing, cutting, ironing and pinning. In an environment where you can feel rushed through the booths at an art fair, Mapping the City was an invitation to sit, explore and do.
On the other side of the no-shoes zone were two experiences that really made me think.
Mindful Minute Collective Drawing with visual artist and cultural producer Lynette Therese Sauer invited us to create our own repeating mark, for one minute, on a collaborative drawing. After spending 60 seconds making the same mark over and over with a crayon, I can confidently say I have a new appreciation for the tactile power of drawing.
We ended our time in The Loft with the incredible fiber artist Marianna Baker and her interactive soft sculpture, Wishing Well. She asked us to answer the question: what kind of future do you want to see?
Our answers were written down on card stock and tied among the bound gloves of Baker's suspended sculpture. Seeing the other anonymous responses drift around the sculpture was a genuinely moving experience. A reminder that we can all make the future together.
Time and Space
An event like Work In Progress allows for art that moves beyond what one expects from a a more traditional art fair or gallery show. The space created the opportunity for several experiential time-based pieces including “Tactical Remembrance of Conflict” by Berto Herrera, a process piece that reflected on individual perspectives and collective experiences of contemporary conflicts as well as “In Fieri - Photographic Performance” where attendees Lounged and posed in the installation whille photographer Ventiko captured images of herself and other nude performers in highly stylized tableaux vivants and “8 Minutes” where attendes were given eight minutes to speak and eight minutes to move. Participants were photographed before and after an intimate chat shaped through movement and presence by artist Zahra Saleki.
Is Work in Progress a WIP?
Some of the works at the fair were fantastical and otherworldly. Some were emotional. Some were hard to look at.
But from where I'm sitting, that's exactly what an art fair is meant to be. If a traditional art fair is a shopping mall where "looking" is the extent of how much the fair-goer and prospective collector can participate, Work In Progress takes it one step further to ask: what if we let potential collectors talk to the artists and actually contribute to the work itself?
When we know how beneficial creativity is to our physical and mental health, breaking down barriers between artists and art lovers seems like the right place to start.
Another striking difference - one I didn't clock until I was on my way home — was that there were no galleries present at all. We had unfiltered access to the artists themselves. This approach wouldn't work for every artist, but the ones I spoke with were more engaging and energetic about their work than most gallery reps I've talked to at traditional fairs.
So what does it mean to experience art? It does include looking, sure. But what Work In Progress has proved is that it goes well beyond that.
Work In Progress (WIP), founded by Novo Collective, is built on a simple premise: audiences watch artists actually making the work, rather than just viewing it once it's finished. The mission behind it is to shift focus away from polished, finished exhibitions and toward the process itself. It debuted in Mexico City in February 2026, where artists opened their studios across several neighborhoods over an eight-day run, and the city itself became part of the experience - folding in dinners, conversations, and other moments of shared creation along the way. The second edition landed in New York City this June, running June 18–21 across two buildings spanning Manhattan and Brooklyn.
