NOW STREAMING:
“DOMINO TABLE TALKS”
VIDEO SERIES DOCUMENTING LATINX DIASPORA CULTURE
CULTURAL CREATORS REFLECT ON PUBLIC ART, PLAY, AND SPACEMAKING IN NEW YORK CITY
Stills from Domino Table Talks, a video series produced by Sandenwolff Productions, 2025, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center.
New York, NY – February 12, 2025 – The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center and Public Art Fund are pleased to announce the first installment of Domino Table Talks, short videos of intimate, multicultural, and intergenerational conversations held at domino tables around New York City between artists, poets, filmmakers, and cultural figures. The first two episodes of the series, filmed at Public Art Fund’s exhibition Edra Soto: Graft, will be available to stream online beginning February 12, 2025.
“Dominoes are more than a game—they’re a cultural thread that connects past and present, turning tables into sites of storytelling, memory, and tradition. Every slap and move of a tile carries history, sparking conversations about who we are and where we come from,” shared Libertad Guerra, Executive Director and Chief Curator at The Clemente. “Domino Table Talks brings together voices from across generations and communities, with Latinx and Caribbean experiences at the center, through a game many in our neighborhoods grew up playing. But beyond nostalgia, dominoes have shaped the rhythms of public life—in parks, on sidewalks, in social clubs, and bodegas. We’re reclaiming public space as a living archive—a place where the tensions between displacement, progress, preservation, and possibilities are both felt and confronted.”
A part of The Clemente’s Around the Table initiative to reinterpret traditional art talks and panels, Domino Table Talks reimagines cultural conversations by centering play, ritual and communal exchange as forms of storytelling. The series was inspired by the familiar dynamics of televised game shows, such as celebrity poker, but explores migration, cultural syncretism, and reclamation of public space through the lens of domino culture—a deeply rooted social practice that has shaped urban life and vernacular history.
“At its heart, the Around the Table initiative and Domino Table Talks are about honoring the voices and stories that have shaped our communities for generations,” added Sofía Reeser del Rio, Associate Director of Programs and Curator at The Clemente. “It’s our motor to create space for reflection, dialogue, and play, where culture is not just discussed but lived and shared.”
In each episode, four participants gather around a domino table to play while engaging in conversation about the history of the game, hybridity, preservation and reinvention of tradition, the cultural connotations surrounding play and leisure, and the game’s important place in Nuyorican culture.
Episode One features artists Edra Soto, Miguel Luciano, Francisca Benítez, and poet Papoleto Meléndez on the risk of gentrification to Puerto Rican communities and the importance of public art and play. In Episode Two, artists Esperanza Mayobre and Risa Puno, poet Edwin Torres, and filmmaker Frances Negrón-Muntaner discuss generational patterns and flows between other geographies – including the Americas writ-large – and New York.
“My intention with Graft, my sculpture in Central Park, has been to create a deliberate space that welcomes people inside to activate it. Domino Table Talks, along with the many casual activities that take place at outdoor tables around the world, offers a playful, inviting way to tackle serious conversations and questions,” said Soto.
The episodes of Domino Table Talks were filmed in Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park alongside Edra Soto’s first large-scale work in New York City, entitled Graft (presented by Public Art Fund, and on view until August 24, 2025). Inspired by wrought-iron screens (rejas) commonly found outside homes in Puerto Rico, Graft features repeating geometric motifs linked to West Africa’s Yoruba symbol systems in contrast with the Spanish colonial architecture often highlighted in Puerto Rican tourism. These are joined by a bespoke set of dominoes that were used in the first installment, as well as domino tables and seating alongside the sculpture that encourage connection between visitors to the plaza and Domino Table Talks participants.
“Public art is a powerful way to make space for people to connect and come together, and Edra Soto’s work invites people to share in conversation, rest, or a playful game of dominoes,” said Melanie Kress, Public Art Fund senior curator. “Offering access to art in the public realm is critical to thriving communities, and we’re thrilled to partner with The Clemente to debut Domino Table Talks.”
Historias
Continuing this spring, Domino Table Talks and the Around the Table initiative are part of the first phase of Historias, The Clemente’s citywide project produced in collaboration with the Latinx institutional collective LxNY to re-center Latinx narratives in New York City that will present scholarly research, oral histories, and cultural programming through 2026. The second phase, Historias Entrecruzadas (Interwoven Histories), will launch an interactive digital platform in October 2025 called The Nueva York Chronicles charting Latinx cultural histories and the intertwined narratives that shape both New York City and the Latinx diaspora. Domino Table Talks will be compiled in a collection of oral histories on this platform.
How to Watch
Episodes are available to stream on The Clemente’s website and on Public Art Fund’s Vimeo. The Clemente will partner with fellow LxNY member. the People’s Theater Project, for the next installment of Domino Table Talks, which will be filmed on March 1, 2025.
Schedule of Related Events:
People’s Theater Project
Domino Party: learn how to play dominoes with food, music, and a DJ! Domino Party is a promotional event for the upcoming play “Domino Effect”, a play by Marco Antonio Rodriguez and directed by Mino Lora. Date: March 1st, from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM Location: Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center (Second Floor)
530 W 166th St, New York, NY 10032 RSVP Required
Public Art Fund
Public Art Fund Talks: Edra Soto with Carla Acevedo- Yates and Marcela Guerrero: a discussion about the themes of architecture and belonging Date: February 26, 6:30–7:30pm ET Location: The Cooper Union, Frederick P. Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Sq, New York, NY 10008
Free Register here!
About The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
Founded in 1993, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts institution with an inclusive and international vision rooted in NYC’s Lower East Side/Loisaida. The Clemente engages diverse audiences in heritage preservation, neighborhood history, and cutting-edge multicultural experimentation, emphasizing the humanities’ role in bridging civic and cultural life.
As a downtown cultural mainstay for three decades, we focus on cultivating, presenting, and preserving Puerto Rican and Latinx culture while embracing a multi-ethnic and international perspective. Committed to operating in a polyphonic manner, The Clemente provides affordable spaces to artists, small arts organizations, and independent community producers, reflecting the rich cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and New York City. Guided by our namesake’s values of culturally grounded multigenerational leadership, local empowerment, and mutuality, we are a collaborative hub for creating and co-producing multidisciplinary contemporary work. The Clemente is a proud co-founder/partner of LxNY Consortium and the Coalition of Small Arts NYC (CoSA NYC).
About Around The Table
The Around The Table series encompasses Domino Table Talks and Remesas/Sobremesas with the goal of answering the questions, “How do we reclaim the narratives of a city that has often excluded us? How do we root ourselves in belonging while navigating a city in flux?” Around the Table reimagines traditional art talks and panels by centering the living archives of play, ritual, and relationality. It celebrates the kinesthetic, intuitive, and embodied practices that shape urban life, affirming that the city is a shared, living archive. These programs highlight rituals, play, and communal acts as pathways to deeper understanding and repositories of Historias.
The panel series Remesas/Sobremesas reimagines the traditional academic roundtable, flipping the script on hierarchical formats to foreground intimate, lived practices that generate meaning in the moment. Grounded in the six anchor themes of Historias, these gatherings transform the act of sharing a meal and conversation into exchanges tied to broader city-shaping themes. By embracing relationality and informality, the series prioritizes the embodied, performative transmission of memory, capturing history as it unfolds. Like remittances that cross borders and generations, this format offers a more authentic and culturally rooted approach to understanding urban narratives—one that traditional panels often overlook.
About Public Art Fund
As the leader in its field, Public Art Fund brings dynamic contemporary art to a broad audience in New York City and beyond by mounting ambitious free exhibitions of international scope and impact that offer the public powerful experiences with art and the urban environment.
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For images, further background, or interviews, please contact:
Katrina Stewart
Senior Account Coordinator, Visual Arts
Blue Medium
T: +1-212-675-1800 [email protected]
