Curious about BICA School? Come find out what it’s all about at our upcoming info session!

Meet current participants, hear firsthand experiences, and get a feel for our unique, community-driven approach to contemporary art education. We’ll give a short presentation covering what BICA School is, who it’s for, and how you can get involved. Whether you’re an artist, organizer, thinker, or all-around curious person—BICA School might be just the place for you.

This is your chance to ask questions, meet the folks who make BICA School what it is, and envision yourself in the mix.

Free to attend and open to all.

Bring your questions, your curiosity, and a friend!

Join us for the opening of Do not go out of the door

Friday, July 18, 7–10 PM

at BICA, 30 Essex St, Buffalo, NY

Celebrate the launch of our summer exhibition with a night of art, conversation, and community. Meet the artists, explore their work in a newly transformed gallery space, and experience the debut of an immersive architectural installation built just for this show.

Featuring works by:

Kayleah Aldrich, Helen Beckley-Forest, H Boone, Lucas Cook, Julia Dzwonkoski, Natalie Hayes, Alexa Kanarowski, Kyla Kegler, Koala Manne, Quincey Miracle, and wavy.

Free and open to all.

Kayleah Aldrich: THE DEBUT
Opening Reception, July 11, 7-10pm
BICA School Project Space
Exhibition runs July 11 - 22

Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert—just bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→Bachelard, Gaston. “The House, from Cellar to Garret, The Significance of the Hut.” In The Poetics of Space, translated by Maria Jolas, 3–37. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

For the first gathering in our summer reading group series we’ll be discussing Gaston Bachelard’s classic essay “The House, From Cellar to Garret, The Significance of the Hut” from The Poetics of Space.

Bachelard’s poetic and philosophical exploration of the spaces we inhabit invites us to see homes, rooms, and even corners as sites of imagination, memory, and meaning. It’s a beautiful starting point for thinking about the relationships between space, self, and creativity.

Whether you’ve read it deeply, skimmed it over coffee, or just want to listen in—come join the conversation. No pressure, no expertise required.

Let’s read, talk, and think together.

Join us on Saturday, June 28 from 3–8PM for the fourth annual Open Essex, BICA’s free summer celebration of contemporary art, creativity, and community at the Essex Street Arts Complex.

Grand Unveiling of the 2025 Buffalo Art Map

Be among the first to grab the guide you helped fund.

Spaghett

The summer cocktail that’s got all the cool kids talking.

Lemonade & Punch

Refreshing sips for everyone—no fancy squeezing required.

Extra Extra Pizza

Bridget (and baby!) will be on-site serving hot, cheesy slices all afternoon.

Art Cake Walk (6 PM)

Circle the ring, hold your ticket—and when the music stops, win a cake or cake-sized art prize. Tickets at the info table; cake donations still welcome at emily@thebica.org.

Blind Box Game
Everyone wins a prize in this wildly creative game by H Boone and Quincy Miracle.

Artist-Made Mini Golf

Putt through one-of-a-kind holes created by Natalie Hayes and Lucas Cook.

Photo Fun

Experiment with DIY photo transfers with Alexa Kanarowski & Nick Mass, or snag your own Polaroid portrait by DJ Carr.

Dunk Tank

Aim at Jerry Mead, Nando, Emily, Scott Propeak, Keelan Erhard, Matt Kenyon, and more. All activities run on BICA Bucks, which you can buy on-site with cash or card.

Live Music

Soulful tunes from Curtis Lovell and upbeat grooves by Side Stitches.

Last Chance

Today is the final day to see Huidi Xiang: the maxim of the tomato in the Main Gallery and Heathscapes by Titorelli in the Project Space before they close at sundown.

And Last, but not least!

Art for Sale

Discover and bring home work by Buffalo’s most inventive artists. Rug Samurai, JP4Hire, Emily Constantin, Nando Alvarez-Perez, EL Hohn, Quincey Miracle, H Boone, Alexa Kanarowski, Kayleah Aldrich, Nick Mass, Natalie Hayes, Lucas Cook, Bri Grace, Koala, wavy, and more!

This is the ultimate Saturday sandwich—after Ride for Roswell in the morning and before Bob the Drag Queen at Outer Harbor in the evening. Free, family-friendly, and full of unexpected delights. Bring your crew and dive into the fun!

Moonlight Revels

 A Reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Madness Most Discreet (MMD) is thrilled to announce its upcoming production of Moonlight Revels, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, making its Buffalo premiere at The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (BICA) on Friday May 16th, 2025 at 6pm and 8pm. This bold new work fulfills Madness Most Discreet’s mission to make Shakespeare’s plays radically accessible to all.

Founded in 2014, Madness Most Discreet is best known for their hallmark approach: one play, four actors, endless possibilities. Each actor learns the entire script, and in a spontaneous collaboration with the audience at the top of each performance, roles are assigned on the spot, making every performance unique.

Moonlight Revels invites you to enter Shakespeare’s world of pure imagination and endless possibility. Each showing (6pm and 8pm) will be uniquely shaped by its audience’s choices. With no role that is bound by gender, class, age, or status -- audiences are offered the rare opportunity to witness how interpretation, identity, and storytelling transform across performances.

We believe Shakespeare’s stories are about us. They belong to everyone.

Free For All Forever.

Join us the day after the opening of the maxim of the tomato for a walkthrough with artist Huidi Xiang. She’ll guide visitors through the exhibition, sharing insights into her practice and the inspirations behind the work. Don’t miss this chance for an intimate look at the installation with the artist herself.

Join us for the opening reception of Huidi Xiang: the maxim of the tomato in BICA’s main gallery.

For this exhibition, Brooklyn-based artist Huidi Xiang has created a sculptural installation that transforms the humble tomato pincushion—a ubiquitous sewing tool found in homes for generations—into a poignant metaphor for the contradictions embedded in care work. Traditionally, the tomato has been associated with health, healing, and prosperity, appearing in folklore as a protective charm and in pop culture as a symbol of recovery—most notably as the Maxim Tomato in the Kirby video game series, where it instantly restores a character’s health. But in the form of a pincushion, it becomes a site of puncture, pierced over and over by needles—a vessel of both nurture and violence.

A Conference Hosted by the Graduate Students of the University at Buffalo’s Media Study Department With a Keynote Talk by Yvette Granata, PhD February 9th @ Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art

The end of the world is near. At least, that’s the message we’ve heard from popular media for the last decade or so. And, who can blame them? With on-going environmental, political, and social crises, the worlds we once knew certainly are ending. It begs the question: what can be created in the old world's wake? The graduate students of the University at Buffalo’s Media Study Department are pleased to announce our inaugural graduate conference: Worldmaking at the World’s End. Considering the apocalyptic events of our contemporary moment, what is the artist's role in helping to shape new worlds? How can art, in all its forms, be used to imagine new possibilities and new answers to the problems we face? Our conference aims to address these questions, thinking specifically about art-making as a means of resistance during times of collapse. We are particularly interested in hearing from research-based practitioners who work between creative and scholarly practice. We are also open to unconventional forms and scholars/artists from non-traditional backgrounds.

CD release with a performance by T.J. Borden & Steve Flato with guests Martin Freeman & Steve Baczkowski. Sugguested donation of $10-$20.

The Growth of Art Market will be a monthly, warm and local space for the creative community to promote and sell their work for the Holiday Season.

A variety night of music performances with sets by chango; Steve Baczkowski; and Michael Rosenstein & Martin Freeman.

Lumpy Buttons is doing it again, this time at The Temp! Welcome to the Fall edition of the free supply exchange! Clean out your space and leave supplies you have given up on and/or take some new ones to get inspired to create. Bring your own bag. Everything is FREE.

Keri Manne, aka Koala, is showing their series of oil paintings “On Our Backs” in our Project Space and debuting a new painting on opening night November 1st, 2024 from 7-10pm.

Exhibiting artist Shana Moulton will give an exhibition walk through and talk about her work and the series Whispering Pines. A part of every opening at BICA, these walkthroughs offer an intimate and informal experience to hear from the artist, know their practice, and ask your own questions.

Shana Moulton (b. 1976, Oakhurst, CA) is a media artist who explores contemporary anxieties through her filmic alter ego, Cynthia. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Cynthia's interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. She holds a BA from the University of California Berkeley and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University; in 2004 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was awarded a Creative Capital grant in 2013. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Cement Fondu, Sydney; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. She has been featured on Art21 and is on the faculty of the University of California Santa Barbara.

Join us for the opening reception of Shana Moulton: Whispering Pines!

Shana Moulton is a contemporary media artist whose video and installation works have been exhibited internationally over the past two decades, including a recent solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Through her various series and mediums, Moulton deftly navigates both the promises and disappointments of self-care culture, capturing the complexity of our collective desire to feel better. While gently poking fun at the industry’s excesses, her work unveils a deeper cultural longing—highlighting the pressures of aging, isolation, and the overwhelming demand to feel good all the time. Her work critiques the wellness industry with its attendant woo-woo mysticism, neoliberal insistence on subjective self-care, and snake oil ethical offerings, all while exposing the deeper cultural forces that shape our search for well-being.

Transfeminist Provocations Against Fascism: Transnational Abortion Struggles

Rachel Fallon & Jennifer Page