Stephanie Misa & Multiple Spirits at Governors Island

Opening on Saturday August 20 at 12-6 pm
On view until September 10, Fridays and Saturdays 12-6pm

Governors Island
KODA House at Colonels Row, Building #404B, 2nd floor

Find a ferry to Governors Island

The Snake & the Archive is a collaborative research and installation project by Stephanie Misa, current artist-in-residence at the FCINY and Residency Unlimited, and queer feminist, zine-producing duo Multiple Spirits.

The installation approaches and encounters the archive — whether as subject, source or concept, and the intersections between them — through embodied and situated knowledge and culturally distinct perspectives. In New York, research for The Snake & the Archive has been conducted at the Franklin Furnace Archive and it traces the work of artists within their collection. The Snake & the Archive connects fragmented archival histories and memories – dealing with gaps and absences – and explores their potential to allow for creative becomings.


Stephanie Misa is a visual artist and writer. Misa's work consistently displays an interest in complex and diverse histories, relating to these topics through her installations, sculptures, videos, prints, and writing— bringing forward questions of historical ‘authenticity’, hybridity, and embodiment. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki and was awarded the Art Foundation Merita prize for Artistic Research in 2021. Future projects include a Tuesday Session at the Secession (Vienna), and further exhibitions with Multiple Spirits at Pengerkatu 7 – Työhuone (Helsinki) in September 2022.

Multiple Spirits is a Japanese/English bilingual queer feminist art zine founded by Mai Endo and Mika Maruyama in 2018. Based in Vienna and Tokyo, it focuses on transcultural exchanges and offers a variety of approaches to vocabularies and languages of re-narration and resistance by inviting artists, researchers, and activists from different backgrounds to contribute to the platform. Multiple Spirits has also conducted research on the historical and political roles and impacts of queer and feminist magazines.