https://www.ronengamil.com/projects daily 1.0 2026-03-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/1605654596943-XDLAV701B36FKKOPXDLM/Gamil_Ronen_09.jpg Selected Works The Best is Yet to Come October 2020 Fabrics, thread, coins, cowrie shells 9’10” x 10’8” x 7’3” The Best is Yet to Come is a textile collage installation about real estate speculation, gentrification and displacement, racial policing, and social control. The installation forms a layered, diagrammatic neighborhood map of the current encroachment and pressures of luxury real estate as an example of racial capitalism. A proliferation of luxury developments hints at the possible near-future of Crown Heights as a proto-hyper-gentrified neighborhood which soon might follow the course of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Policing and social control both protect developers, property owners, and their investments, as well as encourage and pave the way for a primed territory where future real estate investments are safe and promising. Potential investment returns have a spillover value transmitted to properties surrounding new luxury developments which inevitably infuse the often-fraught relationships between landowners and tenants. In addition, racial policing ensures that people are not permitted to live and exist outside of the housing market. In effect, the police serve and protect primarily white business and property interests that further gentrification and displacement and embody a fundamental form of racial capitalism. A tapestry-like and carpet-like collage enmeshes patterns inspired by traditional garments of Yemeni Jews with the burgeoning luxury real estate space economy in Crown Heights. My transnational lived experience as an Arab Jew of color of Yemeni descent born in Brooklyn and coming of age in the hegemonic Israeli society dominated by European Jews shaped my identity and subjectivity. As a second or third class citizen in Israel, and by being racialized in the US as a person of color, I relate to and identify with the indignation and struggles for equality, equity, and liberation of melanated people in NYC and across the world. The title The Best is Yet to Come evokes the orthodox urban planning dictate of "the highest and best use" of land, recalls a loudly projected speech conclusion from the 2020 Republican National Convention, expresses concern about the future of Crown Heights, and warns of the current trend in the housing market throughout NYC. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/1605654952996-7QMCL5B66SEI8NTNE4RD/image-asset.jpeg Selected Works Multifunctional Bed Brooklyn, NY | 2018 Red Oak. 18 x 63 x 85 inches The bed is designed with its height as a seating area for a studio apartment, and its sides as a bookshelf. The upper surfaces can be used as a linear night table. The four functions collapsed into one object is a response to the ever rising costs of urban interior space that push its city dwellers to lead compact and contained life styles. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/1550524491671-CSMC82FTATFB00O2FGC2/2-+Lincoln+Road.+Summer+2018.jpg Selected Works Lincoln Road Entrance Planting Design | 2017 Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY Digital drawing, native herbaceous plants. Approximately 3,000 square feet planted. A large Prospect Park, Brooklyn entrance planting with a complex matrix of native perennial species and about 3,000 live plants installed. This entrance was selected for its location on the low-income side of the Park as a deliberate response to the uneven distribution of Park resources and services. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/1550519196380-WXDWMJCF0VN81UAD8L35/SSP+Website_1.jpg Selected Works Home(-) and Garden 2018 | Socrates Sculpture Park. Long Island City, Queens, NY Steel, drinking cans, aluminum, copper wire, Plexiglas, flooring, paint, perennial woodland plants, annual plants, bulbs, woodchips, compost. Each tent-assemblage 18 x 32 x 32 inches (24 tents). Planting dimensions variable (11 planted beds). The woodland sculpture-garden installation forms a place to contemplate the proliferation of homeless encampments surrounded by screening vegetation as socially produced landscapes that emerge in designed, culturally produced urban landscapes. The work connects New York’s thriving luxury real-estate market with broader urban planning issues, and the active role that these factors play in generating and perpetuating chronic mass homelessness. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/1706463966514-1V8SRQK78Q2YDINAEVFK/1-+Prohibited+versus+Protected+Species+in+the+BioNecropolitics+of+Palestine-Israel_small+resized.jpg Selected Works Prohibited versus Protected Species in the Bio/Necropolitics of Palestine-Israel 2024 Pen, ink, and watercolor on paper mounted on acid free foamboard 21 drawing segments mounted on boards. 34 x 49 inches Bronx Calling: The Sixth AIM Biennial, Group exhibition, Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY Informed by interdisciplinary scholars, these drawings are an example of my research-based practice. Seven species across Palestine-Israel are either protected or prohibited to achieve further land control or advance historical narratives, while suppressing Palestinian legacies and connections to their ancestral lands. I have worked as a public horticulturist in NYC for ten years, implementing landscape management logics towards various plants and animals. With drawing patterns borrowed from jewelry and embroidery traditions of my ethnic group as a Yemeni-Israeli Jew, express an affinity and solidarity with Palestinians and other Arab people. Evergreen pine and cypress forests planted by the Israeli state hide traces of destroyed villages, while developing a greener landscape of wild forests, in opposition to cultivated, domesticated, non-wild olive trees which are a prominent Palestinian symbol. Black Goats are deemed harmful, as feeding on pine seedlings, and are prohibited for Palestinian shepherds. Carob trees recall a Palestinian man’s testimony in a documentary film about wanting just one seed pod from his Carob tree in his home, which he had tried to return to after being expelled in 1948. Za’atar (an oregano-like herb) and Akkoub (a Tumble Thistle) are traditional Palestinian food plants which have been categorized as native and protected, thus prohibiting their foraging. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c6b02e5fb22a5254058cf96/48a016c0-91bc-449a-8853-be2a1541439d/Bee+Miner+at+Gallery+Particulier+%282025%29+_+smaller.jpg Selected Works - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.ronengamil.com/about daily 0.75 2026-02-24