New York-based artist Marco DaSilva opens his solo exhibition “A Light for a Feather” at Tappeto Volante Projects in Gowanus this Saturday, July 11, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at 126 13th Street, according to an announcement from the gallery.
DaSilva makes mosaic assemblages that draw on personal memory, diasporic experience, spirituality, popular culture, and queer histories, according to the gallery. The show includes a work also titled “A Light for a Feather” (2025), built from plastic flowers, eagle feathers, birthday candles, mosaic glass, mirror, and mortar on compressed foam board, at 24.5 by 39 inches.
Born and raised in New York City within a Brazilian-American family, DaSilva assembles found materials, devotional imagery, and urban iconography into what the gallery describes as visual structures that function simultaneously as archive, offering, and self-portrait. His work draws on Afro-Brazilian spiritual practices, Catholic iconography, queer visual cultures, and the visual vernacular of New York City neighborhoods, with references spanning migration, desire, ancestry, and survival, according to the gallery announcement. The gallery frames the exhibition space as a contemporary shrine where disparate histories, beliefs, and visual traditions converge.
DaSilva holds a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY New Paltz and an MBA from Hunter College. He has shown work at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Abrons Arts Center, and the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, and was an Artist-in-Residence at The Arts Center at Governors Island in both 2021 and 2026.
The show marks what Tappeto Volante calls a renewed phase of its Brooklyn program. After recently expanding to a Tribeca location, the gallery is returning to the intimate front room of its Gowanus space. The adjacent gallery at the same address will become the new home of Field of Play, an artist-run space with a longstanding presence in the neighborhood. The two organizations are establishing a shared site dedicated to artistic exchange, experimentation, and community, according to the gallery. Field of Play is opening its own show the same evening: “Fairy Houses,” a group exhibition curated by Wesley Ware.
Tappeto Volante was founded in Gowanus in 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, with a focus on emerging, underrecognized, and self-taught artists. More information is at tvprojectspaceship.com.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily archive
