ONE
THOUSAND
OLNEYVILLES

In Providence (RI) Olneyville Square is an area of bustling activity: restaurants, shops, artist-studios and office spaces, a community library and residential building all live in this 1.5miles (2.5km). It’s also a well- traveled intersection, a connector to highways 6 and 10, as well as streets Broadway and Westminster leading towards neighborhoods in the west –giving the area a visibility and exposure that is hard to find elsewhere in the city.

A Neighborhood Plan put together by the City of Providence in 2017 refers to Olneyville Square as “prime for redevelopment”, and spaces used by artists have been recently turned into residential units. People in the area have expressed their concerns in the past –these range from traffic congestion, support for existing small businesses, affordable housing, crime rates, and urban aesthetics, to name a few. The questions this project explores are: as redevelopment looms in the horizon, how are residents’ concerns being taken into account? what are some ways in which these voices can be captured and amplified?

Our approach leans on a collective imagination strategy –gathering images from people who live and work in the area. This participatory instance creates subjective maps of the area and ultimately informs a special video rendering that will be projected on outdoor spaces as well as online platforms.

“One Thousand Olneyvilles” serves as a tool for residents to explore, express, and document how they would like to see the neighborhood grow. The project invites tangible transformations and amplifies the intimate process of imagining with others by creating media outputs for variable supports. These moving images not only activate living testimonies in the public, they also serve as a repositories of information for future redevelopment efforts as well as additional tools for accountability.

PROJECT IN DEVELOPMENT: Public activation + Exhibition March 2026.

Collaborators

Mariela Yeregui is a visual artist, educator and scholar. Her work includes installations, net.art, interventions in public spaces, video-sculptures and robotics that have been exhibited in numerous museums and art festivals across Latin America, North America and Europe. She has received prestigious awards and is the founder and former director of the Master of Technology and Aesthetics of Electronic Arts at the National University de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, Yeregui holds a BA in art history from the University of Buenos Aires, a Master’s degree in literature from the National University of the Ivory Coast and a PhD in media philosophy from the European Graduate School.

Video Documentation: Zack Kligler & Lexi Schnitzer.

“One Thousand Olneyvilles” is Commissioned by Providence Preservation Society, 2025-2026.