Opening June 27, 2026, Art Omi will present Nayland Blake’s “Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre (2026), a new commission and the artist’s first outdoor installation. It will be accompanied by performances, activations, and workshops across Art Omi’s park and gallery. “Haunt” draws upon the history of the ornamental hermit, a novelty of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which a wealthy landowner would hire a man to live alone in a humble dwelling on their estate for a term of seven years. Required to remain visible to visitors and abide by a strict set of rules for the duration of their contract, ornamental hermits were often forbidden from speaking or cutting their hair and were understood to perform a fantasy of a simpler model of life predating the Industrial Revolution. The ornamental hermit was the precursor to the garden gnome, a mythological earth dweller known to foment mischief in the mountains, woods, and mines.

Victorya Spectre, the figure referenced in the work’s title, is Blake’s alter ego spawned in 2013 as part of their performance The Residue of a Thousand Hugs presented in Times Square as part of the ICP Triennial. An apparition from the old days of Times Square, Victorya Spectre is named after Victory Theater, a former adult theater once on 42nd Street. In this newest iteration, Spectre appears as a cross between a sibyl and a cryptid, a mysterious creature dispensing fragments of insight from their studio/nest. Victorya has answers, but they may just not be the right ones.

Shifting dynamics between audience, artist, and the institution, Blake continues to explore how artwork can serve as a platform for exchange and interactions rarely found in white-cube settings. Part classroom, part lounge, part farm stand, part abandoned amusement park ride, the project raises questions about fantasy, labor, aging, and the conditions of daily life. Central to the project is the question: how can we produce conditions that allow us to thrive and sustain ourselves and one another?

“Haunt”: Being the Folly of One Victorya Spectre is on view in the Newmark Gallery until January 10, 2027. The exhibition in the Sculpture & Architecture Park is on view until the fall of 2030.

Curated by Sara O’Keeffe, Senior Curator, with Guy Weltchek, Curatorial Assistant.