ALT-DC
Video + Stills
Exhibition
ALT-DC presents a layered and provocative portrait of
a city too often reduced to headlines and stereotypes.
Because we actually live here.
Opening Reception:
September 5, 2025 6-9 pm
($5 suggested donation)
On View:
Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays
September 6-October 5, 2025 11-5pm
($5 entrance fee)
ALT-DC explores Washington, DC through the lens of its artistic community — a city seen not as a symbol of power, but as a living, shifting place full of tension, beauty, contradiction, and potential.
POSTCARDS ARE FOR TOURISTS BUT THIS ART DIGS IN.
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About the Exhibition
The exhibition challenges the dominant narratives of the nation's capital by foregrounding alternative visions rooted in the everyday, the imagined, and the overlooked. Through digital projections of video and photography artists reinterpret the city’s layered identity — illuminating untold stories, reimagining public spaces, and questioning what defines DC beyond its federal façade.
Set within the raw, industrial environment of Dupont Underground, ALT-DC transforms the physical space into a platform for expanded storytelling. The site itself — once a transit hub, now an experimental cultural venue — becomes part of the narrative, echoing themes of transformation, reclamation, and hidden histories.
ALT-DC positions DC as a place in motion, where art becomes a tool for revealing what is, imagining what could be, and advocating for what should be.
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Themes the Artists Explore
Memory and erasure: what's been bulldozed, gentrified, or "conveniently" erased.
Infrastructure and invisibility: what lurks under, around, or behind the surface (yes, even the Metro, though you don't have to be literal).
DC as muse: wild futures, fever dreams, or dystopias born from from DC's urban framework.
Irreverence and absurdity: the dry and not so dry humor, snark, and gentle weirdness that makes this place home.