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Oni Gallery closes indefinitely
BY CAMILLE DODERO
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This time, the rumors about the Oni Gallery are true. Last July, after cops appeared at the two-level loft space when they mistook a musician’s screams for something potentially criminal, word around town was that the police had closed the Oni. Not true. Then in November, the Chinatown gallery suspended operation for a week when Boston’s Inspectional Services Department (ISD) closed the entire edifice housing the Oni, due to building-code violations for which the property owner was responsible. But the exhibition rooms weren’t closed for good, and they reopened soon after. Then, last Thursday, the Oni had to postpone all programming until further notice, including last weekend’s "SnuffLoad," a surreal performance-art work by New York artist and playwright Tom Cole. So what happened? Turns out that last November’s ISD requirements were never satisfied. An e-mail about the Cole show’s postponement put it this way: "Our landlord is dragging his feet on bringing the building up to code, and we are caught in the middle." Sadly, Boston needs more places like the Oni. It’s one of the area’s few remaining experimental-art sanctuaries, a venue that hosts the likes of Jim O’Rourke, the Human Petting Zoo, and the Sex Workers Art Show Tour. The gaping hole in the number of settings for unconventional work in this town had already been made larger when, last summer, the ISD shuttered the Berwick Research Institute, a Roxbury performance space. So is the Oni’s ISD-forced closure connected to that of the Berwick? "This situation isn’t about targeting arts spaces, it’s about having a bad landlord," says Oni director Lydia Eccles. "We simply don’t have an occupancy permit. The reason we don’t is that our landlord has refused to bring the building up to code." Eccles says the Oni staff is working with the ISD to get the property owner to make the necessary adjustments. She is reluctant to say much more than that since everything is so tentative, but emphasizes that the ISD isn’t the bad guy here. So what’s the best-case scenario? "The landlord does the work and then we reopen," says Eccles. And the worst-case scenario? "We close down." "SnuffLoad" has been rescheduled for March 27 at the Cambridge Family YMCA’s Durrell Hall, 820 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 661-9622; www.cambridgeymca.org. For future Oni developments and updates on rescheduled events, visit www.onigallery.org.
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