Walk into “The Classics” at The Development Gallery in Tribeca, and it quickly becomes clear—you are not merely at an exhibition. You are inside Jennifer Elster’s mind. The artist, filmmaker, performer, and third-generation New Yorker has turned the 4,000-square-foot space into a living memoir—one that breathes, shouts, mourns, and dances. On view through May 21, “The Classics” is a sprawling retrospective that defies medium, chronology, and expectation.

At first glance, the show is dizzying in range. Here is David Bowie’s shirt from the dystopian 1. Outside sessions—styled by Elster for a photoshoot in 1995, resurrected now like an artifact from another realm. There, a pair of sunglasses worn by both Wu-Tang Clan’s Redman and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, places on a plinth like a crown jewel of cultural collision. In one corner, the haunting self-portraits of Elster wearing a gas mask—”The Warfare Series”—confront the fragility of life in a world teetering on collapse. In another, a childhood pewter chalice sits in the “Garden of Artifacts” like a relic from a private mythology.

But beyond the visual spectacle, what makes “The Classics” sing is its emotional architecture. Each installation functions like a memory excavation, building a personal and political archive of Elster’s life—from surviving 9/11 at close range, to enduring Hurricane Ida as it flooded her upstate refuge, to the discovery of a long-lost Bob Dylan cassette from her late father. These aren’t just objects. They’re exhalations.

“I used to be a powerful warrior,” Elster confides during our walk through, reflecting on how years of burnout led her to a more intuitive and fragmented form of expression. “You think one can go mad burning all the time in a world that’s on fire.” Her answer? Art that fights and forgives in the same breath.

The show opens with “The Wall of Paintings, anchored by the confrontational piece “Mad Face,” a 16-foot scrawl of emotional unrest. Nearby, massive scans of the artist’s skull grin from the walls. Molds of her teeth leer form a wood stool. The works ask not just “what’s wrong with the world?” but “what’s rotting inside of us?” These anxieties stretch into “The Wake The Fck Up Show,” a collection of urgent, hand-lettered paintings bearing phrases like “When Is It Enough? When We’re Dead?”—a raw, typographic scream.

Still, amid the warnings, there is reverence. Elster’s photographic series “America” celebrates the strange and wild beauty of the country—from Arizona’s burnt landscapes to the tangled woods of New York. It’s a love letter, albeit one scrawled with trembling hands and ink made of dirt, grief, and longing.

There’s also play. In “Quite A Bite,” Elster stages her orthodontic molds as sculpture, reflecting on her own skull with equal parts absurdity and reverence. Her style work with Trent Reznor and David Bowie is on view, complete with gas masks, custom garments, and the sensibility of someone who knew how to manifest moments before they occurred. “Sometimes,” she says, “you just know.”

For Elster, art is less about finality and more about becoming. She doesn’t plan mediums; she stumbles into them. Painting arrived unannounced in 2015 as a way to cope with despair. Her ongoing performance series “In the Woods (and Elsewhere)” brings strangers in the woods for unscripted rituals. Her upoming film project—over two decades in the making—will feature Questlove, Rufus Wainswright, Dave Matthews, and more.

Ultimately, “The Classics” feels like a survival strategy—one that stitches together trauma, humor, style, and defiance into a kind of alchemical memoir. It is as much a shrine as it is a scream.

“You can feel what was going on in the world at the time,” Elster says of her paintings. But it’s not just her world she’s documenting—it’s ours.

“The Classics” is on display through May 21 at The Development Gallery, 75 Leonard Street, New York. Open Monday through Saturday, 1-6 p.m.

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INTERVIEW: 

Sabrina: It is a beautiful gallery. And I love your connection to music with it, too, because I feel like that’s such a beautiful art form that people don’t realize can be so healing.

Jennifer: Oh, my God, yes. And it comes out in so many other ways, like, not just actual music, but, you know. I have so much respect for music. I have more respect for it every day, almost, you know?

Sabrina: How did you kind of get into the music world?

Jennifer: Well, you know, it’s weird, because when I was really young, I started off, like, my father was really into music, so from a very young age, I used to sing to Dylan and just, like, really great folk music. My grandfather was the harpist at the Metropolitan Opera, so I got exposed to classical music. And then I also was, like, a club kid when I was a teenager, so…

Sabrina: You were in the scene.

Jennifer: I was in the scene. 

Sabrina: In New York City, too.

Jennifer: Yeah, I was in the scene. I think, like, 12, 13, I started going to clubs, and I would stay out all night and have a lot of fun. And so music, like, from the very beginning… And I just went through a lot as a teenager, and I think, like, going out and dancing was just, like, the most therapeutic thing that a person could possibly… Like, it just felt so therapeutic.

Sabrina: 100%. Music is the best medicine.

Jennifer: Yeah, it just really is. So I think… So all the roots were there. And then I got a job at Mademoiselle magazine. I was an editor at Mademoiselle magazine when I was really young, and somehow I ended up styling. And I always had style as a kid, but it wasn’t, like, anything that I ever thought about doing. And then suddenly I was styling, and then I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore, I want to write. And then I went freelance, and then my agent called me up and said, Do you want to do Bowie? And I was like…

Sabrina: How can you say no?

Jennifer: Like, yeah, of course. You know, and then it just kind of kept going. You know what I mean? It was like everything was so interesting, and then all the music. And I didn’t even realize until recently, like, the 90s music was amazing Like, I just somehow… Because I think when you grew up during that period, like, I look back on, like, oh, the 70s music was so great. You know what I mean? But, like, the 90s music was fantastic, and there was so much happening. And I was just… I just kind of, like, worked with so many different people. I mean, so many other people I worked with, like, Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. You know, I mean, I can’t even remember because there’s so many people. So I just, I really kind of got, like, embedded in the music scene there. And then when I started to do my woods projects, I have a lot of people that, like, Rufus Wainwright and Moby and Questlove and some others as well that I can’t remember right now. And so it was… Oh, Dave Matthews also, yes. So I was in the music. I was involved in music again, you know? And then I started recording music because I was like, oh, this is fun. I’m going to record music. And then I started making my own music.

Sabrina: Wow. Wow, you’ve done it all.

Jennifer: I was like, I want to make sure I do that too. And I did, and that was really fun and exciting.

Sabrina: So when does the film release? When does it come out to public?

Jennifer: It’s going to be a film series, and that’ll be the next thing I work on. That’s a project that is, like, it’ll be released, like, in iterations and segments, and it’ll probably go over a long period of time.

Sabrina: Will we get a sneak peek this year?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Sabrina: Okay, good. I’m excited. So one of the questions I had for you was, you’ve worked across so many mediums. So how do you decide which form a concept should take? Which medium?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Sabrina: How do you decide, oh, I’m going to use a canvas, I’m going to make this, I’m going to style this, I’m going to make it a film?

Jennifer: You know, I don’t think I really do decide. I really feel like, I don’t know, I think I’ve been very lucky to be able to explore myself and what I’m doing, and I just kind of, you know, I just do what I feel at that moment in time. Like an artist intuition. Yeah, I just kind of like, so the medium really almost exposes itself to me naturally. Like when I did the canvases, I did the canvases because I was at my house, which is in the country, and then I was like, oh, it’d be nice to have some canvases and do some, you know what I mean? It was just like, and then suddenly I’m doing that. But I never painted before. It wasn’t like I was like, oh, I’m going to be a painter! You know what I mean? It was just like, oh, that’s just very kind of natural. So most mediums I fall into are just very natural. 

Sabrina: I mean, that’s the beauty of art. It kind of just calls to you.

Jennifer: Yes. Yeah, and I think people get very, like, stuck inside of doing one thing, and I’m just not that kind of, you know, I mean, I respect that, too, if you do one thing, and you do that really well, and you do that your whole life, and you enjoy it. I think that’s fantastic. But for me, it’s like, I think I’m more like, I want to try and challenge myself and just do different things. 

Sabrina: I love it. I love the diversity. Like, every single thing is so interesting.

The fact that you went from clothing to a canvas to, you know, pictures of your jaw. It’s really just like, this is an artist, you know? She does everything, whatever speaks to her. It’s beautiful.

Jennifer: I think it’s just, I think it’s, it’s just like, it’s almost like walking, you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s, making things is that natural to me.

Sabrina: That’s beautiful. Okay, so my last question for you, what advice would you give to an emerging artist who’s afraid to do too much with their work? Or go too far, go too far. Like, you know, do something that might be controversial.

Jennifer: Well, I mean, I think it is important to be mindful of what you’re taking on. Because if you go, if you go really far and you are controversial, you know, you have to be able to, be able to withstand that. You know what I mean? Because if something comes back to you, you have to have the wherewithal to get through that. And like, you know, especially in a world that’s so kind of like toxic online and stuff like that. So I think it’s good to pace yourself and to be, to be real about that. Because I think sometimes people just, sometimes people just want to do things for attention, you know. And then so they do things and then they go out and they do it and then it has these ramifications that they weren’t really planning on. You know what I mean? It’s like what they weren’t equipped for or they don’t really know enough about that to even talk about. So I think it’s good to pace yourself and just be mindful about what you’re doing. But then with that said, also, I feel like so much of the art world today, because I am a New Yorker and I’ve been around for a long time, I feel like so much of the art world is like really like has turned into design and not so much really dealing with the topics and what’s going on. 

Sabrina: Yeah, that’s kind of what inspired the question. I feel like with social media too, people are so quick to attack everyone and I feel like artists kind of hide themselves.

Jennifer: Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like the artists are getting beaten back. You know what I mean? Like, oh, oh, oh, you don’t want to like put yourself, you know, put yourself out in that way. But we need, we need artists to put themselves out in that way, right? But hopefully they’re the artists that know what they’re talking about, you know what I mean? Because sometimes you hear people’s opinions and just because they’re an artist doesn’t mean they’re going to put art out with the right thing, you know what I mean? So, yeah, so I would say just be mindful and careful and also really care about what you’re talking about because you might end up talking about it in a very serious way.

Sabrina: Yeah, I think the best type of art is one that begs questions, makes you ask questions. 

Jennifer: Yes, well, that’s what, I mean, I think one of the hardest things to do in getting this exhibition up so that it didn’t, like, it’s not saying anything specific, it’s just, it’s something that hopefully starts to percolate in your mind, you know what I mean? But not like tell you, like, this is how I feel, this is what you have to do, da-da-da. If you want to figure certain things out, it’s here. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it’s in the room.

Sabrina: A lot of your work is very personal, too, which I think it kind of tells a story. It’s like an autobiography.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Sabrina: It’s your story.