Home Is… at St. Francis College in Brooklyn brought together 16 artists to examine home as a physical place, an emotional centre and something people may have to rebuild after moving.
Curated by Bianca Mońa, the exhibition responded to contemporary movements of people creating new lives and new homes in unfamiliar places.
Home as structure and memory
The participating artists approached the subject through different media and perspectives.
Some focused on the material idea of a dwelling: its shape, construction and changing physical needs.
Others treated home through people, rituals, food, language, sounds, objects and public gathering places.
The exhibition also recognised that home can carry contradictory emotions. It may be a place of safety and affirmation, but it can also be somewhere a person chooses or needs to leave.
Belonging in a changing environment
The exhibition featured Steve Anolik, Meg Boe Birns, Linda Fernandez, Rich Garr, Denae Howard, Anya Iovanov, David Iovanov, Walis Johnson, Alexander Kustanovich, M. Carmen Lane, AnnaMaria Leal, Ayanna Legros, Juan Luis Matos, Joel Mentor, Clarivel Ruiz and Michael Wolf.
Their combined work treated belonging as something created through relationships between spaces, people and memory rather than as a fixed address.
Home Is… used that openness to turn a familiar word into a question: what makes a place feel like home, and how can that feeling change when people, environments and circumstances change?