The HOME HERE exhibition curated by Lucy Rovetto brings together eleven local artists who explore the theme of "home" through works blurring memory, belonging, connection, and personal history. Instead of isolating each piece, the open-floor layout as well as no labels encourages viewers to experience overlapping installations evoking nostalgia, identity, and emotion. The show invites everyone to interpret what home means to them. I always searched for my home, but it was always hard to find and somewhat hard to explain what home even felt like, or looked like. Upon entering the gallery, things felt familiar; almost like others were searching as well. It felt nice to say the least.
An artwork that stood out to me, was a three-dimensional piece. Walking into the gallery and straight ahead; Jaz Graf's Phantom Entanglement is a Pyrography on artist-made paper with bark lace and rope from abaca, cotton, Thai mulberry, jute and hemp, on wood with gold leaf, charcoal, sai sin (monk blessed string) from GrandMa Yai’s temple, and mirrored tile 9ft x 6ft x 3ft. Graf explores the concept of home through the lens of familial roots, diaspora, and humanity's evolving relationship with the earth. The work blends real-world elements with imagined ones to question identity, place, and presence. Home is seen as both a physical and metaphysical passage, a space of yearning existing between arrival and departure. I read their statement as, "How far back does home go? Does it always feel far away? Did I end up here by accident? I feel a sense of longing at the same time as I feel appreciation." In Duncombe & Lambort's The Art of Activism it's stated, "for some, stepping off the curb may be like an epiphany, a blinding moment of clarity... while for others it may be a slow awakening, learned indirectly" (pg. 18, Duncombe & Lambort). This refers to the step from passive indifference to active engagement, but I feel like it can be applied here too. Where Graf's statement says "chance is a passage between pages" referring to turning a page in a story, one must go through that stepping stone, or in a sense "stepping off the curb" in order to take the risk for that chance.
The second work that stood out for me was Jennifer Roberts' corner by the staircase. She reflects on her evolving relationship to memory and loss through her participation in the exhibition, where she revisits her 30-year-old "Family Album" painting a series after losing the original photographs in 2008 during a difficult period in her life. Being unable to recreate these images from memory, Roberts' purchased vintage family photos on eBay in hopes to rediscover her own. This process became an emotional journey that expanded her sense of connection and collaboration through the exhibition. I felt reeled in by this work because I myself had a wall of polaroids that I took of friends, family, and strangers on my wall for a long while before taking them down. I pride myself in having great memory, but at times it really does suck, I just don't tell anyone that part. I admired my grandmother for keeping albums safe; we had record of almost everything. A random fact about me, my father passed before I had the chance of meeting him, and the only picture I had of his was the one they used at his funeral, and It was quite difficult finding more after I got older. I couldn't add him to my wall, or create art that portrayed his legacy because I had no memory of him. Before reading the artist statement, I would've had no idea those were strangers' photos on the wall. In a way it felt like the home I chased after for a long while. In VICE's article Memes Are Our Generation's Protest Art it's stated, "even if you're scrolling past quickly, the point resonates" (Lazarro, Memes Are Our Generation's Protest Art). This reminds exactly of how I felt reaching Roberts' works, even if I had walked past without reading her statement, her point resonated with me.
Both works connect to artistic intervention by challenging fixed ideas of home and memory by reshaping how we understand them. Graf intervenes conceptually by blending reality and imagination to question whether home is physical or a deeper yearning, placing the viewer between here and belonging. Roberts intervenes more materially and emotionally by reclaiming lost memory. In purchasing strangers' discarded family photographs and transforming them into a part of her creative process. Both artists interrupt conventional narratives of home using art to reframe absence, identity, and belonging as a shared experience. Definitely one of my favorite exhibitions thus far, and one of the most relatable experiences I've had.
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| Jaz Graf Phantom Entanglement, 2026 |
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| Jennifer Roberts |
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