Visitors enjoying works in What Color Are Your Feelings? This exhibition at La Galería del Barrio invited artists of all backgrounds and skill levels to showcase work that visually represented emotion and highlighted Latinx identity through color.
From public art installations exhibited by the Providence Commemoration Lab to Liz Collin’s Motherlode at the RISD Museum, August’s Gallery Night was full of inspiring and contemplative creative spaces.
Between the 6 free guided tours and people visiting the gallery shows on their own, we had over 100 people participate. In addition to local folks, we saw visitors from Georgia, New Jersey, North Dakota, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.!
Keep telling your friends and family about Gallery Night!
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Communal memory and reflection was a common thread woven into this month’s itineraries. Tour locations incorporated immersive and participatory elements for visitors to learn from, pause at, and experience.
During the 5:15pm tour, visitors engaged with a “living repository” of over 150 interviews exploring collective histories of colonial oppression as part of The Simmons Center’s Unfinished Conversation Series — before heading to the Providence Art Club, where three exhibitions ranged from Umberto Crenca’s urban paintings to faculty works and intimate member miniatures.
Raffini’s public sculpture “I (Eye) Am Woman” at Roger Williams Park.
At 6pm, Gallery Night kicked off its 2nd pilot tour at the Roger Williams Gateway Center where visitors viewed an exhibit exploring stories of “resilience and resistance” in Chinese, Cambodian, and Vietnamese-American communities, and were provided envelopes containing pieces of history from The South Providence People’s Archive. Artist & Printmaker, Edwige Charlot asked visitors to pause on what it means to deem something as “archival,” and discussed the reclamation of history through public records.
The tour included stops at Providence Commemoration Lab sites, such as Raffini’s public sculpture, "I (Eye) Am Woman,” where sitting became an act of bringing people together.
Next, the tour visited Columbus Square where Shey Rivera Rios discussed their cultural intervention pieces “Abre Caminos” and “Museo de las Ancestras,” and guests were able to interact with Lu Heintz’s participatory installation, “Pond Lands”— public benches and chairs created from a giant tree that was local to the area, inviting rest and contemplation.
Gathered by Heintz’s abstracted furniture objects, juxtaposed by the stone pedestal where a statue of Columbus once stood, guests were asked to ponder: what does it mean to connect past, present and future? Can we be connected by different stories, as neighbors?
The evening concluded with a stop at La Galería del Barrio where visitors viewed works exploring the visual representation of emotion and Latinx identity through color.
“What stuck me was that this tour was an exploration of space — a collaborative and collective exploration of art, narrative, healing, and memory — with active listening and making room for each other’s stories at the center.”