Exhibitions & Artists

Welcome (M)Art

An Immersive Art/Food Residency Program

Welcome (M)Art is a program that blurs the lines between art gallery, grocery, and dinner party; providing a unique opportunity for social discourse in Cincinnati.

Can smelling El Salvadorean coffee while hearing the story of a farmer who was killed fighting for fair wages make us think about our global relationships and purchasing power differently?  

Can grocery pricing based on race or gender make us consider the inequities in our social systems?

Socially Engaged Art has a history of using food to achieve both social connection and critical commentary. Food is often utilized as a quick convener of communities and can bring us easily into dialogue on issues of power, place, sustainability, and culture. Today, more and more emerging and established artists choose to work with food as process, subject, metaphor, and realization.

Ruoyi Shi, Food Envelopes, January – March 2022

In many cultures, people insert letters or objects in food and use food as an envelope for secrets, or transform a regular message into a revolution: mooncakes, fortune cookies, King cake, or new year dumplings. In Welcome (M)ART, Shi will use food to deliver messages. By presenting video installations, edible objects that contain letters inside she will retell the "fish story" in Cincinnati. This is a game with wrapping and unwrapping information, a class for everyone to learn with their mouths and question for the source of information. Ruoyi Shi is an artist originally from China coming to Cincinnati for this project after receiving her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Stephanie Gonzalez, Fried Green Tomatillo, April – June 2022

Fried Green Tomatillo is a food installation highlighting three central components in cuisines of the deep south and the global south: fried, greens, and sweet acid. This project suggests that each of these components found in cuisines from the gulf of Mexico to Louisiana are sites for creolized aromatic and savory flavors in southern cuisine. Stephanie Gonzalez is newly local to Cincinnati, moving to Cincinnati in 2020 from Los Angeles.

Christopher Leitch, Cooking From Memory, July - September 2022

Cooking from Memory will build an ecumenical and historical culture diary of Cincinnati foodways. The installation and events will illuminate subtle and profound powers of daily sensory engagement with food to translate and transmit personal and public history, culture and identity, especially for people in new places. Starting with indigenous residents and tracking waves of settlement through the current day, a documentary timeline will be built with visual and textual collateral from archival and historical sources. Christopher Leitch is a visual artist rom Kansas City, Missouri.

Ngoc Nguyen, Room For Two Table For Ten, October – December 2022

Inspired by her own experiences of being in between different cultures in which she found herself out of

place sometimes both in the physical and mental world, Nguyen’s work is often concerned with ideas of displacement and belongings. Room For Two Table For Ten is an invitation for sharing personal stories about displacement and belongings over a meal in a constructed space. The viewer will be engaged in different situations and contexts such as family gathering meals or Vietnamese style street food stalls. These stories will be reconstructed into a series of photographs and a physical display of the relational objects. Ngoc Nguyen is a installation artist from Vietnam and has worked previously in Australia and Canada.

Welcome (M)ART is generously funded by the Carol Ann and. Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation

Reconciliation Garden

Wave Pool hosts an immersive installation experience by local artist Lorena Molina at The Welcome Project, aimed at education and reconciliation surrounding coffee production in El Salvador. The exhibition will run July 10th – October 30th, 2021.

 At the height of the coffee production in El Salvador, 95% of the country’s income came from coffee crops, yet the land was owned by only .01% of the population. This resulted in vast land ownership and economic inequalities, especially for those working the coffee fields. Any protest by coffee farmers was met with harsh and deadly force from the government and coffee farm owners. This suppression of protest led civilians to form a guerilla that resulted in a civil war, which lasted 12 years because the US helped fund it.  

The war was fought in small towns, on farms, in forests and jungles and the combat was surrounded by banana plants, coffee plants, mangoes, and palm trees. Reconciliation Garden will bring these plants into the gallery to serve as a place for meditation, conversation, and acknowledgement of the history of the US in El Salvador. The exhibition will specifically highlight, how our actions that we might take for granted in our daily routines, such as coffee, are loaded with histories of exploitation, genocide, and imperialism.

This project is possible thanks to a Truth and Reconciliation grant by ArtsWave. As well as thanks to the collaboration and input from the following coffee farms and activist organizations: Cooperativa El Espino, Cooperativa San Isidro, Cafe Juayúa, Renacer, and Ferocacen.

木timberland木

木timberland木 is an exploration of a concert for the trees of Valley Park in Camp Washington, Cincinnati, that originally occurred in Fall 2020. Conceived by Mark Harris, this project brings together Japanese artist Yoshi Nakamura with Froghole?, a Cincinnati band consisting of members Lura Bentley, Lauren Castillo, Ezra Cline, and Schuyler Smith. Nakamura is providing four sound sculptures made from chairs, copper tubing, feathers, stones and other materials and a series of visual scores for Froghole? to interpret. 木timbreland木 draws attention to a community’s enjoyment of local resources of plants, trees, and parks for fuller engagement with this “nature in the city” to improve quality of life in a neighborhood transitioning from industrial to artistic hub.

Yoshi Nakamura was an artist in residence at Wave Pool August, 2020 - June 2021. As a result of those 9 months of work, he presented three related exhibitions in Cincinnati, May 7th – June 26th at Wave Pool, The Welcome Project, and Visionaries and Voices.

The Oliveros Response Project

https://www.theresponseproject.org/oliveros-project

“Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening.” - Pauline Oliveros

The world is only just beginning to understand the depth of influence late composer Pauline Oliveros has had on our lives and our work. Her focus on ”deep listening” taught us to listen “in every possible way to every possible thing”. In particular, her 25 Sonic Meditations embodied her generous compositional spirit, offering opportunity for people of all ages and skill levels to learn “how to focus on, listen to, and produce sound naturally.”

The Oliveros Response Project will create a community-wide artistic response to Oliveros' work, commissioning five composers and five visual artists who have been deeply influenced by Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations. The works of artists Joomi Chung, Samantha Haring, Samantha Parker, Christian Schmit, and Ryan Strochinsky are presented here at the Welcome Project, a community center that encourages all of us to be in cooperation - to listen better - to and with one another.

Through this project, we hope to deliberately explore the influence of Oliveros and trace her continuing connections through the musical world, ultimately expanding upon her influence to continue generating new sounds and new ideas.

Each of the concerts will air at 7:30 pm every Thursday in January, available for free viewing on www.concertnova.com and can be streamed during or after the performance at The Response Project on Facebook.

Virtual Tour: https://poly.google.com/u/0/view/3T6Gj0OPtcp

Nuria Mora

“My name is Nuria Mora. I was born in Spain. I emigrated to USA in 2004 to start a new family and new life in this amazing country. As life is it always and everywhere, I have had good and bad times alternately and simultaneously on many occasions. Successes and failures, pride and disrepute, and so on, like everybody else. But I feel very grateful for everything that comes to my life here: the people I met and the things I learned. So many and so great! I called those: my blessings.

The Welcome Project has been one of those blessings where I discovered a very therapeutical activity to quiet my mind and practice mindfulness, allowing me to rest in the loving awareness of my heart many times. That is a wonderful experience.

Art has been present in my life, somehow or another my entire life since my childhood. Now I am feeling that all my journey has been preparing me for this discovery of creation. I discover that the process of creation is intimate with yourself, and because the self is constantly changing by the mind, this open the space to infinite possibilities of transformation. Very powerful. For me, this experience is being something more profound than just made a piece of pottery. Even though my work is basically a copy of fragments or even complete paintings from other artists that I like, the clay, the glazes, the ceramic and its process, made this act of creation very personal. Those colors and textures, the energy and vibration on these pieces, are the creation of my heart. I wish you like it.

LOVE

Nuria”

Erika Nj Allen

The Journey and The Dream

https://vimeo.com/510708347

Artist and valued member of Wave Pool’s community (manager of @welcomeprojectcincinnati !), Erika Nj Allen, exhibited a photographic series titled The Journey and The Dream, exploring stories of survival, belonging, and the American Dream as it relates to Cincinnati’s rich immigrants community.

The Journey and The Dream was opened at The Welcome Project on September 12 from 12-8pm alongside Outcry by @thewhitneybradshaw at Wave Pool. Both exhibitions were on view from September 12th – November 14th, 2020.

The Journey and The Dream has been sponsored by FotoFocus.

Radha Lakshmi

February 29, 2020

Radha Lakshmi was Welcome’s featured artist for the month of February. Debuted at the opening of The Welcome Market, Lakshmi’s series of silkscreened prints accompanied the functional yet cozy tea lounge / sitting area she installed in the Market’s storefront.

Lakshmi is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Chennai, Southern India. Her span of experience and content reaches from the folklore traditions of Southern India to the Indigenous Art of of Northern Australia, as well as traditional and contemporary printmaking practices. Lakshmi currently lives in Cincinnati, where she uses art and meditation to teach ‘Creating Sacred Spaces’ workshops for children and adults.

Keer Xu

January 11, 2020

Keer Xu kicked off the 2020 season as our featured artist for the months of January and February as part of the Second Saturday Art Walk in Camp Washington in our gallery space.

Keer Xu's creative work includes printmaking, watercolor and drawing. Keer's interest is to study the relationship between human beings, technology and nature.

She was born in China where people traditionally believe in the philosophical theory that "man is an integral part of nature". This theory regards man and nature as a communion of life and morals realizes the harmony between man and nature as the highest ideal. Keer's art is also based on this theory and expresses it in a creepy and cute way.

Any Heaven as a Shelter

November 9, 2019

Welcome introduced November's artists Mónica Andino and Adriana Prieto Quintero in their first collaboration work.

"Mónica is an artist and illustrator from Honduras, who has started a new project with the Venezuelan writer and educator Adriana Prieto Quintero. They are living in Cincinnati and exploring different ways to communicate the experiences of immigrants, refugees and minorities around the world.

As artists they feel the necessity of raising their voices and their work to depict the reality of millions of people around the world who, like them, have left their home countries."

Any Heaven as a shelter showed their first work together in an exhibition.

Gaza Poets Society

October 12, 2019

Gaza Poets Society is a group of 32 young and aspiring poets from Gaza who teamed up to form an effective and coherent society of poets and writers. They are developing a community that can share poetry and express themselves freely and fearlessly.

Gaza Poets Society hosts monthly spoken word events in Gaza; produces spoken work videos; holds weekly meetings for the writers; communicates with local institutions and holds workshops presented by their members; hosts local and international posts and Skype meetings discussing their works with universities and other poetry societies.

In this collaboration, The Ohio Chapter of Gaza Poets Society is supporting their poets’ ability to create through giving them a larger platform to share their work, and guide their message to new listeners.

Sagar Galolia

September 14, 2019

Sagar Galolia is an India-based photographer whose work explores portraiture and wildlife. He is studying Photography at Northern Kentucky University. He also likes to shoot natural landscapes, fashion, food, insects, and product photography. Lately, he has been more focused on portrait and fashion photography. Sagar aims to understand individuals and components of the fashion industry. He also works to understand animal behavior and is invested in documenting societal changes that surround wildlife. An avid nature photographer since 2015, Sagar often shoots in the early morning and evening so that his work reveals beautiful moments and grabs colors from nature.

The vital part of Sagar's photography is finding a view with the likeness of soulful decisions. This decision provides him with beautiful stories and valuable life-changing experiences. Experiences push Sagar towards finding new perspectives every day.

Majd Elsabbagh

August 10, 2019

Elsabbagh loves to create work that encourages interaction between the general public and the artist. He strives to create content that will strengthen a community’s believe and structure. He hopes his work is a tool to help bridge the gap between culture and art. He states, "Before creating a piece, I like to get to know a community, study where they come from and try to figure out what makes them unique to the world, then with my work I like to capture the beauty that lies within the people, and bring it forward." Elsabbagh was born in Lebanon. He has done numerous public art projects with ArtWorks and is working towards a career in art therapy.

Madeline Ndambakuwa

July 13, 2019

Welcome’s second Artist in Residence is Madeline Ndambakuwa. Ndambakuwa is a communications expert, a painter, an illustrator, and a poet, originally from Harare, Zimbabwe. She immigrated in 2001 to Cincinnati, Ohio a sister city to Harare. She believes that in every adversity, there is a gifted champion or game changer rising with strength and resilience, ready to change the world and leave a lasting impact. She hosted an opening exhibition of her work at The Welcome Project as part of Camp Washington’s Second Saturday Art Walk on July 13th from 6-9pm. As part of the opening reception Ndambakuwa also performed her poetry.

https://www.madelinendambakuwa.com/

Pedro Moreno

June 8, 2019

Pedro Moreno was our first Artist in Residence. As part of his residency Moreno exhibited a series of his paintings and ceramic works and hosted two public art classes where he taught his craft during the month of June. As part of Camp Washington’s Second Saturday Art Walk, Moreno hosted an opening reception June 8th from 6-9pm at The Welcome Project. Pedro Moreno lives and works in Cincinnati and is originally from Bolivia. He paints to fertilize his imagination and to project both his memories and perspective. He was selected as the 2019 Movement Artist of the Year by the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center. Moreno’s work remained on exhibition at The Welcome Project through July 6th.