Memory Vault Exhibition Opening Reception

RSVP for the opening of this much-anticipated exhibit

Join us for the highly anticipated opening of Memory Vault. The group show is the culminating exhibition for JCAL's ARTWorks Fellows. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Margarita Rosa.

Artists: Coulibaly Adama Nanguin Abib Junior, Anoushka Bhalla, Edgie Amisial, Keilley Banks, Jashawn Johnson, Quiana Lewis

Program Manager: Sherwin Banfield

About Memory Vault: Memory Vault is an exhibition that mediates on the present moment as a future archive. Artists are asked to use portraiture, cityscapes, sculpture, and experimental forms to create an archive of the now: an archive of faces, gestures, skylines, personal spaces, and communal rhythms. They are encouraged to explore the deeply intimate — the details of their own lives, families, living rooms, bedrooms, neighborhoods — alongside the broader cultural materials shaping our shared present. Television shows, music, digital aesthetics, street fashion, architectural forms, viral trends, food traditions, household objects, neighborhood storefronts, and the emotional climate of their communities become essential tools of documentation.

In this frame, each artwork becomes a primary source. A portrait is no longer simply an image of a person, but a record of how identity, style, and presence are constructed in 2026. A cityscape becomes a map of evolving neighborhoods, capturing the tension between memory and development. A sculpture or installation becomes evidence of the materials that define our era.

By treating the present as a historical document, 2026: Memory Vault asks artists and viewers alike to slow down and observe the world with archival attention. What do we carry that will one day represent us? What aspects of our society — our screens, our music, our buildings, our clothing, our rituals — will endure as markers of this time?

This exhibition honors the personal and the quotidian as powerful forms of record-keeping. The artists’ works become tender, honest, and critical reflections of the moment we are living through its beauty, its anxieties, its dreams, and its contradictions. The resulting archive is both intimate and collective — a snapshot of 2025 as experienced by six distinctive voices in Queens, New York.

About ARTWorks: ARTWorks is a six-month fellowship for emerging, underrepresented NYC visual artists who identify as BIIPOC and/or are based in Queens. Fellows expand their professional network through in-person meetings with art world leaders and mentors; gain knowledge from diverse seminars; exhibit in a group show.