MATERIAL MATTERS: TRADITIONS TRANSFORMED
November 19 to December 31, 2025

Reception Saturday November 22, 2025. 3 – 6 pm
Artist Talk Saturday December 6, 2025. 3 – 6 pm

Press Release

MATERIAL MATTERS: TRADITION TRANSFORMED 

From November 19 to December 31, 2025, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba is pleased to presentMaterial Matters: Tradition Transformed, a group exhibition featuring four visionary women artists: Myrah Brown Green, Heather Williams, Aisha Tandiwe Bell and Sannii Crespina-Flores, whose practices span quilting, mixed media, sculpture, installation, literature, film and community archiving. The exhibition is curated by Jennifer Stewart. The opening reception will be held on November 22, from 3 – 6 pm. There will be an Artist Talk on December 6, 2025. 

 Material Matters: Tradition Transformed explores the concept of materiality as a vessel for memory and transformation: How can the very materials we work with—cloth, clay, canvas, paper, and found objects—carry the weight of history and evolve to tell new, personal stories? Each of the featured artists engages time-honored traditions with textiles, oral history, spiritual practices, and archival work—and reshapes them, infusing their practices with contemporary significance. These materials transcend their physical forms, becoming powerful conduits for lineage, resilience, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge. Through their work, the artists assert that history is not a static record but a living force, constantly reshaped through touch, language, and imagination.

Together, they illuminate how heritage functions both as an anchor to the past and horizon for the future possibilities, grounding us in cultural memory while opening pathways to healing, multiplicity, and transformation. Material Matters: Tradition Transformed highlights the body as archive, art as ritual, and the role of creative practice in resisting erasure, safeguarding memory, and envisioning new futures. In bringing these voices into dialogue, Stewart and Kenkeleba continue the gallery’s longstanding commitment to presenting African American, African, and diasporic artists who expand the language of contemporary art while remaining deeply rooted in cultural continuity.

Born in Boston, MA, and now based in Brooklyn, New York, Myrah Brown Green is a master quiltmaker, author, an independent curator and an art historian. She is a symbolist quilt maker whose work honors ancestral memory through textiles. Incorporating Nigerian indigo cloth, hand-dyed fabrics, and embellishments of beads, charms, and buttons, her quilts transform fabric into offerings that embody lineage, spirituality, and the enduring presence of the Mother figure. Dr. Brown Green holds a BFA, Masters/PhD in Interdisciplinary studies focusing on world symbols from Pratt Institute. An educator, curator, and administrator as well as an artist, she has long been active in the New York quilting community. Her works are held in both private and public collections including the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum and Michigan State University. They serve as tactile records of love, resilience, and generational care.

Born in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Heather Williams is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans paintings, sculpture, and film. She earned an MFA in Art Practice from the School of Visual Arts and a Masters in Art Therapy from Pratt Institute, merging artistry with concern for healing. Williams’ abstract canvases layered with torn paper, pigment, and found objects, explore renewal through “damage and repair,” while her Witness sculptures and award-winning short film Safe Passage interrogates ancestry, protection, and resilience in the Black experience. Williams has exhibited at venues such as the Montclair Art Museum and Akwaaba Gallery. Her artwork affirms multiplicity and transformation across media.

Born in Manhattan and raised in Jamaica within the Boblo Shanti Rasta community, Aisha Tandiwe Bell is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, performance, video, and installation. As a first-generation Jamaican and ninth-generation Black American, she explores fragmented identity, resilience, and the adaptive strategies marginalized communities use to navigate hostile environments. Bell holds degrees from Pratt Institute (BFA, MS) and Hunter College (MFA), and her work has been supported by residencies including the Abron’s Art Center and Skowhegan. She has exhibited internationally at the Venice Biennale, Jamaica Biennial, Museo de Arte Moderno’s Triennial, MoCADA, and the Rosa Parks Museum. Aisha Tandiwe Bell is also a 2024 Art Lab NYSCA grantee and a recent resident at Indigo Arts Alliance. Across forms and materials, her work merges myth and ritual with survival, creating layered reflections on belonging and transformation.

 Philadelphia-native Sannii Crespina-Flores is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, writer, and community archivist whose work bridges oral history, literature, film, and collective memory. Rooted in the belief that the body is a living archive, her practice explores how women of the African diaspora carry and transmit ancestral knowledge across generations. She is the founder of the LO/URE Project, the Un-Inhibited Muse Film Festival, and the global youth initiative Do Remember Me, creating platforms for testimony and cultural preservation. Crespina-Flores has presented work at the Sundance Film Festival and the United Nations and internationally at the Cannes Film Festival. Her book Machetes Are Forged in Soft Rivers reframes diasporic memory through love and futurism, while her ongoing project Moth3r Mask merges science and spirituality to illuminate lineage at both cellular and cosmic levels.

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm
Location: 219 East Second Street, New York, NY, 10009

 Kenkeleba programs are supported by many generous friends.