Haptic Happenings: Exploring Identity through Figure and Touch

Explore the exhibition from 6-8pm and hear from featured artists Ami Hostel (she/her) - There’s a Light Inside Pommi / Mirrored Self Portrait, Huiyin Zhou (they/she) - Making an unfamiliar kitchen our home (from Intimate Encounters series), Princess Jackson (she/her) - In My Meadows, Melany Fuentes (she/her) - Hands of Heritage at 6:30pm.

About the Exhibition:

A team of young curators presents Haptic Happenings: Exploring Identity through Figure and Touch, an exhibition of youth artwork addressing the relationship between understanding personal identity and creating tactile art. With a grant from the Durham Youth Leadership Fund for the 2023–24 season, this exhibition broadens Durham’s idea of how fine art can be made, exhibited, and interacted with by its youth.

Haptic Happenings shares the work of artists aged 13–24 from all over Durham, through a wide range of artistic disciplines just as varied as the artists themselves. Included in the exhibition are paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, literature, photographs, mixed media, fiber arts, and more.

The exhibition centers on how these young people see themselves and their place in the world as they get older. Many pieces, including Nic Bolton’s Reflection of Girlhood, Callie Stoke’s Do You Understand?, and Camille Kerner’s Gay Guernica are about the artists’ relationships to gender and sexuality and the frustrations and joys that come with existing outside societal norms.

Other pieces, such as Surrayyah Chestnut’s Echoes of the Tomato Field, Trang Le’s Hello, World, and Ava Sadikifu’s “blk/drm” depict the artists’ experiences from childhood and how those memories continue to impact their view of themselves today.

Some work shows how the artist feels about themself in the present, whether that be warm and accepted, like Assata Goff’s I Bloomed and Allison Rahaman’s The Greenhouse, or anxious and out of place, like Katie Ramos’s Bleeding Heart and Hsinyu Hsu’s Silent Volcano.

Others still represent artists connecting with their communities. Pieces like Melany Fuentes’s Hands of Heritage and Huiyin Zhou’s Making an unfamiliar kitchen our home show how being part of something can affect a person’s identity just as much as they affect that group.

The impact of this show can be found at the crossroads between lived experiences, the sensation of touch, and the act of creation. Ultimately, this exhibition is one about self- exploration. Each piece is an artist’s answer to the questions: How do you understand yourself?

How do you use art as an action? How does your inner world connect to the outer world through creation?

Haptic Happenings: Exploring Identity through Figure and Touch invests in the community of Durham by delving into the versatility of its youth and communicating the importance of sharing one’s experience of life through art. The Haptic Happenings project has been made possible in part with the fiscal sponsorship of the VAE Raleigh, with funding provided by The Durham Youth Leadership Fund, and with support from Pop Box Gallery. The youth curatorial team is led by Faith Reagin, a multimedia artist with past experience as a gallery assistant, art preparator, and exhibition designer, working in collaboration with the Durham Powerful Arts Collective, a diverse organization of young people prioritizing the arts in Durham by making workshops, exhibitions, and supplies accessible across the city.