The International Institute of Buffalo has partnered with local artist and educator Aprille Nace to present an exhibition of artwork created by recent refugee arrivals to Western New York. Home is a collection of work that uses hand-painted ceramic tiles to evoke a sense of “home” for the refugees who created it.
Nace recently brought various-sized ceramic tiles, acrylic paints, markers, glitter, and other art supplies to our Delaware Avenue location for folks to create art.
Nace and volunteers have since set up the exhibit in the community space at Tri-Main Center located at 2495 Main Street, home to the Buffalo Art Studio. It opens on Tuesday, February 6, and runs through Saturday, February 10, capped with a reception at 12:30 p.m.
The public is invited to participate in the thought-provoking exhibit by writing their own constructs of what home means and feels like, along with encouraging messages on paper alongside the art pieces, later to be gifted to the creators along with their art.
Curator Aprille Nace is currently a resident at Buffalo Arts Studio. She earned her MFA in Ceramics (2018) from the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She works in the Art Conservation Department at SUNY-Buffalo State. Before discovering clay, Nace worked as a librarian at The Corning Museum of Glass.
Nace says her goal for the exhibit is twofold. To empower newly arrived Americans to illustrate varied ideas about home and to encourage the public to make their connections with universal themes.
“Bringing across the idea that we are no different,” Nace said. “If you see the commonality in things, maybe that in some small way can bridge the idea of otherness, us and them, and help people see the bigger context like this could have been me in different circumstances because I can relate to that idea.”
The program is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Services Inc.
Exhibit Hours:
Tuesday – Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. & Saturday, 10 am – 2 pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, February 10, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Click here to learn more about IIB Job Club and how you can help our new American Neighbors entering the job market.