NXTHVN Cohort 07 | Material Conditions of Becoming

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Boesky Gallery and NXTHVN are proud to present Material Conditions of Becoming, a group exhibition that features the work of NXTHVN’s Cohort 07 Studio Fellows S. Yemisi Adeyemo, Alexandra Bell, Benita Nnachortam, Masud Olufani, Haejin Park, Chayse Sampy, and Kristopher Wright, curated by Curatorial Fellows Tara Fay Coleman and Juanita Sunday. This culminating exhibition brings together artists working across screen printing, painting, sculpture, sound, found materials, and collage. Through distinct material approaches that resist singular meaning, the artists examine how memory, interiority, and cultural resilience take shape across lived experiences. The artists in Material Conditions of Becoming move between personal archives, history, and speculative storytelling to explore themes of myth-making, grief, labor, connectivity, culture, and systems of power. 

S. Yemisi Adeyemo moves between painting, assemblage, and sculpture, drawing from the visual language of Afro-diasporic traditions, Black feminist thought, and folk and ritual objects. Using photographs sourced from news media, social platforms, and digital archives as references, Adeyemo paints vignettes onto discarded material recovered from urban public spaces. Influenced by the spiritual traditions of memory jugs, bottle trees, altars, and gravesite offerings, she transforms these objects into works that are sites for grief, memory, and collective resistance. 

Alexandra Bell works at the intersection of journalism, text, and conceptual art to examine the perception of narrative and bias. Bell uses language and constraint to interrogate how information is constructed and circulated. Her work reconfigures familiar formats of information to reveal the structures through which representations of oppressed communities are shaped under the guise of journalistic objectivity. 

Benita Nnachortam works across textile, screenprinting, sculpture, sound, and photography, using repetition as a form of care and labor to preserve cultural memory. Her multi-disciplinary approach is rooted in using storytelling to explore the intersections of community and identity. 

Masud Olufani creates sculptures that examine the movement and cultural continuity of Blackness through African diasporic pathways. Researching traditional ingredients that include tamarind, okra, and rice, he traces their passage through the transatlantic slave trade, and their role in shaping connectivity and identity. 

Haejin Park creates colorful and expressive watercolor paintings to continually revisit and reimagine childhood memories, intimate life moments, and emotional complexity. Drawing from personal experience, she uses painting to navigate interiority, memory, and the fluid boundaries between past and present. Through her imagined characters, Park constructs worlds, and the bright and playful elements she incorporates into her works create a tension that complicates their psychological weight. 

Chayse Sampy works in recomposed figuration, layering images, bodies, fabrics, and material with Black literary and pop culture references to explore family archives and the resourcefulness and adaptability within the Black experience.  She imagines Blackness as constantly evolving, centering interiority and agency of personhood through constructions of connection by juxtaposing bodies across generations.

Kristopher Wright layers screen printing, painting, and collage to investigate storytelling, familial bonds, and the nature of living memory. His work uses experiences of home, and studies of found images to construct narratives around American life that reflect joy, togetherness, and loss. 

Across varying approaches to process and form, the works in this exhibition move between intimacy and collective experience, examining the conditions through which grief, resilience, cultural memory, and connection are transmitted across time. 

ABOUT NXTHVN

Founded by Titus Kaphar and Jason Price, NXTHVN is a new national arts model that empowers artists, curators, and the community through education and access to a vibrant ecosystem. Supported by intergenerational mentorship, cross-sector collaboration, and local engagement, NXTHVN accelerates the careers of the next generation and fosters retention of professional art talent while helping catalyze New Haven into a world-class, sustainable arts community.