My Grandmother is an Altar

Lesley University
The Vandernoot Gallery at Lesley University Hall
May 30th - July 5th, 2025
Opening Reception: May 31st, 5-7PM
Artist Panel (moderated by Audrey Sands, Associate Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums): June 18th, 6:30PM

My Grandmother is an Altar is a visual prayer stitched from the threads of memory, matriarchal wisdom, and diasporic longing. Through photography, film, and altar work, Southeast Asian-American artists Tarik Bartel, Kannetha Brown, and Anhkim Dang offer reverence, devotion, and witnessing of their Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese grandmothers—women who carried the weight of war, displacement, and survival with fortitude. Transforming grief into sanctuary, and memory into monument, the artists honor lullabies sung across oceans, the warmth of kitchens built from exile, and elders, named and unnamed, whose love and labor became the architecture of future generations. These stories do not fade—they burn, they bloom, they build anew and remind us to resist the ongoing devastation of empire and colonialism. This exhibition is fully sponsored by Digital Silver Imaging.

More information here.

Read more in The Boston Globe, and New England Art News.