An Ode To is an exhibition featuring six young artists of color who are honoring their native culture, spirituality, and aesthetics through an conceptual, figurative, and/or abstracted lens. With intention, each artist dedicated their pieces to something or someone that they would like to honor. Located at Band of Vices gallery in West Adams Los Angeles, a historically Black and Latinx district, the exhibition as a whole tells a national and American story by revealing images that speak to each artist’s past and current experience.

Evoking the familiar, the figurative and abstract works throughout the show speak to memory, spirituality, and home yet also the limitless beauty of our everyday traditions and aesthetics. Each piece in the exhibition was created as act of tribute and dedication further questioning how art can serve as a tribute to one’s life and today’s society. How can an artists make work intentionally? And who and what is the work for? Themes throughout the exhibition include honoring breathe, the self, soul, spirit, home, historical and cultural figures, and more. The artists push viewers, especially those who share similar experiences as them, to appreciate the mundane whether it’d be the color palette of their local bodega, the hug of a loved one, or the beautiful intangible abstraction of our everyday.

Afro-Dominican artist Eilen Itzel Mena evokes the spiritual via playful figures, animals, and flora as a way to connect with her dreams, ancestors, conscious and subconscious. El Salvadoran artist Emiliana Henriquez dedicates many of her works to her friends and loved ones by painting them in a truly masterful manner while simultaneously taking agency over western styles of painting. Through the tactile, sonic, and linguistic attributes of Nigerian, African American, and American material culture, Gozie Ojini approaches the crossroads of experiences portrayed by double consciousness and multiplies them through conceptual and abstract sculpture, painting, and installation. Hasef uses video, sculpture, and painting to investigate the African Diaspora and trans-Atlantic memory to study the effects of the American social structure. Afro-Chicanx artist and photographer Jheyda McGarrell meditates on the magical essence of the mundane by sharing intimate documentary photos of themselves, friends, and loved ones, all made with intention especially for queer people fo color. Brooklyn native, Ryan Cosbert is a Haitian, Guyanese, and African-American conceptual artist who’s work approaches and focuses on her own humanistic experiences, self-expression, political issues and historical narratives via the abstract.