Since 2022, the Nuwu Art Gallery and Community Center has housed some of the city’s most honest and reflective work by artists from historically underserved communities. With Healing the Heart, curator Fawn Douglas continues that legacy, inviting viewers into a layered exploration of plant ecology that’s grounded in Indigenous knowledge, community care and lived experience.
“Yagé” by Jesus Gonzalez
Included in the ongoing Weaving Our Culture series, the show features 17 artists examining the link between environmental care and collective well-being.
On the right-hand wall hangs Jesus Gonzalez’s “Yagé” (2025), a 24-by-18-inch soft pastel work that hums with feral color. The jaguar, muscled and alert beneath a star-pricked sky, is less predator and more of a protector. In Indigenous cosmologies, yagé (more widely known as ayahuasca) is a plant of medicine, a spiritual detonator, and Gonzalez roots his composition in that lineage. The feline serves as the guardian of the sacred vine. It stands at the center of the living system, in this case centered in the riotous foliage of electric blues and greens. The jungle itself isn’t so much a backdrop as it is the bloodstream of the piece.
Now, whether the jaguar has consumed the medicine isn’t clear, but it hardly matters. What radiates from the paper is heightened instinct, a communion with unseen realms and a reminder that ecology can stand as a covenant.
“Fleur-de-Lys” by Faye Ahubo Lenore
Across the gallery, Faye Ahubo Lenore’s “Fleur-de-Lys” (2025) transforms dyed corn husk and canvas into an intricate meditation on lineage and contradiction. The large work reclaims a symbol that has traversed French royalty, Caribbean resistance and contested Canadian homelands. Lenore holds both the oppressor and the oppressed within her ancestry, rendering the fleur-de-lys as a prayer for reconciliation. Formed with this ancient material, the iris becomes an emblem of resilience and a vessel for grief, asking future generations to inherit pathways toward healing. The piece is equally breathtaking from afar and up close.
Then there is Haide Calle’s “Que Divina es la Tierra” (2026), an installation of pastel pink painted ceramics, palm leaves, husks and thread rising from the floor like a quiet uprising. Informed by her Otomi heritage and the dislocation of living in the United States, Calle conjures morphing bodies and maguey forms from repurposed debris. What’s cut away becomes sacred again. The effect is tender, almost childlike, and steeped in intent. It invites viewers to reconsider waste, belonging and the evolving narratives embedded in land.
HEALING THE HEART Thru March 28, Thursday-Friday, 4-8 p.m.; Saturday, noon-4 p.m., free. Nuwu Art Gallery, nuwuart.com.
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