SOIL: Where the Light Enters is a multidisciplinary art and wellness exhibition curated by Niki Lopez and presented by What’s Your Elephant™.

This community activation explores transformation, healing, and rebirth through art-making, performance, dialogue, and mindfulness experiences.

Inspired by the Rumi quote, “The wound is the place where the light enters,” SOIL invites audiences to reflect on how pain, memory, and lived experience can become fertile ground for growth, healing, and creative rebirth.

Through your sponsorship and donations, you help us sustain free and accessible creative wellness programs that:

Foster dialogue, empathy, and community healing
Create inclusive spaces for art and self-expression
Uplift marginalized voices across South Florida
Support local artists, educators, and creatives

Together, we continue to use art as a tool for connection, advocacy, and transformation.

About What’s Your Elephant™

Founded in 2014, What’s Your Elephant™ is a 501(c)(3) arts and educational nonprofit that uses the power of the arts to address the unspoken. Through exhibitions, workshops, and interactive art installations, we create safe spaces for storytelling, mindfulness, and connection.

Our work centers on themes such as mental health, gender, LGBTQ+ identity, social justice, and community wellness—uplifting marginalized voices and inspiring transformation through creativity.

To learn more, visit whatsyourelephant.org

Exhibition Details

Dates: December 19, 2025 – February 2026
Opening Night: December 19, 2025 at 1310 Gallery, Fort Lauderdale

Curated and produced by Niki Lopez, award-winning Afro-Latina artist, curator, and social practitioner, SOIL unfolds as both a semi-retrospective and a living conversation. It highlights Lopez’s own works on healing and resilience alongside selected artists whose work embodies courage, truth, and transformation.

Activations & Community Experiences

✨ Opening Night – Friday, December 19, 2025; 6-9 PM
A vibrant evening of art, performance, and poetry celebrating transformation and self-expression.

🎨 What’s Your Elephant™ Collage Workshop
A community art-making experience and dialogue around healing, growth, and storytelling.

🎭 Mindful Mask-Making Experience
A creative and reflective session blending art, mindfulness, and identity exploration.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Mommy & Me: It’s a Family Affair
A mindful art-making experience for parents, caregivers, and children to create side-by-side. This family-centered program encourages creative bonding, emotional awareness, and intergenerational connection through collaborative art-making.

🌿 Wellness Day – January 2026, Sunday, January 11 (Ticketed event)
Co-produced with Longville Wellness, this healing-centered experience integrates sound therapy, acupuncture, and art-based mindfulness practices to promote restoration and wellbeing.

💞 Closing: Friendship, Network & Flow – February 2026
Produced by Niki Lopez Creative, this soft closing event gathers artists, vendors, and community members for networking, small-works sales, and collective connection around art, business, and community care.

Why Your Support Matters

Your contribution directly supports:

Healing-centered art and mental-health programming
Free or low-cost community workshops
Safe spaces for dialogue, mindfulness, and self-expression
The elevation of marginalized and often silenced voices
Local artists, facilitators, and creative practitioners

Since its inception, What’s Your Elephant™ has engaged more than 3,500 individuals across South Florida through exhibitions and workshops—offering over 16+ mindful mask-making experiences and over a decade of community-centered art programming led by Niki Lopez.

Together, we are transforming pain into purpose and creativity into community healing.

Learn More

About the Curator

Niki Lopez is an Afro-Latina, queer interdisciplinary visual artist, curator, and social practitioner based in South Florida. Her work blends visual storytelling, cultural symbolism, and social practice to create spaces for reflection, dialogue, and connection. Lopez is the founder of What’s Your Elephant™, a nonprofit arts and educational organization that uses creativity as a tool for healing and social change. For almost two decades, her projects often merge art, advocacy, and mindfulness, inviting communities to transform pain into purpose and vulnerability into power.

💻 About the nonprofit: whatsyourelephant.org
🎨 About the curator: nikilopez.art
🌿 Community partner for the Wellness Day: Longville Wellness - longvillewellness.info

🌱 SOIL: Where the Light Enters — A Community Art & Wellness Exhibition 🎨🐘

Where art meets advocacy, performance meets reflection, and creativity becomes a vessel for collective healing.