What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue

What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue is an artist-led exhibition and community activation by Niki Lopez in partnership with What’s Your Elephant™, a 501(c)(3) arts and education nonprofit that uses creativity to address the unspoken.

This August, we are transforming 1310 Gallery at Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts into a space for art, reflection, storytelling, and community care.

Rooted in visual art, social practice, interactive reflection, and collective dialogue, What We Carry asks:

What are we holding?
What has been passed down?
What have we survived?
What are we ready to name, hold differently, or transform together?

The exhibition brings together selected works by Niki Lopez and invited artists whose practices engage themes of identity, memory, healing, belonging, resistance, grief, visibility, ancestry, care, and what we are learning to carry differently.

This project is not only about trauma or hardship. It is also about what sustains us: beauty, breath, ritual, creativity, community, humor, softness, spirit, memory, and the possibility of being held.

Through your sponsorship and donations, you help make this exhibition and its community programs possible.

Your support helps us:

• Keep the exhibition accessible to the public
• Support local artists, facilitators, and creative practitioners
• Create space for reflection, dialogue, and community care
• Fund exhibition installation, signage, printing, and documentation
• Provide supplies for the WYE Collage-Making Workshop + Community Chat
• Support interactive reflection elements throughout the gallery
• Offer artist and program honorariums when possible
• Sustain What’s Your Elephant as a platform for naming and transforming the unspoken

Community-centered art does not sustain itself. Every gift helps create a space where people can slow down, reflect, create, be seen, and feel connected.

Together, we can turn creativity into connection — and connection into community care.

Current support for What We Carry includes contributions from Sue Wilder, community donors through Givebutter, and in-kind production, design, communications, and curatorial support from Niki Lopez Creative. Additional donations and sponsorships are still needed to fully support the exhibition, public programs, documentation, supplies, signage, and community activations.

Exhibition Details

Exhibition: What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue
Dates: August 21 – September 10, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, August 21, 2026, 6–10 PM
Location: 1310 Gallery, Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Presented by: Niki Lopez in partnership with What’s Your Elephant™
Opening RSVP: https://whatwecarry0821.eventbrite.com

Curated and produced by Niki Lopez, award-winning Afro-Latina interdisciplinary artist, curator, and social practitioner, What We Carry is both an art exhibition and a social practice container. The project brings together visual art, invited artists, interactive reflection, collage-making, rhythm, movement, and community dialogue to explore what we carry, what we inherit, and what we are learning to hold differently.

Exhibiting Artists

AJ Grossman, Carla Golembe, Carlisa McNee, Carlos Eduardo Plaza, Cathleen Dean, Christina Marie Reddick, Courtney Einhorn, Crystal Galindo, Damaris Ferrer, DJ-Laoshi, Elijah Gabriel Ramos, Felicia Brooks, Joanne Hampstead, Kay Manin!, Kristina Tokár, Lorna Lesperance, Louis Davis, Macarena Zilveti, Melanie Oliva, Michael Anthony Clark, Michel Perez Sosa, Mila Hajjar, Moisés Acebedo, Natalya Kochak, Nicole Gómez, Niki Lopez, Norha Tamayo, Rosa Henriquez, Sheila Alexander, Sophie Wong, Stephanie McMillan, Tina Wright, Tony Brown, Vita Litvak, & Zeb.

Curatorial Vision

What We Carry grows out of Niki Lopez’s long-standing practice as an artist, curator, and social practitioner using art as a bridge for reflection, healing, dialogue, and community connection.

The exhibition is shaped by questions that have moved through Lopez’s work for years: What do we hold in the body? What do we inherit? What remains unnamed? What helps us survive, soften, remember, release, and transform?

What We Carry is a curated community art exhibition that brings multiple artists and perspectives into conversation around memory, identity, grief, care, belonging, resistance, ancestry, restoration, and transformation.

Activations & Community Experiences

What We Carry is not only an exhibition. It is a space to gather, reflect, create, listen, and be in community.

Additional RSVP links and program details will be added as they are confirmed. All events take place at 1310 Gallery unless noted otherwise.

Opening Reception — Friday, August 21, 2026, 6–10 PM - CLICK TO RSVP
A public opening evening featuring visual art, music, community reflection, invited artists, opportunities to support WYE, and a focused invitation to help carry this work forward.

Community Drum Workshop with Feminafrika — Sunday, August 30, 2026, 2–4 PM
RSVP / donation link coming soon.
A community-centered drum experience led by Feminafrika, inviting rhythm, grounding, reflection, and collective connection inside the gallery space. Donations will support both Feminafrika and What’s Your Elephant™.

WYE Collage-Making Workshop + Community Chat — Saturday, September 5, 2026, Time TBD
RSVP link coming soon.
A signature Elephant™ creative wellness experience using collage, writing, visual expression, and facilitated conversation to explore the question: What are we carrying? No art experience is needed. Come as you are.

Closing Reflection: Art, Movement & Community — Thursday, September 10, 2026, Time TBD
RSVP link coming soon.
A closing gathering with art, reflection, and community dialogue, offering space to honor what surfaced throughout the exhibition and what we are ready to carry differently.

Ongoing During the Exhibition

Interactive Reflection Installation
Throughout the exhibition, visitors will be invited to contribute words, reflections, memories, or responses connected to what they carry, what they are releasing, and what they want to see named, protected, or remembered.

Stay Connected

Check back for updated RSVP links, added program details, artist announcements, and community partner updates.

About What’s Your Elephant™

Founded in 2014 and officially established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2023, What’s Your Elephant™ is an arts and education nonprofit that uses creativity to address the unspoken.

Through exhibitions, workshops, wellness-centered gatherings, and interactive art experiences, we create spaces for storytelling, mindfulness, emotional wellness, and community connection.

Our work centers mental health, LGBTQ+ identity, social justice, gender equity, cultural storytelling, and collective wellbeing — uplifting marginalized voices and fostering transformation through art.

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

To learn more, visit whatsyourelephant.org

Why Your Support Matters

Your support helps make What We Carry possible while strengthening the larger work of What’s Your Elephant™.

Every donation helps create space for art, reflection, dialogue, and community care — while supporting local artists, facilitators, creative practitioners, and the real production costs behind a public exhibition.

Together, we are transforming creativity into connection — and connection into community care.

Sponsorship/Support Levels

$2,500 — Presenting Community Partner
$1,000 — Healing Space Sponsor
$500 — Exhibition Supporter
$250 — Art & Dialogue Sponsor
$100 — Community Seed Sponsor
$50 — Creative Access Supporter
$25 — Community Care Gift
Other — Give What You Can

Learn More About the Curator

Niki Lopez is an award-winning Afro-Latina, queer interdisciplinary visual artist, curator, cultural producer, and social practitioner based in South Florida. Her work blends visual storytelling, cultural symbolism, community dialogue, and social practice to create spaces for reflection, healing, connection, and collective care.

Lopez is the founder of What’s Your Elephant™, a 501(c)(3) arts and education nonprofit that uses creativity to address the unspoken. Since 2008, her curatorial and community-centered projects have brought together art, advocacy, mindfulness, identity, and public engagement, inviting people to name what is often carried quietly and transform it through creative expression.

💻 About the nonprofit: whatsyourelephant.org
🎨 About the curator: nikilopez.art

What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue

Support an artist-led community exhibition where art, healing, storytelling, and collective care come together.