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) nonprofit that uses the arts 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, collage-making, 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 alongside invited artists whose practices engage themes of identity, memory, healing, belonging, resistance, grief, visibility, and care. A personal anchor within the exhibition is Lopez’s developing body of work, What Slows Me Saves Me, which reflects a shift from survival mode toward regulation, trust, stillness, and inner guidance.

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 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/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.

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

Exhibition Details

Exhibition: What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue
Dates: August 2026
Opening Reception + Fundraiser: Third Friday, August 2026
Location: 1310 Gallery, Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Presented by: Niki Lopez in partnership with What’s Your Elephant™

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, and community dialogue to explore what we carry, what we inherit, and what we are learning to hold differently.

Activations & Community Experiences

Opening Reception + Fundraiser — Third Friday, August 2026
A public opening evening featuring visual art, music, community reflection, invited artists, small works for sale, and a focused invitation to support What’s Your Elephant™.

WYE Collage-Making Workshop + Community Chat — Date TBD
A signature What’s Your Elephant™ creative wellness experience using collage, writing, visual expression, and facilitated conversation to explore the question: What are we carrying?

Interactive Reflection Installation — Ongoing during exhibition
A participatory element inviting visitors 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.

Optional Sound / Stillness / Healing Gathering — Date TBD, pending partner support
A gentle gallery-based experience incorporating sound, stillness, reflection, and collective 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

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, and social practitioner based in South Florida. Her work blends visual storytelling, cultural symbolism, and social practice to create spaces for reflection, dialogue, 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 and create space for healing, storytelling, and social connection. For nearly two decades, her projects have merged art, advocacy, mindfulness, and community engagement — inviting communities to transform vulnerability into visibility and creativity into social impact.

💻 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.