Echoes of the Heart: New England Media Art Biennial
2025-07-29 12:00 - 2025-12-13 18:00 (America/New_York) | Media Art Gallery
Iwalani Kaluhiokalani, The Radiance Chasers, 2025. Multidisciplinary installation, painting, paper cut-outs, video mapping, sound Sound score by Slamber Slusser

Iwalani Kaluhiokalani, The Radiance Chasers, 2025. Multidisciplinary installation, painting, paper cut-outs, video mapping, sound Sound score by Slamber Slusser.

Emerson Contemporary – Emerson College’s platform for presenting contemporary visual art – proudly presents Echoes of the Heart: The New England Media Art Biennial, a multimedia juried group exhibition featuring New England visual artists Clint Baclawski, Erik DeLuca, Iwalani Kaluhiokalani, Justin Levesque, VHF Studios, and Karlie Zhao. The exhibition is on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from July 29- December 13 , 2025, free and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6 pm.

This exhibition is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The National Endowment for the Arts

New media art now encompasses traditional film and digital video, as well as a wide range of technology, from AI to hand-built radio, representing an exciting and rapidly expanding genre in the contemporary art world. Yet, there are few venues for emerging and mid-career video artists to showcase their work in New England. This biennial aims to expand these opportunities for the region and celebrate artists with financial and technical support and the opportunity to expand and reiterate existing and/or new works.

Artist Reception, Thursday, September 18, 5-7pm

Tuesday, October 7, 6:30- 7:30pm, 6pm doors. In Conversation: Join artists Justin Levesque and VHF Studio as they discuss their broad ranging practices and what it means to be a practicing artist in our current climates. Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA

Tuesday October 21, 6:30- 7:30pm, 6pm doors In Conversation: Join multidisciplinary installation artist Iwalani Kaluhiokalani and photographer Clint Baclawski as they discuss space, time, color and motion in their work. Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA

Tuesday, November 4, 6:30- 7:30pm, 6pm doors In Conversation: Join artists Erik DeLuca and Wenran Zhao as they speak with Emerson professor and sound artist Amber Vistein to discuss experimentation, sonic textures and the art of presence.

Our artist centered public programming is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.

Clint Baclawski is creating a new photographic sculptural installation part of his ongoing scroll series to consider the photographic impulse to capture the landscape as combined with the presentation strategies of advertising. Erik DeLuca is creating an interactive technology based object exploring silence and sound entitled White Spaces Radio. Iwalani Kaluhiokalani will combine innovative projection-mapping and sound to activate a challenging architectural area in the gallery’s entryway. Justin Levesque will reimagine his multimedia wall installation Geographical Problems for the Emerson space. VHF Studios will present a new iteration of their cheerfully riotous multi-media sculptural installation, Narcissus Looks Back: and They Love You. Karlie Zhao will create a site-specific piece for the windows facing Avery Street, and display her delicate, evocative piece Thread in the Air, which infinitely generates poetic texts through audience interaction.

Juried by Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury, Curator of Special Projects Shana Dumont Garr, and visual artist and curator Allison Maria Rodriguez, this exhibition recognizes the importance of contemporary new media art being created across the Northeast. Of the experience jurying, Allison Maria Rodriguez said:

“It’s been such an honor to be included in this process. It can sometimes feel like New England is dominated by more traditional artistic mediums – and that may be true – but it was so thrilling to see all the incredible new media artists working in the area that submitted to this call. The jury had a real challenge – in the best way! It proved that opportunities like this to showcase artists working in art and technology are so greatly needed, not only to support individual practices, but also to expand the conversation in the broader arts ecosystem – and I’m so grateful to the folks at Emerson Contemporary for making this happen!”

Hidden Histories: Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed part of Un-Monument
2025-09-01 12:00 - 2025-10-28 19:00 | Boston Commons, 139 Tremont St, Boston, MA, Boston, 02111, United States
Un-Monument is a two-year initiative that reimagines and fosters discourse around Boston’s monuments and memorials in a way that centers and amplifies a multiplicity of voices and creates authentic learning moments across the city. It invigorates public spaces through artist interventions that bring to the fore the rich histories that are often hidden.

Emerson Contemporary enthusiastically announces Hidden Histories, a series of four public art projects produced as part of the Un-Monument initiative of the City of Boston. Hidden Histories highlights the processes of collaboration, artistic research, and speculation in contemporary art.

LAUNCH PARTY: SEPTEMBER 18, 5-7:30PM, Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, 02111

WHAT: A Series of Public Art Activations that are part of Un-Monument, a multi-year public art initiative to bring temporary monuments and free programming to the City of Boston that expand the inclusive histories represented in public spaces across the City.

WHEN: September 1 through October 28, 2025.

WHERE: Beacon Hill, Boston Common, and MBTA trains and stations along the Green and Orange Lines, and virtually via the Hoverlay augmented reality application.

This initiative is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture and the Mellon Foundation.

Curated and produced by Emerson Contemporary, the exhibition will present a series of four public art projects featuring Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Combining the gallery’s mission to educate by doing, the inclusive experience of walking tours, and the idea that history is a living subject that constantly evolves, the artists received this prompt: find an aspect of the city’s past that is not currently well-known or understood and create art using new media technologies to amplify those stories.

Emerson Contemporary collaborated with Boston’s foremost historic archives: The Boston Athenaeum, Historic New England, and Massachusetts Historical Society, and the artists were subsequently invited as community research fellows. With the generous support and collaboration of the archives’ staff, artists were provided access to their rich collections and many objects that served as inspiration for their thought-provoking projects.

Sue Murad, ASSEMBLE, 2025

To support public access to Hidden Histories, the gallery has continued to build on their multi-year collaboration and partnership with Hoverlay, a Boston-based augmented reality platform where users can compose and publish immersive content. Hoverlay enables any storyteller to utilize AR to transform how they tell their stories by placing virtual story objects out in the world to be accessed by visitors’ smartphones.
