sacred
A group exhibition curated by Naomi Stewart
On view:
February 26th - May 7th, 2026
Opening reception:
Thursday, February 26th, 2026 | 7 PM - 9 PM
Sovern LA is pleased to present sacred, a new group exhibition curated by Naomi Stewart with support from curatorial assistant Bamelak Wendwossen Tesfaye, opening with a public reception on February 26th, 2026. This exhibition calls for the embodiment of the sacred within the Black soul whilst navigating white-body supremacy and generational trauma—building self-fortitude.
sacred includes artists Patrick Chuka, Tiffany Ann Conway, Dellis Frank, Natou Fall, and Lisa Diane Wedgeworth. Through their art practices, which alchemize grief, embrace rest, and celebrate creativity, the artists weave threads of resilience that honor both personal and collective healing.
Souls inhabiting Black bodies bear generational burdens of labor, trauma, and erasure. The term sacred can be referred to as something set apart, to be regarded with reverence and great respect. What would it mean for the Black sojourner to view themselves as set apart—sacred? How does this aid in our protest? Reclaiming reverence for our body, mind, history, and soul's mission steadies our foundation—our protest. This thread of resilience honors embodied and collective wisdom rather than scarcity and fear.
Stewart's curatorial approach was led by intuition, dreamspace, and anthropological methodologies. Through studio visits and cross-disciplinary engagement with Black liberation texts, marronage texts, psychology, archival practice, and indigenous wisdom traditions, Stewart assembled artists whose practices embody the sacred through these layered perspectives.
Together, these artworks transform the gallery into a portal—a sanctuary where collective wisdom guides contemporary expression, allowing visitors to engage with the sacred within. There will be supplemental programming throughout the exhibition run to provide opportunities for deeper exploration of the exhibition themes.
Patrick Chuka
Patrick Chuka's hyper-realistic pen and charcoal drawings serve as mirrors, inviting viewers to look inward. Capturing vulnerability and the masks we wear, Chuka's drawings of friends and community members honor the beauty in the breaking—the process of becoming. His work serves as an archive and storytelling, keeping records for communities at risk of erasure while asking us to look beneath the surface to see the whole being in each of us.
Tiffany Ann Conway
Tiffany Ann Conway's colorful and sensual paintings celebrate the Black body and her own journey toward self-love and acceptance. As a self-sustaining artist and entrepreneur, Conway's work grapples with challenging white body supremacy through representations of Blackness that are brown-skinned, full-bodied, and full-lipped, capturing its most joyful, peaceful, and somber aspects. Her paintings reveal the extent of dreaming and prolific creativity required to navigate these unsettling times.
Dellis Frank
Dellis Frank's multidisciplinary approach incorporates textile and play into vibrant sculptures that wrestle with themes of nostalgia and racism. Her works serve as totems and altars of reverence for the Black soul, aiding in the work of dreaming and embodying our sacredness in ways we cannot yet imagine.
Natou Fall
Natou Fall's MaadCode naturalistic assemblages, juxtaposed with her pastel portraits and film, reflect the duality of her practice. While excavating the challenged histories of enslavement and her Senegalese roots through new language-making with maad seeds, she turns to her vibrant pastels as respite. For Fall, striking a balance becomes essential—particularly as a queer Black woman—where taking space to simply be and play becomes an act of protest.
Lisa Diane Wedgeworth
Lisa Diane Wedgeworth employs painting, performance, and film to interpret energy as an investigation of personal and collective narratives. Through abstraction, her films examine Black womanhood, the domestic slave trade, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, creating space for processing historical trauma and envisioning liberation.
Naomi Stewart
Naomi Stewart is a curator, consultant and founder of Black in Place, working primarily in the greater Los Angeles region. Stewart received her BA in Anthropology with a concentration in Art History from Hawaii Pacific University and her MBA from Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business School. Past curatorial projects include Black In Place (Angels Gate Cultural Center, 2025), No Song Unsung (Brea Gallery, 2023), a time to tear, a time to mend (Wonzimer, 2022), Into the Deep, Unto the New (Inbreak Residency, 2021), Borderline (Angel’s Gate, 2021), and The Emergent (SuperCollider, 2020). Through a lens of identity, collective healing, and somatic ecology, Stewart's curatorial practice is guided by intuition, poetry, dreamspace, and anthropological methodologies.
A note on accessibility: Sovern LA is committed to creating a space that is welcoming and accessible to all. At this time, our building does not have ramps, which limits physical access for some community members. We recognize this as an area that needs improvement and are actively working toward making the space more accessible. We do our best to accommodate people of varying abilities and encourage anyone with specific access needs to reach out before attending so we can support you as best we can.
Sovern LA is an intersectional healing justice center and gallery, located in LA’s West Adams district, focused on supporting Black and Indigenous women and gender expansive people of color. Fueled by a passion for justice, equality, and creative expression, Sovern is driven by the collective determination to center healing justice, challenge systemic barriers, empower artists of color, and amplify their impact for collective wellbeing. By building a community that uplifts and celebrates diverse voices, we aim to reshape the art world in Los Angeles and beyond, creating a more inclusive and equitable space where artists and communities can thrive together.