Echoes of Elsewhere

NAVA Contemporary is pleased to present Echoes of Elsewhere, a group show that explores the intricate layers of cultural memory and the enduring presence of ancestry within contemporary identity. This exhibition brings together artists whose works resonate with the intangible ties that link past and present, homeland and diaspora, memory and lived experience. Featured artists include Miguel Arzabe, SoHyun Bae, Firouz Farman Farmaian and Sonya Yu.

Through diverse mediums—photography, painting, print and mixed media—the featured artists navigate the echoes of places left behind and the fragmented stories carried across generations. Echoes of Elsewhere invites viewers to engage with the complex narratives of heritage and transformation, revealing how cultural memory shapes not only personal identity but collective consciousness. It is a space to reflect on history’s lingering presence in the everyday, informing who we are and who we continue to become.

Miguel Arzabe’s work spans painting, video and paper weaving. His vibrant abstract paintings take visual cues from indigenous weavings of the Americas and modernist painting, creating a tension between control and chance mark making. Ideas migrate and overlap freely between the subjective realm of painting and other conceptual modes of making. Arzabe’s work as a whole addresses issues of agency, progress, how value is created, and existential conundrums.

SoHyun Bae layers rice paper and pure pigment to create expressive canvases, often visualizing themes and figures traditionally suppressed in Korean culture. Her surfaces suggest forms while also alluding to latent narratives and alternate histories. Inspired by the Jewish Mystical understanding of why we have suffering in this universe, Bae’s Nature of Water series examines the fragility of life and the strength in vulnerability through depicting shards found in our natural world.

History and memory inform the work of Persian-born artist Firouz Farman Farmaian, whose lifetime of living in exile in Paris, France profoundly influenced both his creative practice and individual character. Farman Farmaian’s work seeks to actively engage in a dialogue with the past, and as such, his compositions possess a vivacious and spontaneous energy, as well as a deeply symbolic quality, which speaks to a multiplicity of currents in politics, art and philosophy.

Sonya Yu's quiet yet vibrant photographs capture the beauty of mundane objects, breathing life into classic still lifes. Heavily influenced by Dutch master painter Johannes Vermeer, Yu’s creative process is anchored in the strict exercise of analog photographic techniques and the meticulous use of natural light. The artist's studio is set up to recreate the self-same, unique conditions the 17th century painter worked under. Yu's conscious and methodical practice eschews technology to achieve a highly distinctive visual style, one that artfully combines contrasting textures with harmonious colors palettes.