Curated by Maria Markham
Exhibition Dates: April 26 - July 5, 2026   
Opening Reception: April 26, 1-4pm
Panel Talk: Date TBD

why and why and why
should i call a white man brother?
who is the human in this place,
the thing that is dragged or the dragger?
-Lucille Clifton, jasper texas 1998

The Ely Center is pleased to announce the group show where is the human in this place, curated by Maria Markham. The title of this exhibit is adapted from Lucille Clifton’s searing poem, jasper texas 1998.* Clifton gives voice to James Byrd in this poem highlighting the horrendous act perpetrated on a black man by white people. Clifton’s powerful condemnation and poetic rendering of Byrd’s humanity grounds the visual work presented in where is the human in this place?. This exhibit opens a discussion around the structures and systems that continue and reinforce racism and other inequities deeply wound within societies. 

In where is the human in this place, artists Amy Yoshitsu, Jacob Cullers, Jayden Ashley and Ode explore these infrastructures that perpetrate daily violences and inequities against people who differ from the dominant culture, including people of color, poor, and trans people. 

Amy Yoshitsu focuses on deconstructing the interconnections between power, economics, labor, and race. Return and Schedule Self-Interest derives from Yoshitu’s own experience and examines how the tax system “perpetuates the black and white ‘logic’ and poles of our society.” Yoshitu notes that the 1040 tax form that workers in America are required to file has built in prejudices that reinforce long-standing hierarchies.

Jayden Ashley explores zoning laws relating to redlining to highlight how institutional policies and structures are a source of sustained and continued systemic violence against Black communities. For this exhibit, using legislative and cartographic sources, Ashley researched redlined geographies in New Haven creating sculptures from concrete that echo the erasures of Black people and their communities, channel absences as a result of these enactments, and questions borders.

In The Man, Jacob Cullers unapologetically highlights the violence of the white male hierarchical power structures in the U.S. In this work, the “Man” is a grotesque abstraction that disgorges intestines from its mouth. On the left, a mask resembling those worn by the Klu Klux Klan receives the intestine signaling the white male supremacy that is embedded within the system. In the background, the monumental faces of the Mount Rushmore Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson locate the viewer squarely within the American political system.

In her video, Travecacceleration, Ode examines how the logic of capitalism and cisgender capitalism impacts trans people, specifically travesti in Brazil. According to Ode, the video showcases how the “cisheteropatriarcal…puts black people and, overall, travestis in a position that does not allow us to claim our own images, enunciations, and epistemologies.” Through video montage, she reinforces how black people and travesti are defined within the system and how they are specifically absent from rapid growth in capitalism and its underpinnings including technology.

The works in where is the human in this place respond to questions of humanity and as echoed in Clifton’s poem the lack of it. They show the invisible and visible systems and structures that deliberately exclude, perpetuate violence, and impact vulnerable people’s lives with tragic certitude. The exhibition will be on view from Sunday, April 26 through Sunday, July 5. Please join us for the opening on Sunday, April 26, 1-4pm. 

-Maria Markham

*Written for James Byrd, Jr. who was gruesomely lynched in Texas on June 7, 1998, the original line from the poem is “who is the human in this place.”

Exhibition Dates: April 26 - July 5, 2026   
Opening Reception: April 26, 1-4pm

DARK DEY emerges from love for Iran and the urgency of witnessing its present history. Created in exile, Mahsa Attaran’s work responds to ongoing state violence, gendered oppression, and the massacre of over 50,000 civilians across two days—DEY 18th and 19th (January 8–9, 2026)—during the continuing revolution. It stands as both testimony and refusal of silence.

Working from a distance, Attaran positions herself as both witness and subject, tracing how this violence is carried across borders and into the body. Her work reflects the condition of diaspora of living a daily, outwardly ordinary life while remaining internally bound to a homeland in crisis. The experience of teaching, working, and moving through professional space exists alongside an ongoing awareness of loss, where the weight of what is happening to loved ones is continuously present, though often unseen.

Attaran’s practice centers women’s lives, domestic space, and acts of care as sites of political meaning. Her work confronts violence sustained through patriarchal power, religious authoritarianism, and the laws of an extreme Islamist regime, while holding space for the resilience of those living within it.

Addressing particularly Western audiences, the work calls attention to life under state-enforced Sharia law, where rights are known yet systematically denied. Rejecting ideology, it insists instead on lived experience and the ongoing pursuit of dignity, safety, and self-determination.

Rooted in devotion to her homeland and its people, this work is an act of love. It asks viewers to witness, to remain with discomfort, and to recognize that this violence is not distant, but ongoing.

Mahsa Attaran is an Iranian-born visual artist, photographer, and educator whose work explores culture, gender, and belonging through memory, exile, and domestic archives. Working across photography, video, installation, and conceptual wearables, she often uses the archive to preserve and reframe women’s histories. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran, Ball & Socket Arts in Cheshire, TheatreWorks in Hartford, and The Sue & Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery in Windsor, and has been featured in publications such as Hyperallergic and Midbrow.

As an Iranian woman in exile, Attaran is committed to witnessing and refusing silence in the face of political violence and human rights abuses. She also leads workshops and talks that encourage critical engagement with social justice, memory, and responsibility. Attaran holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Connecticut and teaches on the Visual Arts faculty at The Loomis Chaffee School.

Exhibition Dates: April 26 - July 5, 2026   
Opening Reception: April 26, 1-4pm

The Ely Center is pleased to present Portals of Holding, a solo exhibition of works by Asma Waheed. Working primarily in clay, Waheed draws from architectural materials and domestic traditions from the Middle East and South Asia and reimagines them through a deeply personal exploration of visibility, privacy, and cultural inheritance. 

As a Pakistani Muslim woman, mother and artist living in the United States, Waheed’s practice is shaped by an ongoing conversation between stories revealed and stories held close. Her work balances on this tension, creating forms that both invite and withhold, offering moments of access while keeping moments of protection and intimacy.

Waheed uses perforated screens, draped textiles, and architectural references that allude to systems of boundaries that are physical, cultural and also psychological. Light filters through punctured surfaces, playful glazes make your eyes dance along surfaces, and fabric that could be flowing on a person is still, tethered to the wall and protected by a pedestal. What emerges is a dynamic interplay between exposure and concealment, where meaning is never fully given but is hinted at in fragments.

Central to Waheed’s practice are her ceramic vessels. These works draw on the universal rituals in domestic life: the table, the cup and the act of gathering. These vessels become sites for connection. Her use of patterns and surface treatment give these objects their layered histories allowing them to function as personal objects and carriers of a broader cultural memory.

Waheed is currently earning her MFA at MICA, but has also studied with Iranian ceramic masters. Rather than seeking to preserve tradition in a static form, her work activates it and allows for her inherited visual languages to shift, expand and speak to her contemporary experience. Waheed’s practice embraces the oppositions of softness vs strength, visibility vs holding and tradition vs transformation.

Please join us on Sunday, April 26, 1-4pm for the opening reception for Portals of Holding at 162 James Street in New Haven, CT.

Asma Waheed is a multidisciplinary artist with Pakistani roots, based in Ellicott City, Maryland, where she balances her creative practice with her role as a mother of four. Her work explores themes of identity, heritage, and self-expression, shaped by the complexities of diaspora and the everyday realities of motherhood.

Asma holds a Bachelor's degree in Education from West Virginia University and later pursued her passion for ceramics by earning a Master’s degree from Hood College, Maryland. She is currently an MFA candidate in Studio Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).  Her dedication to her Art practice has been recognized through numerous awards, including the prestigious Leslie King Hammond Graduate Fellowship from MICA, the Windgate University Fellowship from the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and the NCECA Graduate Fellowship Award. She also serves as the Student Director-at-Large for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), where she advocates for student and contributes to the broader ceramics community.

Exhibition Dates: April 26 - July 5, 2026   
Opening Reception: April 26, 1-4pm

LIVE POTTERY DEMO: Sunday, April 26, 2:30pm

The Ely Center is honored to present Centering, a solo exhibition of work by Afghan master potter Matin Malikzada. A seventh-generation ceramicist from Istalif, Afghanistan, a place long recognized as a historic center of pottery, Malikzada brings a deeply rooted tradition into dialogue with his present life in Connecticut.

Working within a lineage passed down through generations, Malikzada’s practice bridges continuity and adaptation. His vessels, both functional and decorative, are shaped, carved and glazed through processes that reflect centuries of knowledge. This includes a distinctive turquoise hue historically derived from natural materials unique to Istalifi pottery. At the same time his work reflects a contemporary journey marked by displacement and resilience.

In 2021, Malikzada was forced to leave his home, his studio and his teaching position as head of the ceramics department at the Turquoise Mountain Institute. After months of migration he resettled with his family in Northwest Connecticut where he began the complex process of rebuilding both his life and his practice. 

The works in this exhibition embody a system of translation, one specifically represented by the hundreds of glaze tests he created in order to rediscover a visual language that could carry his history forward in his new environment. The pottery’s forms maintain a refined symmetry and balance rooted in tradition, but each piece carries what Malikzada describes as both memory and renewal: an unbroken connection to place mixed with the realities of migration and change.

Central to Malikzada’s philosophy is the idea that pottery is not only an art form, but a part of daily life. His vessels are created to be used and shared during times of gathering, from everyday meals to significant celebrations. In this way his work sustains a living tradition, one that continues to evolve through use and community.

The exhibition also features a newly produced film, by Yonah Sedeh, documenting Malikzada’s journey from Istalif to Connecticut and the rebuilding of his practice. The short film offers an intimate view into his process and story; it expands the exhibition beyond simply works on display but highlights the human experience that is embedded in each piece.

An opening reception on Sunday, April 26, 1-4pm will include a live wheel-throwing demonstration at 2:30 pm by Malikzada, providing visitors with a rare opportunity to witness the incredible skill behind his practice. Through this work he offers to the audience not only objects of beauty, but a testament to the endurance of tradition and the possibility of rebuilding through art.