York College Arts Gallery is proud to present “Returning to a Womb, Ecological Becoming,” the first solo exhibition by Queens-based interdisciplinary artist Elizabeth Velazquez. The exhibition features existing works alongside a newly commissioned site-responsive installation created specifically for the gallery, exploring themes of ancestral care and healing transformation through ecological experiments with sculpture, drawing, installation and performance.
The opening reception is on Thursday, September 17, from 5 to 8 p.m., however, the exhibition can be viewed Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. beginning Wednesday, September 2, through Thursday, November 12, 2026.
Following her 2025 performance-installation under Sam Gilliam’s “Solar Canopy” (1986) at York College for “Roving Reverie,” the Southeast Queens Triennial Research Program, Velazquez returns with a solo show conceived specifically for the gallery space on the Academic Core’s distinctive sunken-level first floor. The exhibition follows her ongoing investigations into embodied knowledge and relations of interdependence.
Elizabeth Velazquez, Brush Spirits, Wave Hill, Bronx, 2020. Experimentation with the branches selected from the brush pile during Winter Workspace Residency. Photo Credit: Elizabeth Velazquez.
In Returning to a Womb: Ecological Becoming, Elizabeth Velazquez welcomes the York College Art Gallery audience into her near-decade-long collaboration with mug wort. Velazquez has harvested the plant, joining efforts to reduce its impact on the local environment, while simultaneously transgressing the limits of seeing the plant as a weed by honoring its transformative properties. – Laura C. Suárez Rodríguez, art historian
Caption: Elizabeth Velazquez, Water is Our Bodies Our Bodies Are Water, Works on Water Residency, Governors Island, 2021. Working with horticulture staff on Governors Island to harvest enough mugwort to create a space to acknowledge the life-giving force of water. Photo Credit: sToLen.
At the center of the exhibition is the newly commissioned, “Ancestral Wombs,” a series of life-size vessel- like forms constructed from mugwort mulch, hypertufa, and other materials. Conceived as containers for holding, receiving, and growing, these sculptural receptacles reflect Velazquez’s sustained engagement with cyclical processes of nature and the renewing capacities of the body. Alongside this work, visitors encounter sculptural forms and ritual objects made with handmade paper, plant matter and textile along with video documentation of past performances.
Caption: Elizabeth Velazquez, Under the Light of a Canopy: Qualities of Opacity and Transparency,Roving Reverie, York College, 2025. A public engagement project under Sam Gilliam’s Solar Canopy, as part of Roving Reverie. Photo Credit: Fawwaz Allie.
Over the years I have grown to consider mugwort as my teacher. In collaborating with this powerful being, I am learning to be in a continual mindfulness of my actions and my surroundings, along with learning a responsibility for tending- tending to the land, to my loved ones and to my body and spirit. – Elizabeth Velazquez, artist
Along the gallery’s curved glass wall, the artist presents bottles of her custom-brewed agua florida, a botanical essence incorporating mugwort among its ingredients. Used throughout Indigenous and Afro- diasporic healing traditions across the Americas, agua florida activates ‘flourishing’ (florida), the objective of its use by healers.
Over the past decade, Velazquez’s focus on acts of cultivation have developed through longstanding experimentation with organic matter in her art, including at residencies with Wave Hill in the Bronx and Works on Water on Governors Island, and a group exhibition at The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in Manhattan. For Velazquez, art-making is a process of reclaiming wellness while confronting physical, psychological, and social forms of injustice.
As part of exhibition programming, the York College Women’s Center for Gender Justice will present “Meditations on the Womb,” an intimate workshop facilitated by Velazquez. The session fosters an intergenerational space for conversations about womb care, health, and ancestral knowledge. Participants will receive womb-care kits containing wellness resources and herbal materials. The program is tentatively scheduled for October 2026 and is free and open to participants through registration.
In addition, Velazquez will facilitate Flourishing with Agua Florida, a special exhibition walkthrough and workshop session on agua florida with invited members of the public and students enrolled in York College’s Art History course FA 289 Caribbean Art, offering students and community members an opportunity to engage directly with the artist and her interdisciplinary practice.
Elizabeth Velazquez (b. 1977) is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist and founding member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance (SEQAA). Born and raised in upstate New York to Puerto Rican and Peruvian parents, she has lived in Queens for more than two decades and is a frequent collaborator of the York College Arts History program as a member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance. Velazquez works across mixed media, installation, and performance, often incorporating ritual as a means of challenging structures of oppression. Her practice explores themes of connectedness, veneration, immateriality, and healing. She has exhibited and performed throughout New York, including at The Boiler, The Clemente, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Lehman College Art Gallery, and York College, and has participated in residencies at Wave Hill, Works on Water, and NYLAAT.
Location: York College Arts Gallery, 160-01 Liberty Avenue, Jamaica, Queens
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-4:30 PM (Saturday by appointment)
Admission: Always free and open to the public.
Parking: Free and metered parking is available on Liberty Avenue. Visitor parking is $10 at the Guy R. Brewer Boulevard Parking Lot next to the Milton G. Bassin Performing Arts Center.
Accessibility: York College is a wheelchair-accessible campus. For special accommodations, please contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu.
York College Arts Gallery – Press Release – Fall 2026 2
Public Programming
Opening Reception in collaboration with the York College Arts Gallery Thursday, September 17, 2026, 5-8 p.m. Meet the artist and enjoy refreshments!
Workshop – Meditations on the Womb
In collaboration with York College Women’s Center for Gender Justice October 2026 – Date to be Announced
Free and open to the public with registration
Contact: nacevedo@york.cuny.edu
Workshop & Exhibition Walkthrough – Flourishing with Agua Florida – In collaboration with the York College Art History program Monday, November 2, 2026, 3:00-4:30 p.m.Free and open to the public with registration
Exhibition/Project Support: The exhibition is made possible with support from the York College Arts Gallery through the York College Auxiliary Foundation and funding from the Queens Arts Fund, a re-grant program supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts. It is part of the York College Art History program’s initiative, Jamaica Forum for Public Art Otherwise, a project initiated through Social Practice CUNY. The exhibition catalog is designed by Jorge Penez Boeneker with a catalog essay written by art historian Laura C. Suárez Rodríguez.
Learn more about artist Elizabeth Velazquez at www.elizabethvelazquez.com.
Contact: ebovino@york.cuny.edu
Aug 25, 2026 12:21 PM