What We Carry – Art Exhibition & Dialogue 🎨🐘🗣️

What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue

An artist-led exhibition and social practice activation by Niki Lopez and What’s Your Elephant™

August 2026 | 1310 Gallery, Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts | Fort Lauderdale, FL
Opening Reception + Fundraiser

August 21, 2026
Exhibition August 21 – September 10, 2026

 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

What We Carry: A Community Art Exhibition & Dialogue is an artist-led exhibition and community activation curated and produced by Niki Lopez and presented by What’s Your Elephant™, a 501(c)(3) arts and education nonprofit that uses art and facilitated dialogue to address what often goes unspoken.

This August, we are transforming 1310 Gallery at Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts into a space for art, reflection, storytelling, and community care.

Rooted in visual art, social practice, collage-making, and collective dialogue, What We Carry asks: What are we holding? What has been passed down? What have we survived? What are we ready to name, hold differently, or transform together?

The exhibition brings together selected works by invited and submitting artists whose practices engage themes of identity, memory, healing, belonging, resistance, grief, visibility, care, ancestry, and transformation. Select works by Niki Lopez may also be included, but What We Carry is not a solo exhibition. It is a curated community art exhibition shaped by multiple artists, perspectives, and lived experiences.

This project is not only about trauma or hardship. It is also about what sustains us: beauty, breath, ritual, creativity, community, humor, softness, spirit, memory, and the possibility of being held.

Curatorial Vision

What We Carry grows out of Niki Lopez’s long-standing practice as an artist, curator, and social practitioner using art as a bridge for reflection, healing, dialogue, and community connection.

The exhibition is shaped by questions that have moved through Lopez’s work for years: What do we hold in the body? What do we inherit? What remains unnamed? What helps us survive, soften, remember, release, and transform?

What We Carry is a curated community art exhibition that brings multiple artists and perspectives into conversation around memory, identity, grief, care, belonging, resistance, ancestry, restoration, and transformation.

1310 Gallery • Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Inside the Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts

Activations & Community Experiences

What We Carry is not only an exhibition. It is a space to gather, reflect, create, listen, and be in community.

Additional RSVP links and program details will be added as they are confirmed. All events take place at 1310 Gallery unless noted otherwise.

Opening Reception — Friday, August 21, 2026, 6–10 PM – CLICK TO RSVP
A public opening evening featuring visual art, music, community reflection, invited artists, opportunities to support WYE, and a focused invitation to help carry this work forward.

Community Drum Workshop with Feminafrika — Sunday, August 30, 2026, 2–4 PM – RSVP / donation link coming soon. 
A community-centered drum experience led by Feminafrika, inviting rhythm, grounding, reflection, and collective connection inside the gallery space. Donations will support both Feminafrika and What’s Your Elephant™.

WYE Collage-Making Workshop + Community Chat — Saturday, September 5, 2026, Time TBD – RSVP link coming soon.
A signature Elephant™ creative wellness experience using collage, writing, visual expression, and facilitated conversation to explore the question: What are we carrying? No art experience is needed. Come as you are.

Closing Reflection: Art, Movement & Community — Thursday, September 10, 2026, Time TBD – RSVP link coming soon.
A closing gathering with art, reflection, and community dialogue, offering space to honor what surfaced throughout the exhibition and what we are ready to carry differently.

Ongoing During the Exhibition

Interactive Reflection Installation
Throughout the exhibition, visitors will be invited to contribute words, reflections, memories, or responses connected to what they carry, what they are releasing, and what they want to see named, protected, or remembered.

Stay Connected

Check back for updated RSVP links, added program details, artist announcements, and community partner updates.

What’s Your Elephant™ collaborates with community groups, artists, nonprofits, and corporate organizations.

SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION

Donate: https://givebutter.com/wye_whatwecarry
Together, every gift helps create space for art, reflection, storytelling, healing, and community care.

About What’s Your Elephant™

Founded in 2014 and officially established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2023, What’s Your Elephant™ is an arts and education nonprofit that uses creativity to address the unspoken.

Through exhibitions, workshops, wellness-centered gatherings, and interactive art experiences, we create spaces for storytelling, mindfulness, emotional wellness, and community connection.

Our work centers mental health, LGBTQ+ identity, social justice, gender equity, cultural storytelling, and collective wellbeing — uplifting marginalized voices and fostering transformation through art.

Since its inception, What’s Your Elephant™ has engaged more than 3,500 individuals across South Florida through exhibitions, workshops, and immersive art activations, including more than 16 mindful mask-making experiences and over a decade of community-centered arts programming led by Niki Lopez.

To learn more, visit whatsyourelephant.org

Our work centers on:

• unspoken topics 
• mental health & mindfulness
• gender & LGBTQ+ identity
• social justice
• place-making
• lived experience
• community wellness
• Community engagement
• Trauma & healing
• the arts as tools for transformation and dialogue
• the importance of the arts/art/creative expression

FEATURED COMMUNITY PARTNERS

TBA

If you would like to join the eList for Niki Lopez to get updates on upcoming programing and other creative happenings: http://eepurl.com/eqUc