Behind VA Shadows, in partnership with The Harvard Square Business Association and Intercontinental Management, is pleased to welcome the group exhibition Rupture (and its infinite ripples), the latest installation at the 25/8 artspace project located at 2 Linden Street in Harvard Square.
Guest-curated by Maia Erslev with exhibit assistance from XiHu Arfa, the exhibition on view through December 7th, 2025, explores the effect of rupture in lived experiences, featuring the works of artists Qais Assali, Arfa, Bithiah Holton, Elizabeth Hopkins, Ena Kantardžić, Marianna McMurdock, Mai Pham, Alaya Shah, Jenny Wen, Lucy Yan, and Mimi Zhang. Through a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, collage, installation, and photography, the exhibition illuminates different aspects of life-changing events and their lasting impact; it showcases the destructive as well as generative potentials of these experiences. Centering the voices of BIPOC artists, the exhibition presents diverse responses that reflect on rupture, revealing how artists insert their agency in these uncontrollable events.
Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, commented, “We’re so pleased to continue our collaboration with Intercontinental Management and Yolanda He Yang on our latest art installation at the 25/8 artspace. This popup gallery exhibits beautiful artwork that is to be enjoyed “from the street” in an unexpected location in Harvard Square.”
For the curator, the exhibition concept derived from their personal experience with the Adoptee Consciousness Model, in which rupture is theorized as a turning point that disrupts the status quo (Adoptee Consciousness Model, n.d.). Beyond the context of a shifting awareness of their own adoption, Erslev noted that rupture, both literal and metaphorical, opens up discussion, interpretation, and reflection across different intersections of identities and experiences. Erslev describes rupture as “unwelcome disturbance,” and the exhibition questions the process, the aftermath, and the shatteredness in these happenings. More importantly, it speaks to a shared human experience—because, as Erslev observed, never having experienced a rupture is itself a kind of privilege that deserves reflection.
The exhibition offers a rich interpretation of the theme, sketching out subjects such as loss, absence, transformation, and renewal. In different visual languages, the artists share intimate stories and reflections, demonstrating the making of art as a form of processing. In Yan, Zhang, Shah, and Holton’s works, representational depictions of figures convey vivid visual memories, recalibrating the momentary truths between the past and the present. Reality, however, is also prescribed in words, languages, and text. As shown in Arfa, Pham, and Wen ’s works, the underlying meanings of words and characters are constantly subject to challenge and transformation. Sharing a similar abstract approach, Assali, Hopkins, Kantardžić, McMurdock, and Shah rely on symbols, shapes, and compositions to express the intensity of emotions and echo the subtle traces of memory. The exhibition brings together different forms of rupture, both retrospective and forward-looking, holding a space to anchor these events, effects, and emotions.
Working in the arts in Boston, Erslev’s curatorial work is informed by their facilitation of visual art in their day to day work. Transforming these work experiences into their own curatorial project, Erslev embraces the opportunity and platform of Behind VA Shadows to explore the meaning and the manifestation of rupture and its rippling effect through art, creating a site of conversation for the aspects that are central to their identities. To Erslev’s surprise, the exhibition open call received enthusiastic responses, showing how a space for grief, recognition, and commemoration is sorely needed. Lastly, the curator extends an invitation through the show: “I invite you to reflect on your own ruptures: the ones you have endured, the ones that have remade you, and the ones whose effects continue to ripple through your life.”