🌱 SOIL: Where the Light Enters
A community art & wellness exhibition presented by What’s Your Elephant™
“From what has been buried, we grow. From what we face, we transform.”
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
SOIL: Where the Light Enters is a multidisciplinary art and wellness exhibition and community activation presented by What’s Your Elephant™, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that uses the arts to address the unspoken.
The exhibition brings together works by 26 artists whose practices explore transformation, resilience, memory, and healing through deeply personal and lived experiences. Across visual art, performance, and interdisciplinary forms, the works invite reflection on growth, vulnerability, and the ways creativity becomes a site for meaning-making and connection.
Curated and produced by Niki Lopez, award-winning artist, curator, and social practitioner, SOIL unfolds as a living, community-centered exhibition that approaches curation as a form of social practice. Through a curated constellation of works, the exhibition centers dialogue—creating space for reflection on how healing and growth emerge through what we endure.
Inspired by the Rumi quote, “The wound is the place where the light enters,” the exhibition invites audiences into an immersive experience of art, reflection, mindfulness, storytelling, and community connection. Here, art meets advocacy, performance meets reflection, and creativity becomes a vessel for personal and collective healing.
Together, SOIL creates space for contemplation, conversation, and connection—using art as a catalyst for awareness, wellness, and change.
Exhibition Details
Dates: December 19, 2025 – January 2026
Opening Night: December 19, 2025 at 1310 Gallery, Fort Lauderdale
Exhibiting Artists
Christina Marie Reddick · Trish Delish Art · Jane Kreinberg · Olivia Rachel Austin · Elizabeth Vitale · Louiveste La Croix · Isabella M.L · Christine Velez Stone · Zipporah Michel · Linda Telfer · Dr Kimme · Alana DaCosta aka Yaa Ifanike · Sheila Alexander · Emily Peters · Tsahai Smith · Ariel Collins · Damaris Ferrer · Micheal Anthony Clark · Yamel Molerio · Bearwizzard · Juan Sebastian “Zeb” Restrepo · Coralina Rodriguez Meyer · Sophia Lacroix · Erika Cespedes · Niki Lopez.
Funding for the SOIL art exhibition & programs is generously provided by Wayne and Lucretia Weiner, CSC Broward, and community donations.
Location
1310 Gallery • Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Inside the Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts
Exhibition Details
Dates: December 19, 2025 – January 2026
Opening Night: December 19, 2025 at 1310 Gallery, Fort Lauderdale
Curated and produced by Niki Lopez, award-winning Afro-Latina artist, curator, and social practitioner, SOIL unfolds as both a semi-retrospective and a living conversation. It highlights Lopez’s own works on healing and resilience alongside selected artists whose work embodies courage, truth, and transformation.
Activations & Community Experiences
Stay tuned for RSVP links for each experience.
All events take place at 1310 Gallery unless noted otherwise.
✨ Opening Night — Friday, Dec 19, 2025 – CLICK TO RSVP
A vibrant evening of art, performance, spoken word, and storytelling celebrating transformation and self-expression.
Opening night features drumming by FeminAfrika, DJ Bumi, hosted by poet Mori Taiye and Open Mic courtesy of Beyond Imagination Art. Light bites catered by Health Rush
🎨 What’s Your Elephant™ Collage Workshop + Artist Talk — Dec 27, 2025 – CLICK TO RSVP
A community art-making experience and dialogue exploring healing, growth, and storytelling through collage and conversation.
🎭 Mindful Mask-Making Experience — Jan 8, 2026 – CLICK to RSVP
A creative and reflective session blending cultural symbolism, identity exploration, and mindfulness-based art-making.
🌿 Wellness Day — Jan 11, 2026 – CLICK to PURCHASE TICKETS
Co-produced with Longville Wellness, this restorative day integrates sound therapy, acupuncture, expressive arts, and mindfulness practices for holistic well-being.
👨👩👧👦 Mommy & Me: It’s a Family Affair — Jan 18, 2026 – CLICK to RSVP
A family-centered mindful art-making experience for parents, caregivers, and children to create side-by-side, encouraging bonding, emotional awareness, and creativity.
💞 Closing Event: Friendship, Network & Flow — Jan 23, 2026 – CLICK TO RSVP
Produced by Niki Lopez Creative, this soft closing gathers artists, vendors, and community members for connection, small-works sales, and conversations around art, wellness, and collective care.
About What’s Your Elephant™
Founded in 2013, What’s Your Elephant™ is a nonprofit arts and educational organization (since 2023) dedicated to using the arts to address the unspoken. Through exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, and interactive art installations, we create safe spaces for storytelling, mindfulness, and community connection.
Our work centers on:
• mental health &mindfulness
• gender & LGBTQ+ identity
• social justice
• place-making
• lived experience
• community wellness
• the arts as tools for transformation and dialogue
To learn more, visit whatsyourelephant.org
What’s Your Elephant™ collaborates with community groups, artists, nonprofits, and corporate organizations.
Featured community partners:
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