Welancora Gallery

Welancora Gallery The focus of the gallery is to exhibit and represent artists from around the world by mounting major exhibitions and publishing scholarly catalogs.

As the daughter of a gynecologist, Debra Cartwright uses abstraction to reconcile complex histories of Black maternal he...
05/26/2026

As the daughter of a gynecologist, Debra Cartwright uses abstraction to reconcile complex histories of Black maternal health and reproductive care. Her work draws from imagery she encountered early in life—medical journals, anatomical illustrations—and later through her own independent research. These references become material for subversion, as she abstracts, inverts, and obscures the physical form, challenging the iconography of women in medicine. Through paint and mixed media, she sculpts a new image of the Black female body with intention, offering viewers a moment of empathetic remembrance. Her oil paintings become a kind of living body themselves; using printmaking tools, she strips away, stitching and bruising to build up the foundation, merging painterly gestures with surgical process.

Click the link in our bio to visit our website, where you can view more work by Debra Cartwright

Artwork
Fancy Girls, 2024
Screenprinting, watercolor collage
12 x 16 inches
30.5 x 40.6 cms

In the current group show at Ivy’s Projects, work on view by Cyle Warner explores how place is remembered and how materi...
05/15/2026

In the current group show at Ivy’s Projects, work on view by Cyle Warner explores how place is remembered and how materials reflect shifting landscapes. Warner works with elements from domestic spaces, the natural environment, and sites of gathering in the Caribbean diaspora, not as relics, but as active forces that shape space. Warner’s work does not reconstruct history; it engages with how it lingers, how it is shared, and how it changes over time.

Through woven surfaces, fragmented structures, and layered compositions, these forms hold space not to preserve a fixed past but to acknowledge its fluidity, how sites of gathering, labor, and rest evolve for those who have left and those who remain. In works like Slip Zone, Warner ruminates on displacement – the slip being both a reference to geological phenomena and metaphor for human experience. Bound within the intricately knotted fabric is the notion of two bodies that have already passed through each other, neither returned to where it began, and neither entirely gone. 

Warner’s work is also on view as part of the seventh AIM Biennial through June 29thand Magic Ephemera, the culminating exhibition for his fellowship   on view June 12 - Aug 2.  He will also be featured with .art this week!

This work is included in Empire Is Not Forever, on view at Ivy’s Projects at 410 Jefferson Avenue through June 27. We are open Wednesday-Saturday from 11am-6pm. The exhibition is co-curated by and . Click the link in our bio to learn more about this exhibition!

Artwork
Slip Zone, 2026
Heirloom fabric in nylon netting
84 x 44 x 2 in
213.36 x 111.76 x 5.08 cm

04/30/2026

In this clip from the discussion between Lauren Haynes and Aisha T. Bell, Lauren asks Aisha about the significance of the connection between spirituality, ancestors, and science fiction. In response, Aisha sheds light on when she began to investigate the gaze, decodes the symbolism of the traps in her work, and explains what two-dimensionality versus three-dimensionality means to her. Click the link in our bio to watch the full artist talk.



Artwork

Heavy is the Head, 2026
Acrylic, stoneware, black metal leaf on wood
9 x 12 x 3 inches
22.9 x 30.5 x 7.6 cm

It Happens In Threes, 2026
Acrylic, stoneware on wood
24 x 24 x 3 inches
61 x 61 x 7.6 cm

Lil Tricked Out Trap, 2026
Stoneware, acrylic paint, fabric, wire, glue, epoxy
10 x 11 x 5.75 in
25.4 x 27.9 x 14.6 cm

Reclining Dream Catcher, 2026
Acrylic, stoneware, jute rope on wood
24 x 30 x 4 in
61 x 76.2 x 10.2 cm

04/25/2026

We are pleased to announce that Empire Is Not Forever, a group exhibition curated by Alyssa Alexander and Cyle Warner will open on Saturday, May 9 at Ivy’s Projects.
The exhibition gathers works engaged with the slow unraveling and persistence of empire.

Through painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and textile-based practices, the exhibition considers how the legacies of colonial structures in the Caribbean and its diaspora, deteriorate unevenly, leaving behind residues in land, language, and the body. Resistant to negotiating these truths by way of solely narrative strategies, artists here look to various modes of storytelling. The difference, as Byung-Chul Han suggests in The Crisis of Narration, is that narration serves as an enclosure rather than an invitation to explore. In an age of relentless access to information, narration upholds familiar knowledge and notions, and provides a neatly packaged identity. Storytelling, on the other hand, initiates possibilities of realms unknown. Though varied in their approaches, the artists within Empire is not forever withhold as much as they share, leaving room for generative speculation on how to leverage what has been left behind toward a useful futurity.

Included artists:
Jill Cohen-Nuñez
Renluka Maharaj
Pedro Troncoso
Cyle Warner
Kemar Keanu Wynter

Join us from 5pm-7pm for the opening reception! Visit our link in bio to learn more!

’s projects

04/25/2026

We are pleased to announce that Empire is not forever, a group exhibition curated by Alyssa Alexander and Cyle Warner will open on Saturday, May 9 at Ivy’s Projects.
The exhibition gathers works engaged with the slow unraveling and persistence of empire.

Through painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and textile-based practices, the exhibition considers how the legacies of colonial structures in the Caribbean and its diaspora, deteriorate unevenly, leaving behind residues in land, language, and the body. Resistant to negotiating these truths by way of solely narrative strategies, artists here look to various modes of storytelling. The difference, as Byung-Chul Han suggests in The Crisis of Narration, is that narration serves as an enclosure rather than an invitation to explore. In an age of relentless access to information, narration upholds familiar knowledge and notions, and provides a neatly packaged identity. Storytelling, on the other hand, initiates possibilities of realms unknown. Though varied in their approaches, the artists within Empire is not forever withhold as much as they share, leaving room for generative speculation on how to leverage what has been left behind toward a useful futurity.

Included artists:
Jill Cohen-Nuñez
Renluka Maharaj
Pedro Troncoso
Cyle Warner
Kemar Keanu Wynter

Join us from 5pm-7pm for the opening reception!

’sprojects

We are thrilled to announce that Deborah Willis has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 AIPAD Award. Dr. Willis w...
04/22/2026

We are thrilled to announce that Deborah Willis has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 AIPAD Award. Dr. Willis will be honored at the AIPAD Award Ceremony today, Wednesday April 22, at The Photography Show 2026.

Dr. Willis will also be speaking as a part of AIPAD Talks on Thursday, April 24, at 1 PM. She will be in conversation with Brendan Embser, Senior Editor at Aperture. AIPAD Talks will take place over the four public days of The Photography Show in the Veterans Room at the Park Avenue Armory.

Deborah Willis, Ph.D. (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an historian, accomplished photographer and an author. Willis’s work has been instrumental in advancing the study of Black aesthetics in photography. She is currently the University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In November 2024, Willis was appointed chair of the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

We are pleased to announce Carl E. Hazlewood’s inclusion in the American Abstract Artists’ 90th Anniversary Exhibition: ...
04/15/2026

We are pleased to announce Carl E. Hazlewood’s inclusion in the American Abstract Artists’ 90th Anniversary Exhibition: Abstract by Definition: An Index, which opened last Saturday. The exhibition includes Carl E. Hazlewood’s piece, Demerara Sun Pool, and is on view at ART CAKE from April 11–May 30, 2026.

Hazlewood on his abstract process: “Like a sculptor, I work to find shapes and volumes, implied or actual. And like painting, the layering becomes an intuitive search for textures, color and form… I think of this as drawing the accumulation of parts into active and resonant connections. Then those active parts are pinned into a final configuration, something that feels properly evocative yet stable as plastic form.”

Artwork info: Carl E.Hazlewood, Demerara Sun Pool; Blue Dot, Collage & Acrylic on Paper, 2025, Images courtesy of ART CAKE.

For availability and more info on Carl Hazlewood, visit our website linked in bio.

On Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm, Aisha T. Bell will be in conversation with curator Lauren Haynes. This talk supports Bell’s...
04/10/2026

On Tuesday, April 21 at 6pm, Aisha T. Bell will be in conversation with curator Lauren Haynes. This talk supports Bell’s third solo exhibition, Ethos, which is currently on view at the gallery. Please join us in person at Welancora Gallery, or via Zoom. The links to register are in our bio.

Aisha Tandiwe Bell’s work is inspired by the fragmentation of our multiple identities. Her practice is committed to creating myth and ritual through sculpture, performance, video, sound, drawing, and installation. In Ethos, Bell’s subjects wear ceramic masks that emerge from painted wooden panels while their bodies remain trapped in two-dimensional planes. These figures possess a degree of vitality and authority as they extend out of the frame, monitoring the world from their protruded positions. Their simultaneous existence across multiple planes relates to their fragmented, shape-shifting, and hyphenated identities. 

Lauren Haynes is the Executive Director of Atlanta Contemporary. She has also held positions at preeminent arts institutions across the United States, including Governors Island, the Queens Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Haynes holds a B.A. in Art History with a minor in African American Studies from Oberlin College. She is a 2018 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership and serves on the board of the Association of Art Museum Curators, where she previously held the position of Vice President of Fundraising. Haynes is also a member of the Visiting Committee of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin. Her writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, and she has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and monographs.

We hope you will join us on April 21 at 6pm!

Debra Cartwright is included in Constellations of Belonging, an exhibition at the Delaware Contemporary. Constellations ...
04/09/2026

Debra Cartwright is included in Constellations of Belonging, an exhibition at the Delaware Contemporary. Constellations of Belonging unfolds within a moment shaped by surveillance, bodily regulation, and persistent demands that Black women be legible, visible and consumable. The body is monitored, narrated, disciplined, and asked to explain its own presence. This exhibition closes on April 26, 2026.

Cartwright’s work explores similar themes of re-embodiment, myth creation, theft, and intimacy as it pertains to the Black women who served as the initial practitioners and the unwilling test subjects of early gynecological study in the United States. She uses paint and mixed media to explore selfhood and her own positioning as the daughter of a gynecologist. As Cartwright depicts the relationship between the Black female body and American medical history, she explores a critical understanding of the past while also proposing an examination of the present American healthcare system.

Click the link in our bio to learn more about this exhibition.

Artwork:
Countermeasure, 2025
Watercolor, pencil, ink, and collage on paper
11 x 15 inches
27.9 cms

Whispers of care, 2025
Watercolor, pencil, ink, and collage on paper
11 x 15 inches
27.9 cms

This week marks the opening of the exhibition, Looking for America, at The Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine. We ...
04/08/2026

This week marks the opening of the exhibition, Looking for America, at The Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine. We are pleased to share that photographs from Deborah Willis’ “Meditation On Joan Baez’s Civil War” series will be on view. The original source of these photos comes from a film directed by Willis and choreographed by dancer Djassi Johnson, in which Johnson and Kevin Boseman re-interpret folk singer Joan Baez’s song “Civil War.” The film foregrounds the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers framed in the act of a waltz. Willis captures a past collective memory of conflict that reflects the present day, where the contemporary American political climate holds up a grim resemblance to the ills that gave rise to the Civil War.

Willis’ piece,”Reflections Gordon Parks’ ‘American Gothic’”’, is included in the exhibition, which utilizes Parks’ iconic photograph of African American government worker Ella Watson posed with a broom in front of the American flag as a reenvisioning of Grant Wood’s American Gothic – a clear statement of Parks’ perception of the country. Another photograph on view from the series, “Harlem Street Baptism,” presents Willis’ own “Sundays in Harlem” series. In this case, Willis has chosen imagery of joyous church celebrations that memorialize an older Harlem. Whereas American Gothic displays subjugation, Sundays in Harlem presents spiritual solace.

Looking for America also features the work of Hank Willis Thomas alongside artists who have worked with him, highlighting the importance of creative community and collaboration. Looking for America is on view at the Ogunquit Museum from April 10 - July 19, 2026. Click the link in our bio to learn more about this exhibition!

Artwork:

Reflections Gordon Parks’ “American Gothic”, 2018
Projection reflection, archival pigment print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag
18 x 21 inches
45.7 x 53.3 cms
Edition of 3

Harlem Street Baptism, 2018
Projection reflection, archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag® Metallic
47 x 47 inches
119.38 x 119.38 cms
Edition of 3

Address

33 Herkimer Street
New York, NY
11216

Opening Hours

Tuesday 11am - 5pm
Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday 11am - 5pm
Friday 11am - 5pm
Saturday 11am - 5pm

Telephone

+16468180162

Website

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