Love, grief, resilience, and dance: these universal themes can shape our most transformative summers. For the summer of 2025, we welcome you to explore these themes through the five multimedia exhibitions at Urban Arts Space. In May and June, we will feature Vessels in Red in our lower gallery alongside Ohio: A State of Dance in our upper gallery. If You Say So takes center stage from mid-June to mid-July, while in August we welcome Cartography and Fragmented-Recaptured in shared exhibition spaces. Read more about each show below.

May 13 – June 7 

Vessels in Red 

Artists and curators Miriam King, Ashley Martin, and Christina Navarro use monochromatic red works to examine how our bodies process love, shame, guilt, anger, and grief. The exhibition engages multiple senses: sight through artwork and lighting; touch through varied fabrics; sound through spoken word, music, and installations; and smell through rich, primal scents and performances on opening night. There will also be a closing panel discussion with the artists on Saturday, June 7.

Ohio: A State of Dance

The OhioDance Virtual Dance Collection® is an interactive platform that documents and preserves the achievements of persons and institutions who have shaped the diversity of dance history within the state of Ohio. The exhibition will feature showings of the award-winning documentary film, Ohio: A State of Dance, and a hands-on experience to interact with the gesture interface of the traveling exhibit. An Artist Commune, live podcast, and closing performance will also be held at Urban Arts Space. Check the event page for more details! 

June 17 – July 12 

If You Say So 

An exhibition of recent work by the novelist and essayist Michelle Herman around her latest book, If You Say So, in which a series of Holland’s paintings are reproduced. Both Holland’s paintings and Herman’s book are also in conversation with two dance works: the award-winning dance film Spatula, choreographed by Russell Lepley, with music by Counterfeit Madison, and a new, live-danced piece, If U Say So, co-created by Herman and Mallory Rowell and performed by a multigenerational, multinational group of dancers. Workshops, classes, talks, panel discussions, Q&As, talkbacks, and performances will occur throughout the exhibition.

July 22 – August 16 

Cartography 

The artists in this exhibition, whether Palestinian, Kashmiri, or Afro-Caribbean, embark on similar missions to map out their personal relationships with ancestral and migratory lands. Their art gives voice to stories of imperialism, racism, and occupation while also exploring new vistas of identity, connection, and resilience. Participating artists include Hala Abubaker, Michael Hambouz, Ray Perez, Numair Qadri, Tabeena Wani, and Mona Gazala.

Fragmented-Recaptured 

Fragmented-Recaptured interrogates the histories and systemic minoritization of the Kurds, the largest stateless nation within the socio-political borders of the states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) that rule over a part of their homeland, Kurdistan. The exhibition navigates shared narratives of displacement, conflict, and resistance, offering a deeply personal yet collective lens on the Kurdish experience recaptured through the new forms of diasporic conversation. Participating artists include Hala Abubaker, Michael Hambouz, Ray Perez, Numair Qadri, Tabeena Wani, and Mona Gazala.

Visitors are invited to free programming throughout the summer, including receptions on Friday, May 16, for Vessels in Red and Ohio: A State of Dance; Friday, June 20, for If You Say So; and Saturday, July 26, for Cartography and Fragmented-Recaptured. 

For more details about exhibitions, programming, and events, visit uas.osu.edu/events or follow us on Instagram @urbanartsspace.