The Destiny
...is to take root among the stars
March 15 - May 10, 2025
Free & Open to the public
Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 - 5:00 pm
& by appointment
Opening Reception
Saturday March 15, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
The exhibition is curated by guest curator Jaime Ransome and includes works by:
Destiny Arianna
Vernon Byron
Cy Hinojosa
Lala Montoya
Alisa Sikelianos-Carter
Tony Washington
Inspired by the prescient works of African American, feminist author, Octavia Butler, The Destiny is an exhibition of six BIPOC artists working in upstate New York. The exhibition examines concepts prevalent in Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which depicts imagined futures and recalls distant pasts through magical realism in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The novel reflects our fears about climate change, canonizes our futures as intelligent beings on a dying planet, and unearths the “essential human resources” that will be necessary for humans to inhabit - not colonize - a new world in space or on an unrecognizable Earth.
Artists Lala Montoya and Destiny Arianna illuminate stories of our Indigenous histories, imploring the audience to remember the parables of their families, for they have encrypted the codex for humanity’s success in their stories, rituals, and heirlooms. The works from artists Tony Washington and Vernon Byron resonate the tone of our present, warning about the correlation between rapid technological expansion and systematized dismantling of cultural collaboration. Alisa Sikelianos-Carter and Cy Hinojosa depict our paths to the future - our devolution if we seek no other home and our cosmic legacy if we return to the stars.
Contributing to an evolving vision of Afro-Futurism, these works of painting, ceramics, video, mixed media, and installation exercise Butler’s theory that small groups of similarly motivated people can create great change. The Destiny acts as a blueprint for how to build something new and sustainable, especially during eras of devastation, hopelessness and fire. Butler finds hope in the idea that Earth is just a womb - just the beginning - and that only by radically reinventing our relationship to it by venturing outside it can our species truly be born, grow, and change.
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes You. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
-Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Programming at Ann Street Gallery:
March 29, April 12, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30pm — “Parable of the Sower” Book Club led by exhibition Curator Jaime Ransome RSVP requested, not required to jransome.curation@gmail.com
April 5, 2:00-4:00pm-with full name and phone number
Storytelling through Mixed Media Collage Workshop with Destiny Arianna. Limit 12 participants. Reservations required: email destinyariannastudio@gmail.com
Date TBA — "Indigo Rising" Afrofuturistic Dance & Drumming by Rhythm of Water Productions featuring Psifire
Listen to The Destiny Curated Playlist on Spotify here.
EXHIBITION MATERIALS:
Exhibition Checklist
(Price list available upon request)
The Destiny Curated Playlist on Spotify.
Curated Reading List 008 by Jaime Ransome
(click to view/download soon)
Press:
Hudson Valley Selected Gallery Guide: March 2025
The exhibtion guide will include materials lists and dates, along with artist statements.
Jaime Ransome (she/her) is a Poughkeepsie local who pursued her undergraduate degree in Film and her graduate degree in Museum Studies at Syracuse University. Ransome was the Gallery Manager and Curatorial Team Instructor at the Trolley Barn Gallery in Poughkeepsie until it closed in January 2025. In her time at the Trolley Barn Gallery, Ransome has trained countless local youth in the art of curation and museum education and is continuing to inspire young minds as she teaches introductory art history as an adjunct professor at Dutchess Community College. Ransome has curated over 30 exhibitions in her career: from member shows to international juried exhibitions to teen art showcases. Ransome is passionate about highlighting the work of living contemporary BIPOC and feminist artists and specializes in working with artists to develop site-specific, community-inspired installation work and embodying the principles of curatorial activism.
Destiny Arianna (b.1999) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice interrogates themes of identity, land, and cultural memory through the lens of Black and Indigenous experiences. Born and raised in Harlem, NY, and currently based in Dutchess County, she is a citizen and current Tribal Councilor of the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Indian Nation. Her work functions as both a mode of storytelling and an act of cultural preservation, engaging with historical erasure, personal lineage, and the complexities of contemporary Indigenous and African diasporic existence.
Destiny earned her degree from Bowdoin College, where she studied Art History, Visual Arts, and Africana Studies. Her academic and creative research emerged in response to the systemic absence of BIPOC representation within institutional curricula, a realization that catalyzed her commitment to centering Black and Indigenous narratives in the visual arts. Her thesis critically examined these gaps, solidifying a practice rooted in reclamation and archival intervention.
Working across painting, collage, photography, and installation, Destiny employs material convergence to navigate personal and collective histories. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Poughkeepsie, NY, with her debut solo exhibition, Beauty in Remembrance (2022), on Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard).
Through an interdisciplinary approach, Destiny seeks to disrupt colonial frameworks of representation, constructing visual languages that honor ancestral knowledge, lived experience, and the evolving narratives of her communities.
Destiny earned her degree from Bowdoin College, where she studied Art History, Visual Arts, and Africana Studies. Her academic and creative research emerged in response to the systemic absence of BIPOC representation within institutional curricula, a realization that catalyzed her commitment to centering Black and Indigenous narratives in the visual arts. Her thesis critically examined these gaps, solidifying a practice rooted in reclamation and archival intervention.
Working across painting, collage, photography, and installation, Destiny employs material convergence to navigate personal and collective histories. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout Poughkeepsie, NY, with her debut solo exhibition, Beauty in Remembrance (2022), on Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard).
Through an interdisciplinary approach, Destiny seeks to disrupt colonial frameworks of representation, constructing visual languages that honor ancestral knowledge, lived experience, and the evolving narratives of her communities.
Vernon M. Byron is a visual artist and designer from Spring Valley, NY. In 2011, Vernon earned a BFA with a concentration in printmaking from SUNY New Paltz. Since then, he has continued to show work at various locations in the Mid-Hudson Valley. In the Fall of 2024, Vernon returned to SUNY New Paltz to pursue an MA in Digital Design & Fabrication, where he aims to enhance his creative output by adding additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques to his practice.
Cy Hinojosa is a Hudson Valley-based artist who works primarily with charcoal, oil pastel, and acrylic paint. They graduated with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts from SUNY New Paltz in 2023. Exploring the intersection of texture, form and emotion, they place their featureless figures in strange landscapes in an attempt to escape reality for just a moment.
Lala Montoya was born and raised in Medellín Colombia, a land of strong mountains, ancient lakes and careful campesinos. It is this abundance of nature, and the abundant nature within each of us – the way nature is expressed in the body, in the work of Life – that inspires Montoya’s powerful earthen art (ceramics, wood carving, painting, printing blocks). It is through these mediums that Montoya seeks to illuminate the beauty of time, of age - to make transparent the small details often missed in the rush of progress and perfection. It is by working with youth in her partnerships that this work stays vibrant and alive.
Montoya is currently rooted at the foot of the Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, NY. She works as youth coordinator of Poughkeepsie farm project, practices language Justice throughout out the Hudson Valley and holds a strong bond with the youth she gets to work with to transitioning to being healthy and actively engaged community members.
Montoya is currently rooted at the foot of the Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, NY. She works as youth coordinator of Poughkeepsie farm project, practices language Justice throughout out the Hudson Valley and holds a strong bond with the youth she gets to work with to transitioning to being healthy and actively engaged community members.
Alisa Sikelianos-Carter is a Black, Queer mixed-media artist from upstate New York. Her practice is informed by intuitive research and explores themes of infinitude, interior landscapes, shadowwork, spirit, and futurity. She is endlessly inspired by light (both physically and metaphysically) and the dark night sky. Sikelianos-Carter lives and works in upstate NY.
Anthony “T0NEWASH” Washington is a contemporary artist and muralist from Syracuse, New York, whose work draws upon the dynamic intersection of culture, community, and history. Known for his bold and emotive use of color, Washington’s murals tell stories that bridge the gap between personal narrative and collective experience. His artwork, often infused with elements of urban street art, African American heritage, and modern aesthetics, serves as a powerful tool for public engagement, sparking conversations about identity, belonging, and social change.
Safe Harbors' Ann Street Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and with funding from the Cowles Charitable Trust, Dominican Sisters of Hope, M&T Charitable Foundation, and TD Charitable Foundation.
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