York College Arts Gallery

Opened in 1989, the Gallery presents several professional exhibitions each year, ranging from solo and thematic group exhibitions to student shows at the close of each semester.

Exhibition Statement

As her first solo exhibition, Returning to a Womb, Ecological Becoming marks a significant emergence for artist Elizabeth Velázquez. The show’s title is also fitting for the role York College has played in her practice. Velázquez is an alumna of the Artist Peer Circle program of the former Queens Council on the Arts for which small groups of artists gathered for mutual support; among participants was artist and art historian Margaret Rose Vendryes, whose efforts on York’s faculty strengthened the college’s support of Southeast Queens artists. Indeed, Peer Circle conversations launched the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance (SEQAA), a vital creative force for area artists.

SEQAA friendships have been instrumental to Velázquez’s experiments with performance. Returning to a Womb, Ecological Becoming manifests her sensorial approach to relationality: between people and land, spirit and material, individual grounding and collective memory. The newly produced Ancestral Wombs extends these ongoing investigations into forms sculpted from organic matter, imagining the womb not only as a biological organ and symbolic metaphor, but as a fundamental enveloping condition of sustenance. Wombs cross scales, from mammalian bodies to planetary and cosmic systems.

The solo project also builds upon her contribution to Roving Reverie, the 2024-2025 Southeast Queens Triennial Research Program at York. A year of conversations and workshops culminated in a performative-installation activating artist Sam Gilliam’s Solar Canopy (1986) in the college’s south atrium. Incorporating ceremony, ecology, time and place beneath the radiating heat of a nearby skylight, Velazquez’s material gestures amplified Gilliam’s desire that his ceiling work function “experientially,” reanimating it through solar energy, soundings of the room around it, and plant life from the campus's historic cemeteries. The project demonstrated how public art acts as witness.

Emily Verla Bovino, 2026 - PhD, Coordinator, Art History Program, York College.

Press Release for Returning to a Womb, Ecological Becoming Exhibition:

Artist Biography:

Elizabeth Velazquez (b. 1977) is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist and founding member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance (SEQAA). Born and raised in upstate New York to Puerto Rican and Peruvian parents, she has lived in Queens for more than two decades and is a frequent collaborator of the York College Arts History program as a member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance. Velazquez works across mixed media, installation, and performance, often incorporating ritual as a means of challenging structures of oppression. Her practice explores themes of connectedness, veneration, immateriality, and healing. She has exhibited and performed throughout New York, including at The Boiler, The Clemente, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Lehman College Art Gallery, and York College, and has participated in residencies at Wave Hill, Works on Water, and NYLAAT.

Location: York College Arts Gallery, 160-01 Liberty Avenue, Jamaica, Queens

Admission: Always free and open to the public. Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-4:30 PM (Saturday by appointment)

Parking: Free and metered parking is available on Liberty Avenue. Visitor parking is $10 at the Guy R. Brewer Boulevard Parking Lot next to the Milton G. Bassin Performing Arts Center.

Accessibility: York College is a wheelchair-accessible campus. For special accommodations, please contact ebovino@york.cuny.edu.