In spring of 2026 this collection of work was exhibited at Street Theory Collective in Cambridge, MA.

The exhibition unfolds as a path. Viewers move alongside textile works that hold fragments of diaspora life, including food, gesture, adornment, and memory, before arriving at a central space of encounter. At the center, a group of ridable animal sculptures invites the body into the work. This shift from looking to riding is intentional.

Across the exhibition, The Mz.Icar Collective drew from African diaspora and Caribbean cultural references shaped by their lived experiences. Their work builds from layered materials and imagery: burlap coffee sacks, braided forms, signage, archival fragments, and illustrated figures that move between memory and imagination.

Fruit appears throughout the work, mango, coconut, soursop, banana, pointing to histories of labor, trade, and migration. Burlap carries those histories forward, holding the weight of movement across land and water. Figures are often dressed with care and precision. Patent leather shoes, pressed clothing, and staged environments speak to protection and the quiet strategies people use to move safely through the world.

This work sits inside the tension between culture and assimilation. It considers what is carried forward and what is softened or set aside in order to survive. It also acknowledges how cultural forms are continuously reworked, repackaged, and resold, often disconnected from the people who made them.

At the same time, the exhibition makes space for joy, softness, and being held. Music, food, and gathering appear as places where the pressure lifts and people are able to exist fully.

The animals hold a different kind of question. To ride is to move, to play, to travel. It is also to be carried, to be guided, or to be burdened. In diaspora life, the line between those states is not always clear.