This event is part of a series – see below for details.September 12, 2025 10:00 a.m.
Family Business: An Exhibition by the 2024-2025 WaterFire Accelerate Cohort
Event Details
Family Business
An Exhibition by the 2024-2025 WaterFire Accelerate Cohort
On view in the gallery at the WaterFire Arts Center through October 19, 2025
Opening Reception (Housewarming): Sunday, September 14, 4:00–7:00 p.m
In Family Business, a group exhibition by the 2024–2025 WaterFire Accelerate cohort, five emerging artists—Elizabeth Alice-Isam Jweinat (Lizzy Sour), Dorian Epps, Caterina Maina, Sissy Rosso, and Ariel Tavares—transform the gallery into a reimagined household—each room reflecting their personal connection to the domestic, the intimate, and the inherited. Through immersive installation, photography, collage, sculpture, and multimedia, the artists examine how memory, lineage, and lived experience shape our sense of home and self.
What is typically private—kept behind closed doors or passed down through generations—is here made public, personal, and deeply resonant. Themes of nostalgia, confrontation, grief, and reconciliation unfold throughout the space, inviting audiences to consider their own histories and inherited truths. Each artist constructs a room of their own, offering both comfort and challenge through visual storytelling, symbolic objects, and layered emotion.
Family Business is a meditation on family—chosen and biological—and the ways in which art can offer space for healing, questioning, and reflection. Visitors are invited to wipe their feet on the mat, take a deep breath, and step inside.
EVENTS & PROGRAMS
- Valley Vibes Roof Deck Preview
Thursday, August 28, 5:00–9:00 p.m.
Featuring DJ set by Sissy and drinks by TROOP. A special summer evening preview event. - Open Studios @ Sweet Dreams Studio (Design Week RI)
Saturday, September 13, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Visit the artists’ studio at the Graduate Hotel to learn more about their creative process. - Opening Reception: Housewarming
Sunday, September 14, 4:00–7:00 p.m.
Celebrate the exhibition’s launch and meet the artists. - Gallery Night Providence
Thursday, September 18. Trolley departs WFAC at 6:30 p.m.
Tour local galleries, ending at WFAC for a guided visit of Family Business. - Artist Panel
Wednesday, October 8, 6:30 p.m.
Moderated by Jordan Seaberry. Join the artists in a reflective discussion on their work, community, and process.
The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday until 9:00 p.m. Admission is free and open to all; donations are encouraged.
ABOUT WATERFIRE ACCELERATE
WaterFire Accelerate is a year-long professional development program designed for emerging artists under 30. The program provides access to mentorship, workshops, and real-world opportunities, helping participants build sustainable creative careers.
Now in its fourth year, the 2024–2025 cohort continues to reflect Providence’s artistic vitality, supporting artists who represent a diverse range of backgrounds, mediums, and perspectives.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Elizabeth Alice-Isam Jweinat (Lizzy Sour) is a Providence-born artist with Jordanian roots, whose work transforms public spaces into vibrant, abstract canvases. Her distinctive style, developed from a lifelong love of freehand drawing, blends shape, color, and typography into a unique visual language. A RISD alumni with a BFA and recently acquired Master’s in Art Education, community organizer, and mentor, Lizzy is dedicated to supporting marginalized artists and fostering creative expression in the next generation. Through her murals, sculptures, and diverse artistic mediums, she weaves together her Middle Eastern heritage and the dynamic spirit of her city.
Dorian Epps (He/Him/His) is an Experiential and Product Designer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A 2021 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Industrial Design, his passion lies in exploring the intersection of design and athletics. He has navigated this middle ground through apparel and accessory design, speculative design, multimedia collages, animations, printmaking, and various other forms of storytelling and making.
Sports-related explorations are central to his brand, Blacktop Market, which serves as a platform for merging creative practice and curiosity with athletic culture. Through his work, Dorian seeks to push the boundaries of storytelling — connecting people who, under ordinary circumstances, might not recognize a shared narrative.
Using sports and his identity as a lens to foster dialogue, his practice is shaped by both individual and collaborative design efforts. These deeply influence the ways in which his growing community engages with one another and with the work itself.
Caterina Maina is an Italian-American artist based in Providence, RI. Her work explores themes of memory, family, and connection through contemporary photography, and her latest project marks her first foray into installation art and the use of archival imagery. Her practice reflects a deep commitment to preserving personal histories and evoking the emotional resonance of everyday moments. Caterina’s art has been exhibited in galleries across the United States. She’s notably been exhibited at the Susan Eley Fine Art Gallery (NYC, 2021), Delaplaine Arts Center (Maryland, 2022), Fitchburg Art Museum (Massachusetts, 2025), and Axis Gallery (Sacramento, 2025). She earned her BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she received numerous awards for her projects and artistic vision.
caterinamainaphotography.com
@_4x5junkie
@caterinamaina.studio
Sissy Rosso, born in the Bronx, NY, and raised in Providence, RI, Sissy is a multidisciplinary artist, an art director, world builder, working across collage, printmaking, and storytelling. Her work explores memory, space, and identity through a Caribbean lens, drawing from her lived experiences as a Dominican-American and first-generation artist. She brings her inner world to life through richly layered visuals that honor both personal and collective histories.
Her visual work informs her approach to art direction, where she blends research, intuition, and narrative to build emotionally resonant worlds. Sissy uses visual language as a tool for storytelling, pulling from archives, textures, and cultural references to shape cohesive and intentional creative visions.
Sissy’s work invites viewers to feel nostalgia, to see themselves reflected in unexpected ways, and to witness how visual storytelling can reclaim lost or overlooked narratives. This sensibility shaped the work she presented in the 2024 Black Biennial at the RISD Museum.
Ariel Tavares believes in the power of prayer, the power of words, the power of people, the power of imagination, and the power of a lil sweet treat after a meal.
Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, she was sustained by a big family of cousins & pots of Cape Verdean dishes handmade by a line of heavy-handed, love-filled immigrant matriarchs who shaped her work ethic, commitment to community, and love for yellow porches.
Ariel is a multimedia artist and performer who uses a range of mediums, including poetry, photography, collaging, crafting, event curation & digital art. Her work explores the question of “What If?” a question that drives her artistic practice, sometimes outfit choices, and most importantly her spirituality which is the source of her inspiration. For Ariel, art & creativity are a means of personal and collective liberation.
Ariel is a past alum of the 2024 Graduate Hotel Sweet Dreams Society Residency, where her Garden of Dreams Exhibition received an official citation from the State of Rhode Island. She completed the Creative Reuse Center of RI’s Barbara Grandis Artist Residency and recently won the Motif 2025 Spoken Word: Free Verse Poet Award.
Organizer
