Work
Press Release
Liberté éclairant le monde:
Liberty Enlightening the World
Artists: Taraneh Hemami,Wakana Kimura, Preetika Rajgariah, Reyah, Gabriele Severson, Lien Truong and Sanjay Vora
EXHIBITION DATES: July 18 – August 22, 2026
RECEPTION: Please join us for a celebratory reception for the artists on July 18th from 3–5:30 pm
Conversation & Walk-through: Saturday, July 18th at 2 pm
with Taraneh Hemami, Preetika Rajgariah, Gabriele Severson, Sanjay Vora and Wakana Kimura.
* This is a standing only event –please let us know if you need special accommodations.
PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is pleased to present Liberté éclairant le monde: Liberty Enlightening the World, Part 2 of Summer 2026 with artists Taraneh Hemami (San Francisco),Wakana Kimura (Los Angeles), Preetika Rajgariah (Houston), Reyah (Los Angeles), Gabriele Severson (San Francisco), Lien Truong (Chapel Hill) and Sanjay Vora (Oakland). The artists were not asked to make work for this exhibition; rather, work was selected representative of their studio practices.
America’s founding documents offered visions of a united country rising above cries of hate, xenophobia, and racism, a country that would strive for the highest ideals. Liberty Enlightening the World became that symbol of strength, courage, and compassion.
Emma Goldman, a political exile from Russia, arrived in America in 1885. In her memoir Liberty Enlightening the World, Goldman wrote, “She held her torch high to light the way to the free country, the asylum for the oppressed of all lands.” Emma Lazarus dedicated a poem, The New Colossus, “… Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Erected on Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty became a beacon of hope in a turbulent America. As today, the political, racial, and economic divisions during the mid-19th century to early 20th century were profoundly fragmented, serving only the privileged few. The odd specter of Liberty, a towering female figure, funded by private wealth, became an indomitable revolutionary symbol for those powerless and oppressed. With one outstretched arm offering the light of resistance, the other arm cradling the Declaration of Independence, she unflinchingly proclaims, Freedom for All!
Yet a conundrum exists: how could a country that invaded and enslaved people for their economic value, fought a war to remain a slave-holding economy, turned away ethnic asylum seekers to their deaths during WWII and countless massacres in other nations, interned Japanese-American citizens in locked camps, held women as chattel and children as slave labor, and eradicated every Native American nation whose lands we occupy, the atrocities are endless—how could this be the country that held an enlightened beacon of hope for the world?
Somehow America was, and for many continues to be the promise of a future free from what was left behind. Ordinary and extraordinary voices elevated founding documents, telling America who it could be, who it must be, telling of injustices, and putting forth remedies. Those voices found supremacy—they were not silenced, subdued, or erased. People came to America for every reason, but mostly for hope. America was and still is a country of immigrants from all nations, African Americans who descended from America’s legacy of slavery, and Native tribes whose many nations America massacred and colonized.
With this preface, Liberty Enlightening the World is not about a single voice declaring who is American. We live in a polarized nation where the pillars of freedom are always tumbling, where we have to retrench and reclaim the ideal of a nation that celebrates Liberty, Justice and Freedom. As citizens we define and celebrate our many identities, yet we remain one nation.
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Taraneh Hemami’s work is the struggle of Iran and America. Her practice is both community-centered, helping other Iranian artists transition to America and also singular as she describes and declaims state violence, grieving, loss, and erasure.
Taraneh’s handcrafted replications of historical archives serve as commemoratives to events, places and people, while commenting on tools of manipulation and persuasion used across nations and histories. Her sources have varied from an image downloaded from a US governmental site for examination of perception and stereotyping in the Most Wanted series to a collection of banned books and propaganda of the Iranian underground movement that narrate the Iranian revolution in the Theory of Survival project.
Hemani has received awards from Creative Capital, Creative Work Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, California Council for the Humanities, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. Her works have been exhibited widely, including at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Victoria and Albert Museum, Boghossian Foundation, and the Sharjah International Biennial.
Wakana Kimura is a Japanese artist who spent many of her formative years in America. Her metaphorical foil is Buddism. Gods and goddesses traverse, emerge, and direct her choreography of subjects. Always one step ahead of understanding, always struggling to enlighten, her paintings won’t offer easy paths of recognition.
Kimura was born in 1978 in Izu, Shizuika, Japan. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Japan. She received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2011 and a BFA from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2002. Kimura is the recipient of the cover of the Los Angeles Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2025; 2023 COLA Independent Artist Project, Los Angeles; 2017-2020 Robertson Recreation Center mural from the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, and in 2013 received a commission from the Los Angeles Metro, Through the Eyes of the Artist. Museum exhibitions include RSVP Los Angeles: The Project Series at Pomona, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont; IMA, Hinokisoken, Museum Meiji-Mura, Aichi, Japan, and Invoke, Udatsu no Kogei Kan Museum, Fukui.
Preetika Rajgariah is an Indian born, Texas raised American. “My work is an exploration of my layered identity – as an immigrant, as a brown woman, as an “American”, as a Southerner, as a queer person”. She works with a range of materials inspired by my personal and cultural history that delve into discussions of feminism, cultural appropriation, standards of body, intersectionality, and notions of longing. Rajariah’s work has been reviewed by The Brooklyn Rail, NY; Oxford American, AR; Sixty Inches from Center, IL; Artforum Magazine; The Idea Fund, TX and ACTX, TX.
Reyah is a nonbinary photographer who has devoted his career to capturing the performance of their nude self-portraiture. Their photos are epistemological studies, emotive cries of desire, speaking to the political discourse of the moment. Reyah was a guest speaker in a series produced at MoAD, In the Artists Studio—Reyah.
Gabriele Severson is in the final MFA graduating class from California College of the Arts. Culturally estranged from her father’s Siletz tribal traditions and heritage, Gabriele is learning about her cultural roots in understanding her relationship to a nation she never knew. Her work weaves visual narratives with beads.
Lien Truong was air lifted out of Vietnam with her family airlifts evacuating South Vietnamese during the abrupt departure of American troops. Her work addresses the psychological consequences of displacement, emigrating, and growing up in America. Truong’s paintings metaphorically trace her matriarchal lineage and the complexities of mother/daughter relationships, which were further complicated by the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Truong has exhibited in institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery [Washington, DC], Nasher Museum of Art [Durham, NC], Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University [CA], North Carolina Museum of Art [Raleigh, NC], Southern Exposure [San Francisco, CA], Van Every | Smith Galleries [Davidson, NC], Station Museum of Contemporary Art [Houston, TX], Weatherspoon Art Museum [Greensboro, NC], Cameron Art Museum [Wilmington, NC], the Centre of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, Oakland Museum of California, and Pennsylvania Academy of Art [Philadelphia, PA]. Her awards and fellowships include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, the Institute of the Arts and Humanities, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fine Arts Fellowships, and residencies at the Oakland Museum of California, Jentel Foundation, and the Marble House Project.
Sanjay Vora grew up in Baltimore. He works from nostalgic family photos: a family barbeque, running through the sprinkler, a camping trip. Nothing describes his Indian heritage, just another family in America. Sanjay Vora is currently on view in Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry at Pacific Asia Museum through September 6th.