Gentleness Takes Form paired the work of six CGU MFA artists with five pieces of early modern European and Asian furniture and art from the Mehran Nia Collection at Claremont Graduate University. Rooted in Anne Dufourmantelle's Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, the exhibition took its cue from the Latin root of curation, "to care for", staging encounters between contemporary work and historical objects: a gilded branch suspended above a hand-painted piano, ceramics on sand beside Meiji lacquer cabinet, soft feminine forms before a mahogany mirror. Gentleness emerged through craft, labor, and detail, and through its contradictions, since a violent world is precisely what makes gentleness worth protecting.

Co-curated with Donalyn White |Galleries 128 and 129 | Claremont Graduate University, April 2024

Artists: Sara Ajami, Emma Limtiaco, Michelle Lum, Andie Ryan Round, Alexis St. John, Matt Odon Yrad.