Amira Diaw
Ava Peterson
Rebekka Federle
Olivia Porter
A house is never only a structure. It is a sequence of movements, arrangements, and experiences: arrivals and departures, objects placed then replaced, rooms slowly infused with life through use. Housewarming, Elise Seigenthaler Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, brings together a group of artists whose works consider the domesticity as a site of memory, projection, and emotional investigation.
Throughout the history of art, interiors have offered a framework for thinking through personal environments and the quiet pressures of everyday life. Neither purely private nor entirely fixed, the home emerges as a place shaped by negotiation: between self and other, permanence and impermanence, outside and inside, care and neglect. The works in Housewarming engage with these tensions, approaching domestic space not as a static backdrop but as an active and evolving habitat.
Across painting, beaded work, and sculpture, familiar elements of the home are loosened from their functional and traditional roles. Ornate decor dissolves into shimmering strokes of abstraction, rooms register absence as much as occupation, and wooden objects become affective substitutes for pets. The components and meaning of an interior are revealed as something constructed, vulnerable, and deeply entangled with personal and cultural histories.
As the gallery’s first exhibition, Housewarming reflects a moment of arrival. The exhibition extends its attention inward and treats the gallery itself as a space in the process of becoming. The works gathered in this show trace their own paths through memory, material, and imagination, offering the gallery as a provisional interior, newly occupied and still taking shape.
Amira Diaw (b. 2002 in Houston, TX) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Her paintings serve as an archive of their history, capturing moments from the 1970s through the early 2000s that lend a stranger-like quality in the realm of the family or kinship space. Diaw has exhibited her work with John St Gallery, Point Blank Gallery, and Gure. She is a BFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2026).
Rebekka Federle (b. in Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Federle received her MFA from the University of Chicago (2025). Federle’s work was recently exhibited in the solo shows The Liberators, Chat About x CWAC Exhibition Series (Cochran Woods Art Center, IL) and In Your Dreams (Topo, ME) and GOODUNANIMOUSBAD BADUNANIMOUSGOOD(Logan Center, IL)
Ava Peterson (b. 2002 in Columbus, OH) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Peterson received a BFA in Studio Art from Denison University (2024) and is an MFA candidate in Painting & Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2026). Notable exhibitions include the solo shows House & Garden (Incubator Gallery, IL) and Clear the Kitchen Table (Bryant Arts Center, OH) as well as the group show In a Child's Place (Purple Window Gallery, IL). Peterson has also received the Nan Nowik Memorial Award for Outstanding Artistic Expression (2024) and was a Luminarts Visual Arts Fellowship Finalist (2025).
Olivia Porter (b.1995 in Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Porter received her BA from Kenyon College (2018). Recent exhibitions include The Last Notice Show (Rusha & Co., CA) and Garden 2022(Ladie’s Room, CA).
