Queens Botanical Garden is pleased to partner with AnkhLave Arts Alliance to present the return of the Annual AnkhLave Garden Project for its 8th year!
This year’s show, The Art of Storytelling, was put together by lead curator Darlene Deloris with assistance from Curatorial Fellow Megan Elevado, and features site-specific works by six different local artists: Haksul Lee, Marco DaSilva, Elisa Soliven, Naya Lee Chang, Cecile Chong, and Dara Ojugbele.
On view throughout the Garden until December 6.
Learn more about the initiative, the artists, and their artworks below.
Exhibition Statement
Historically, art has found space to exist within, and alongside, every conceivable field of study. From mathematical models to philosophical literatures, the brilliant colors and structural lines of art have been used to help interpret intellectual concepts since the dawn of time. Like the griots of historical African cultures, today’s curators hold a responsibility to tell stories, educate, and relay historical events using various creative methods including art. Cultures all over the world have histories of griot-like individuals and visual creators sharing information with society through storytelling. Korea has the “history narrator” 역사 구송자 (Yeoksa Gusongja). Brazil uses “griô” to describe the storyteller who preserves oral histories and ancestral traditions. Puerto Rico refers to their oral historians as a “trovador.” And in the language of the Kichwa, the diverse indigenous peoples of South America, “willakuk” refers to narrator or storyteller.
‘The Art of Storytelling’ curates the vividly brilliant works of 6 NYC creatives into the lush and peaceful gardens of Queens Botanical Garden. It utilizes traditional storytelling techniques and a common goal to educate each other to information that is not commonly considered. ’ This exhibition encourages viewers to interact with the art by making music with “Sympathetic Resonance” by Haksul Lee, consider iconography as culture in the podial sculpture of Marco DaSilva, walking the Fibonacci sequence leading up to the totems of Elisa Soliven, embracing lost waterways through the works of Naya Lee Chang, paying homage to memory and traditions through sculptures and bee community in the ceramic works ‘Held & Holding’ by Cecile Chong, and by reflecting and meditating on the botanical branch sculpture of Dara Ojugbele. Connecting these works and honoring the gardens’ commitment to fostering an inclusive environment, curator Darlene Deloris tells the story of collective wisdom in this year’s Garden Project Fellowship Program’s Public Art Installation.
About the Artists
Marco DaSilva
“A Tradition of Elegance and Quality in Three Dimensions”
Location: Unity Garden
“A Tradition of Elegance and Quality in Three Dimensions” is a mosaic sculpture that explores the relationship between natural and urban environments — inspired by shoe repair shop signs across New York City and brought to life on a monumental men’s dress shoe.
The work draws from Brazil’s Malandro archetype, a cultural figure associated with wit, style, and urban survival as well as the idea of the “gentleman” embodied by the elegance of classic American menswear in figures like Fred Astaire. Through this fusion, the sculpture examines how urban patterns and symbols become part of one’s personal ecology.
Raised in New York City, DaSilva’s understanding of environment and place was shaped by streetscapes: shoe repair shops, beauty salons, barbershops, and neon signage. These textures inform the sculpture’s surface, which incorporates mosaic patterns inspired by Roberto Burle Marx’s Copacabana shoreline in Rio de Janeiro and yellow accents that reference timeless New York City taxi cabs. A plant emerging from the shoe introduces natural growth into the urban form.
Constructed from carved insulation foam, mortar, mirror, tile, and stained glass, the work reflects an interest in elevating everyday objects into something sacred. Through the process of mosaic, the widely advertised men’s dress shoe is transformed into a hybrid relic reflecting migration, cultural exchange, and transformation.
Haskul Lee
“Sympathetic Resonance”
Location: Cherry Circle
Sympathetic Resonance is an interactive multimedia installation measuring 6 feet high, 25 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. The structural foundation consists of five hollow steel columns, each measuring 1′ × 1′ × 5′, containing internal resonant tubes tuned to a stable major pentatonic scale.
Branching outward and bridging the gaps between these pillars is an intricate network of satellite tubing that introduces a fully developed scale of non-pentatonic, discordant notes. Due to the expansive 25-foot horizontal span, the sculpture physically resists individual control. It deliberately engineers physical interdependence, requiring a coordinated group effort to navigate the space, strike the materials, and activate a fully realized musical piece.
The installation serves as a lived metaphor for urban solidarity, tolerance, and diversity. True community does not exist in a vacuum of flawless, engineered uniformity; it thrives on the friction, tension, and unexpected juxtapositions of a diverse population. Just as great music relies on dissonance to find its depth, social beauty is found in imperfection, discrepancy, and shared struggle.
While the five core columns represent our shared infrastructure and common ground, the interconnecting satellite tubes map the complex, challenging dialogues that happen between us. By demanding collective cooperation to play the instrument, solidarity transforms from an abstract academic concept into an active, physical practice. Ultimately, this work treats art as an intuitive, sensory experience—akin to a food experience—where repeated exposure allows the public to taste, absorb, and find harmony within societal tension.
Naya Lee Chang
“Travels on the Kissena Creek”
Location: Parking Garden Bridge 
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” —Toni Morrison
Before it was rerouted underground to make room for nineteenth-century development, a stream ran
through what is now the Queens Botanical Garden. When it rains, the memory of that stream is visible, as runoff flows into various constructed valleys, before being absorbed into the ground.
In this installation, which is sited in the northwest portion of the garden, three headwalls (facades built at the outlets of culverts, or water tunnels) draw attention to the historical Kissena Creek and its ghost. The facades are inspired by architectural traditions in Mexico, India, and Korea—a small selection of the many nations from which Queens residents hail.
The markers celebrate the diversity of Queens while engaging in a symbolic “daylighting”: the process of restoring and protecting a buried waterway. The work seeks to extend the Queens Botanical Garden’s mission of exploring the ecological and cultural role of water in urban environments across the world.
Cecile Chong
“Held & Holding”
Location: Bee Garden 
“Held & Holding” is a site-responsive installation of stacked ceramic sculptures inspired by the artist’s recurring theme of the guagua, a Kichwa word meaning baby or child. Balancing and
supporting one another, the forms evoke caregiving, kinship, and interdependence.
Created for the Queens Botanical Garden, the sculptures draw inspiration from wetland plants and organic forms, connecting the landscapes of Queens with those of the artist’s native Ecuador. Their vertical formations suggest growth and resilience, echoing the ways people, plants, and cultures take root and transform over time.
Born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and based in New York City, Chong explores migration, ecology, and language through painting, sculpture, installation, and public art. Across her practice, she works through layers of material, memory, history, and cultural exchange, tracing the shared threads of humanity that connect people, places, and generations.
In “Held & Holding,” the stacked forms reflect how knowledge and traditions are carried forward, each generation building upon the foundations laid by those who came before. The installation is also reminding us that, like the garden itself, we flourish through connection.
Oluwadara Ojugbele
“Cultivator of Cosmic Balance”
Location: Deconstructed Wetlands 
A large, basket-like head is constructed from locally foraged fallen twigs, branches, and tree bark. Drawing from the artist’s Yoruba heritage within a diasporic context, the form is inspired by
West African Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ masks. The basket shape evokes the containment and protection of life and community, while its calm, relaxed face embodies harmony and balance.
These references connect to Yoruba-Nago Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ masquerade spectacles, which evolved from fertility rituals and are performed in anticipation of a good harvest, traditionally fostering social accord within communities. They honor women, especially elder women, who are regarded as powerful, as well as the feminine principle of the earth, the primordial mother known as Iya Nla.
A dove rests atop the head, which serves as the site of one’s ori, a personal connection to the infinite cosmic life force and a holder of intuition in Yoruba cosmology. Birds signify àṣẹ, or divine power, through their ability to fly. Doves, more specifically, represent calm and good fortune. Color accents contrast with the natural wood, reflecting the vibrancy of the natural world. Vivid, earthy, and cool tones of reddish-brown and blue evoke tranquility and wisdom.
This work is a tribute to social and ecological resilience, the upliftment of feminine power, and enduring hopes for stability and ease.
Elisa Soliven
“Waterfall Body Totem for Pingala’s Spiral with Butterfly Bench”
Location: Fibonacci Spiral in the Meadow 
In my work, I look to the gestural marks of clay as a mode of totem-making, both as symbols of connection and as a recording of time. For the Queens Botanical Garden Project, I made a body totem, with an abstract waterfall running down its front. The totem contains square orifices and crosses in a grid-like structure that interconnects the modular parts.
A ‘Butterfly Bench’ with square tiles showing the diverse population of Indigenous butterflies of New York, stands in the vicinity of the totem. Butterflies are crucial for maintaining ecosystem biodiversity. They are also indicators of environmental health. Butterflies act as essential pollinators for native plants and are vital to a healthy ecosystem. Visitors are invited to rest on the bench, contemplate the sculpture, and take in the beauty of the Queens Botanical Gardens.
Butterflies also have deep cultural significance. They represent rebirth, balance and ancestral connections. Within the Queens Botanical Gardens, the site is located in a field area where the Fibonacci spiral is mowed into the grass. The Fibonacci number is a natural occurring geometric pattern found in nature. In order to maximize space and air, plants often grow within this sequence. While the symbol of the butterfly also signifies balance and harmony, so does the Fibonacci spiral, a mathematical sequence that was originally found by the ancient Indian poet and mathematician Acharya Pingala. I named my piece “Waterfall Totem for Pingala’s Spiral with Butterfly Bench.”
About Ankhlave Arts Alliance
AnkhLave Arts Alliance is a New York City–based nonprofit founded and directed by visual artist Dario Mohr to support BIPOC artists in continuing the legacy of their Indigenous and cultural heritage through contemporary art. Through its flagship Annual AnkhLave Garden Project Fellowship (since 2019), Annual Curatorial Fellowship and Annual Public Artist-in-Residence programs (both since 2022), as well as the AnkhLave Arts Alliance Gallery and Art Residency on Governors Island (since 2024), the organization creates opportunities for artists and audiences to engage in dialogue about heritage while combating erasure through the shared lens of creative amplification.
Many artists with ancestry from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas have historically been excluded from the broader art conversation, relegated to the ethnographic wings of museums and reinforcing the belief that works from these regions exist in a timeless void of stagnation. Since AnkhLave’s founding as a collective in 2012 and its establishment as a nonprofit in 2018, the organization has championed not only the work of BIPOC artists but also accessible spaces where BIPOC communities can experience art outside traditional white-walled galleries. By utilizing green spaces throughout New York City, AnkhLave encourages generations of diverse audiences to participate in the artistic dialogue—a pillar of culture that shapes how we all live.
Green spaces are not only sanctuaries that naturally inspire curiosity and childlike wonder, but they also reflect the traditional gathering and viewing spaces of Indigenous societies around the world, making them AnkhLave’s exhibition spaces of choice. Garden Project venues have included Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wave Hill, and Queens Botanical Garden.