NextGen 12.0 is the 12th installment of our annual juried exhibition for emerging artists in the Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia region.

This year’s show features 15 early-career artists, ages 17 to 27; most have little or no prior exhibition experience. NextGen 12.0 gives these artists the chance to show work in a professional gallery setting and take part in a robust lineup of programming — including an opening celebration, artist talks, and peer conversations.

The exhibition includes collage, mixed-media and ceramic sculpture, abstract and figurative painting, charcoal and pastel drawings, printmaking and screenprinting, digital collage and comics, and a range of multimedia installations featuring video projection and live performance, as well as other dimensional works.

This year’s artists explore the absurdities of urban life, transform inner visions into soft, evocative worlds of love and safety, and repurpose overlooked materials to highlight humor in the mundane. Several confront Western art’s erasure of Black figures, giving voice to displaced presences and exposing the intertwined traumas of race, gender and class. Others examine the emotional and generational weight carried by eldest daughters—caregiving, expectation and inherited roles—or reflect on human vulnerability across life’s spectrum, from the lonely and impoverished to the aged and newborn. Some offer odes to the unconscious self and the essence of the Black woman, engaging in dialogue with ancestors and nature to explore spiritual and cultural connection. A few map personal journeys of identity, shaped by cultural collision and memory, using symbolic patterns to reflect belonging and becoming.

Jurors for NextGen 12.0 are Alex Ebstein, artist, independent curator and senior program manager at the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and Anisa Olufemi M., artist, curator and director of programs at Hamiltonian Artists.

ARTISTS

Jean-Luc Chretien
Adam Goodman
Alexis Irby
Leah Lowery
Emi Lundblad
Alexandra McGowan
Amuri Morris
Sora Munkhbold
Cora Olson
Keely Rae
Maria Sanchez
Shaylin Wallace
Tia Wilson
Merrin Winkel
Hu Zeqian