Dates: September 1 – October 15, 2025

Gallery: The 34Gallery

Organized by: The 34 Gallery in partnership with SimukaAfrica.org (SAYA)

Framework: Part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal SDG 3.4 Initiative (Mental Health & Wellbeing), in collaboration with UNV.org

Silence as a Language

Trauma leaves many traces, but not always in the form of visible pain. More often it lingers as silence: a frozen state of emotional detachment, an absence that resists articulation. The September group exhibition Stillness, presented by 34 Gallery in partnership with SimukaAfrica.org (SAYA), invites artists across continents to interpret this complex aftermath.

Founded in 2006, SimukaAfrica.org is a Zimbabwe-based charitable organization that supports at-risk youth, families, and survivors of child marriage through education, vocational training, medical outreach, food provision, and psychosocial care. Stillness emerges from this humanitarian framework as part of SAYA’s SDG 3.4 Initiative, aligning with the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. Here, contemporary art becomes not only a site of aesthetic inquiry but also a form of public health advocacy.

Participating Artists

The exhibition gathers a diverse roster of participating artists whose works span visual art, photography, digital media, and poetry. Together, they render the contours of stillness in its many forms:

Mary Stone Art – Beside the Absence
A meditation on vacancy, where emptiness itself becomes presence.

Madland – Labyrinth of Self
An inner maze reflecting the disorientation of trauma.

thedumbbandshee – Stillness II
A frozen corridor that suspends both time and body.

Mitochondralorian – Of Echo and Absence
The Room Where Gravity Forgot Me Works that transform silence into echo and weightlessness.

The Last Bard – Ghosts of Echoes / The Waiting Room
Poetic explorations of language as a faltering witness.

Lingfei Shen – Dissolving Together
Figures that fade into one another, caught between connection and loss.

Kira Risugawa – Quietude in the Winter Desolation
A portrait of solitude against a barren winter backdrop.

Oti Tsone – Serene
A seascape where calmness conceals isolation.

Hiroshi Kawazumi – One Quiet Evening On The Hill
Photography capturing dusk as a breath of quietude.

liapsart – Invictus
A surreal landscape of masked figures and avian flight.

Margaret Furr – Emotions
Texts confronting turbulence and fleeting calm.

Usha M Reddy – Echoes Between the Steps
A solitary figure suspended within an architectural void.

Doğan Özdemir – Bipolar
Portraiture fractured into states of discord and duality.

FotoGraafHanneke – The Owl Kept My Silence
A quiet dialogue between human and owl, heavy with unspoken witness.

Brooke Moran – Portrait of Child Self Painted on Collage of Old Suicide Notes
A haunting self-portrait inscribed within fragments of memory.

Shelley Lafferty – Between the Shadows
Shadows and forms overlapping in muted light.

Renata Kaman – All that remains
A body reclined within the earth, fragile yet enduring.

Muriel Lherm – Veins of Quiet
Elaborate floral motifs entwined with tears, balancing beauty and rupture.

Celestino Espinoza López – Dissociative Identity
A vivid portrait where multiple faces collide, reflecting the fractured tension of dissociative identity.

Deborah Kimble – Alone
Layered folds of canvas spiral inward, evoking the wound and quiet gaze of isolation.

Beyond Aesthetics

Stillness is less about artistic style than about recognition. By situating creative practice within SimukaAfrica’s humanitarian mission, the exhibition frames art as a therapeutic gesture and a vehicle for advocacy. It reminds us that survivors’ silence is not absence but presence—an embodied condition deserving of attention, dignity, and care.

The exhibition also underscores the role of virtual platforms in contemporary art. Far from diminishing its relevance, the digital format extends reach, connecting artists and audiences who might otherwise remain excluded from institutional spaces or mental health discourse.

Conclusion

Through Stillness, 34 Gallery and SimukaAfrica.org articulate an ambitious synthesis of art, health, and advocacy. Positioned within the UN’s SDG 3.4 framework, the exhibition demonstrates how contemporary art can intervene in urgent social realities while honoring the quiet resilience of those who live with trauma.

Exhibition Access: 34gallery.org/open-calls

SimukaAfrica.org: https://simukaafrica.org/

Instagram: @simukaafricaofficial

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