Image courtesy of the artist
From January 9-February 18, 2026, New City Arts presents Sueños Florecientes/Flowering Dreams: Portals to Self, an exhibition of work by Karina A. Monroy, with featured works by Andrea Agredano and Carmen Monroy.
In this new body of work, Karina explores concepts of intergenerational matrilineal healing through art-making and the cultivation of dreaming practices. Inspired by Mexico’s ancestral practice of lucid dreaming—referred to as flowering dreams—Karina uses crochet, painting, embroidery, video installation and performance to embody and bring her dreams into the material world.
Exhibition Statement (courtesy of the artist)
Dear viewer,
Welcome. Within this exhibition, you will find a body of work that honors process and making as a form of healing. A partial culmination of a multi-year journey cultivating a dreaming practice that has supported my own healing. In essence, a journey of learning to listen to my Self. Flowering dreams refers to Mexico's ancestral practice of lucid dreaming as medicine. In a lucid dream, one experiences the conscious and unconscious interacting with one another—dancing with one another—breathing life into one another. Art-making has offered a similar experience for me. Questions that have felt too large, or unbearable to answer alone have been left for my ancestors to support me—guide me—and they have responded through flowering dreams. Here, I untangle and unpack matrilineal wounds that I have carried for myself and for the women before me.
Through crochet, I have explored what it means to break patterns while embracing ancestral traditions. The combination of crochet with pomegranates, picked from my maternal grandmother’s home, become stand-ins for a disruption of intergenerational patterns taught and inherited. I had to understand the pattern prior to the disruption. Through painting and sewing, I have honored and depicted messages brought through dreams. Through video and performance, I explore the embodiment of it all.
I invite you to immerse yourself fully—checking in with your senses as you interact with the work, and contemplate your own healing practices, patterns you have broken, and the ways in which you have honored or reclaimed your own lineage. How have these practices led you to your Self?
Con cariño,
Karina A. Monroy
About the Artist
Karina A. Monroy is a California born Chicana, mixed media artist and art therapist based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She holds a B.A. in Art and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in Art Therapy from The George Washington University. As an artist and art therapist, Karina is process-driven – embodying art-making as ritual, and ritual as art-making. Her work explores, challenges and embraces themes of healing, femininity and matrilineal legacies within Chicanx culture. Through needlework, painting, sculpture and drawing, Karina creates delicate images and objects as sacred restorative offerings for herself and her feminine ancestors.
New City Arts' Welcome Gallery
114 3rd St. NE, Charlottesville, VA 22902
Exhibition Opening Reception
January 9 from 5-7:30PM; Artist talk at 6PM. Free and open to the public. All ages welcome. Exhibition opening sponsored by William Taylor and the Taylor Group of Truist Investment Services.
Gallery Hours
Wednesday-Saturday from 10AM-5PM
Exhibition Events
Co-Working at Welcome Gallery | 1/21 & 2/12 | 10AM-5PM | Free, public co-working day with coffee & pastries
Sensory-Friendly Second Saturdays | 1/9 & 2/14 | 10AM-5PM | Explore the exhibition with modifications made to ensure the space is accessible and inclusive for visitors with sensory sensitivities.
Analog Hour Fridays | Weekly from 1/16-2/13| 12-1PM | Bring your lunch, stash your phone, and join us for a screen-free hour.
Mending & Transforming Sewing Circles with Karina | 1/18 & 2/15 from 3-5PM | Bring a textile project and join Karina at this free, drop-in event.
New City Reads | 1/28 from 5-7:30PM | Join us for a discussion of this month’s book selection. Learn more & RSVP here.
Visitor Guide
In Karina A. Monroy’s immersive exhibition, work is installed on the walls, suspended from the ceiling, and arranged on the floor, inviting the viewer to wind their way slowly through the space. On three of the gallery’s walls, Karina’s paintings, which are richly colored and feature fine lines and intricate detail, are shown alongside crochet works made by her mother and grandmother within deep blue and red painted backgrounds. Throughout the center of the gallery, lace panels, embroidered works, and dried pomegranates with crocheted details are suspended from the ceiling, slightly obscuring the visitor’s view of the installation near the back of the exhibition. Here, a small wood table is covered in a tablecloth stained with pomegranate juice and arranged with found objects, embroidery floss, an embroidered work, bits of pomegranate, and dried flowers. Two chairs are positioned on either side of the table and face a film projection on the opposite wall. In front of the projection, an embroidered dress is suspended from the ceiling and under it is a cloth stained with pomegranate juice and a line of pomegranates. In the film, hands are seen seeding pomegranates and a conversation among women in Karina’s family, held in Spanish, is overheard. The conversation fades and Karina begins to speak in a quiet tone, moving through an exploration, reminiscent of a body scan, of self and embodiment.
Please note: Work in this exhibition is installed on the floor and suspended from the ceiling throughout the space. Visitors are asked to use care moving throughout the space and to accompany children as they view the work. Viewers are invited to gently interact with the textile work installed in the middle of the room and to sit in the chairs while watching the film projected in the middle of the gallery.
Thank You
This exhibition is supported by Lisa M. Draine and the Bama Works Fund of Dave Matthews Band at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.