INTERVAL

One Day Exhibition: Saturday, February 21, 2026 / 4pm-8pm
3822 Luca St, Houston, Texas 77021

Featuring the work of Kaima Marie Akarue, Keliy Anderson-Staley, William Bossen, & Simon Silva
Performance by Isabella Mireles Vik featuring Emily Wang
Curated by Jessi Bowman, FLATS Founder & Photographer Ryan Francisco
Hosted by Dr. Rachel Afi Quinn, assistant professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Houston

Interval explores the space between moments, the pause where meaning gathers and transformation begins. Anchored in photography and expanded through mixed media, projection, and movement-based performance, the exhibition considers what lies beyond the frame and between gestures, where personal histories and inherited narratives quietly surface.

The works in Interval move fluidly between stillness and motion, presence and memory. Photographs capture fragments of time shaped by lived experiences, while projections and layered materials introduce rhythm, repetition, and the cyclical nature of remembrance. A movement-based performance activates the exhibition, responding to the visual works and extending their narratives into the body, breath, and shared space, echoing the ways memory is carried, transmitted, and transformed across generations.

Together, these practices invite viewers to linger within the in-between. To consider how movement holds memory, how images are shaped by family, history, and intimacy, and to notice what unfolds when we slow down, listen, and allow images to move through us.

Featured Artists:

Kaima Marie Akarue

Kaima Marie, the daughter of a Nigerian immigrant and a white mother, explores identity through collage, focusing on urbanism, capitalism, and erased narratives. Kaima constructs layered environments that challenge viewers to reflect on identity, memory, and the spaces we inhabit and often overlook. Her work preserves personal and collective histories, reimagining memory and place. She has exhibited nationally at institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, earning accolades such as the 2024 Jones Artist Award and the Carol Crow Fellowship. Her work is part of private and institutional collections, including the MFAH, the Guess Lawson’s, and the Carter Knowles Collection. She received her MFA from the University of Houston in 2025 and recently finished her residency at Black Rock Senegal.

Keliy Anderson-Staley

The first time I met my biological father was 2014, the same year I became a mother. Until the age of twelve, I didn’t know that my father, Tom, who had been raising us in an off-grid cabin in Maine, was not my “real” father. More shocking was that he had always known, but chose to raise me as his daughter. My mother gave me a single blurry photograph of my biological father—the only one she had—but I lost it a few years later.

Between 2014 and 2017, I photographed both of my fathers multiple times, hoping to understand them, my childhood, and the role photography has played in my perception of family. This effort culminated in a set of tintype portraits of both men, presented as an intermixed grid. The men look uncannily similar and often difficult to tell apart. The portraits vary in their clarity and what they reveal; none can serve as a definitive portrait of the man or of my relationship to him.

William Bossen

William Bossen is Texas-based artist pursuing his MFA in Photo Media at the University of Houston. His multidisciplinary practice spans photography, video, printmaking, and sound art. He explores the interplay of memory, identity, and personal histories, weaving intimate insights into broader reflections on human experience. Through an auto-ethnographic approach, he draws from his lived experiences to examine how these shape his perceptions, biases, and worldview while connecting to wider cultural narratives.

He draws inspiration from Pierre Nora’s “lieux de mémoire” and Marianne Hirsch’s “postmemory,” and uses these ideas to investigate how personal and collective histories mold our worldviews. He sees memory as dynamic, like Cubist paintings, where every angle uncovers recursive layers of meaning, space, and time. This perspective drives him to layer elements in his pieces, creating compositions that shift with viewer engagement and reveal hidden connections over repeated viewings.

His work challenges assumptions about identity, aiming to bridge individual reflection with collective dialogue on resilience and shared existence. Using structural symbolism, He speaks into fragmented narratives of dissonance and healing by urging his audience to reconsider their own place in these unfolding dynamics. His practice seeks to foster contemplation of how we construct ourselves within our environments, exploring the marks we leave on our surroundings, both literal and metaphorical. It posits that true understanding emerges from the liminal spaces between ambition and quiet persistence, encouraging a reevaluation of our identities in a complex world. He aims to spark ongoing conversations that extend beyond the artwork itself by turning passive observation into active introspection about the fluid nature of self and society.

Simon Silva

Simon Silva, is a photographer born and raised in Houston, Texas. Growing up on the southwest side of Houston, he experienced a rich blend of cultures that shaped his perspective. This cultural diversity is central to his work, as he highlights black and brown communities in a positive light, offering a counter-narrative to their often-negative portrayals. Often showcasing the more intimate aspects of Latinx life. Throughout his journey as a photographer, he has been deeply fascinated by the themes of spirituality and religion, and how he can weave these elements together while reflecting his cultural background. Currently, he is focusing on editorial photography, as it gives him the freedom to approach his work in a more conceptual way. His projects range from intricate shoots involving multiple extras to minimalist setups that center solely on a single subject and their styling. Inspired by the raw, authentic photography of Gordon Parks and the meticulously planned compositions of Richard Avedon, he strives to evoke emotion while creating otherworldly yet grounded images. His hope is that his work resonates, giving voice to underrepresented communities and inviting viewers to engage with them in a new light

FLATS programming is sponsored by Fresh Arts and is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance