An Immersive New Art Experience Arrives in Downtown Phoenix

Welcome Home is a new, evolving artist platform and curatorial initiative founded by artists Ozlem Yeni and Chris Agnese, designed to create immersive, community-centered art experiences that explore memory, identity, belonging, and human connection. Conceived as a mobile and internationally minded platform rather than a permanent physical space, Welcome Home aims to host workshops, exhibitions, and educational programming throughout Phoenix, across the U.S., and internationally — with activations planned in locations including Turkiye, Australia, and Brazil.

Rooted in the belief that art can function as both a personal archive and a communal gathering place, Welcome Home brings together artists working across textile, installation, film, sound, and participatory practices to create environments that invite reflection, dialogue, and connection. Future programming will include education-based workshops centered around honoring foundational artistic mediums such as drawing, weaving, and handicraft traditions, while fostering cross-cultural artistic exchange and collaboration.

The platform’s inaugural exhibition opens June 12 at 6:30 PM at Central Arts Market (CAM) Gallery in Downtown Phoenix. The immersive group exhibition transforms the gallery into a living environment where installation, performance, film, and textile practice converge to explore what it means to create home through shared experience.

At the center of the exhibition is Co-founder Ozlem Yeni’s evolving work LIFE, a large-scale woven textile piece constructed from photographs from the artist’s own life. Inspired by traditional kilim and basket weaving techniques, the photographs are cut into strips and woven together into a textured archive of memory, migration, identity, and human connection. Embedded within the surface, the word “LIFE” slowly emerges through Yeni’s hand-drawn patterns — revealing itself gradually, much like memory itself. Throughout the evening, Yeni will continue weaving the piece live, allowing the work to evolve in real time alongside the audience.

The exhibition will open with an introduction by Melissa Erickson, Founder & Executive Director of The Funding Studio, whose work at the intersection of art, culture, and community has helped foster meaningful dialogue around creative practice and public engagement.

Also featured is co-founder, filmmaker, and artist Chris Agnese, whose immersive installation transforms a portion of the gallery into an intimate bedroom environment. Complete with their own film playing on a television alongside layered domestic imagery, the work explores emotional memory, nostalgia, and sensory experience through cinematic space. Brazilian artist and researcher Cecilia Andrade presents Eating Memory, a contemplative work that examines ritual, identity, and the ways in which memory is embedded in the body and in everyday acts of consumption. Fiber artist Kristy Miologos will present a live knitting performance rooted in inherited technique and repetitive gesture, using tactile process and sound to create a meditative connection between past and future.

Together, the exhibition invites viewers into a deeply personal yet collective exploration of memory, embodiment, intimacy, and human connection across disciplines and mediums. More than a traditional exhibition, Welcome Home invites visitors to move through the space slowly, engage with one another, and consider how memory, ritual, and shared experience shape our understanding of home.

“Welcome Home Artists Platform is mobile for now because the goal is larger than a single space,” says Yeni. “We want people to leave feeling more connected — to themselves, to one another, and to the idea that belonging is something we actively create together.”

Welcome Home opens Thursday, June 12, at 6:30 PM at CAM Gallery, located at 700 N. 4th Street, Suite 102, Phoenix, Arizona.