What happens when young people who are often defined by the systems around them are given the opportunity to define themselves?
At the Center for Art and Advocacy in Brooklyn, the answer is taking shape through "Keeping Community," a summer exhibition bringing together artists, organizers, formerly and currently incarcerated creatives and young people navigating New York City’s juvenile justice system. At its center is the Youth Art Space, a pop-up gallery featuring works created by youth at the ACS Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville.
The Youth Art Space similarly asks audiences to reconsider the assumptions they may bring with them when encountering young people involved in the justice system. Rather than presenting youth through statistics, court records or institutional narratives, the exhibition places their own voices and creative decisions at the forefront.
For Sienna Fekete, co-director of programs at the Center for Art and Advocacy, the exhibition is ultimately about who gets to tell a story and how. “The biggest thing that we think about is the power of autonomy and people being able to author their own stories,” Fekete said.
The Youth Art Space was curated by Immanuel Oni, growing from his work with Department of Cultural Affairs’ Public Artists in Residence program. Oni's workshops at the Crossroads Juvenile Center invited participants to think about architecture not simply as the buildings that surround them but as something they could redesign.
The resulting work offers something that can be difficult to find within conversations about juvenile detention: a view of young people through their own imagination.
Oni's pieces include architectural drawings and models framed as windows, as well as prototypes for a mobile gallery pop-up.
"This residency deeply moved me to see art as a tool for narrative change, highlighting an immense citywide need for dedicated teaching artists and programs like Crossroads Art Club and Brooklyn Combine," Oni said. "Moving forward, we hope to inspire bringing this gallery experience and its elements back into the facility to continue fostering growth, imagination and healing.”
For the Center for Art and Advocacy, that distinction is central to its mission. Its gallery provides a physical home for exhibitions and programs across disciplines, from visual art and filmmaking to writing and performance. Fekete describes the center’s mission simply: “We’re empowering creativity that challenges the limits of incarceration.”
"Keeping Community" extends that work beyond a traditional gallery exhibition. The space is divided into three distinct environments: a Reading Room curated by Sojourners for Justice Press, the Youth Art Space and a Listening Room curated by Freer Records, a label working with formerly and currently incarcerated musicians. Visitors can encounter archival texts, independent zines, music, videos and correspondence alongside the youth artwork.
“We were really thinking about the active — the verb — of how do you keep that?" said Fekete. "How do you maintain that? And sustain it really powerfully?”
The significance of that approach was also recognized by NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Diya Vij, who noted in the exhibition’s press release that Oni’s work demonstrates how art can give young people room to imagine themselves beyond their present circumstances and expand their sense of what is possible.
For Fekete, that possibility begins with access to art education and mentorship. “Art education and mentorship is so crucial for folks to be able to see themselves in positions of creativity and power and leadership,” she said. For many, art is a means of creating stronger connections across generations, and mentorship is a reciprocal exchange rather than a one-way relationship.
For the center, community is not simply something to gather around. It is a form of infrastructure that sustains people and creative practice. “Community is the thing that is going to propel us forward," Fekete said.
"Keeping Community" is on view at the Center for Art and Advocacy through Sept. 25, 2026. Photos of the artwork are available here.
