Exhibitions

Unbroken Gesture: Light, Lineage, and Living Tradition

Alina Wilczynski

March 23 – April 17, 2026

Gallery Event

Reception | Gallery Talk | Participatory Light Painting Demonstration | Thursday, March 26, 2026, 4:30 - 6 p.m.

Curated by Beth Giacummo
Location | Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery, JoAnn Mazzella Murphy '98H Arts Center, Iona University

Iona University is pleased to present Unbroken Gesture: Light, Lineage, and Living Tradition, works by Alina Wilczynski, a solo exhibition of light painting photography that explores how cultural identity is embodied, preserved, and continually transformed through movement practices such as dance and martial arts, curated by Beth Giacummo. The exhibition will be on view from March 23 through April 17, 2026, at the Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery in the JoAnn Mazzella Murphy ’98H Arts Center, with a special reception on Thursday, March 26 from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

In Unbroken Gesture: Light, Lineage, and Living Tradition movement becomes a living archive—carrying memory, emotion, and ancestral knowledge across generations, just as migration, whether chosen or forced, carries people and their traditions across borders. Each gesture emerges as a phrase, a chapter, bearing stories of hardship and celebration, loss and healing, defiance, resilience, and communal strength.

Using a long-exposure camera technique called Light Painting, Wilczynski collaborates with movement artists to translate invisible currents of thought, emotion, and unspoken intention into luminous form. The body becomes both brush and storyteller, revealing the inner charge of each gesture and making visible the layered tensions between memory, displacement, strength, and transformation—an unbroken thread connecting body, history, and belonging.

Movement practices featured in the exhibition include Qigong, a 4,000-year-old energy-cultivation practice that forms the basis for Chinese medicine and martial arts such as Tai Chi and Kung Fu, and Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art developed by enslaved Africans in the 16th century as a form of self-defense disguised as an acrobatic dance. Together, these traditions underscore the exhibition’s meditation on continuity, cultural transmission, and the enduring power of embodied knowledge.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Wilczynski will present a Light Painting Demonstration, inviting visitors to participate in an interactive art experience that coincides with the work on view. During the event, she will share behind-the-scenes insight into the camera techniques used in her practice, along with stories and reflections gathered throughout her eight-year journey of creating movement studies with collaborative partners.

Whether curious or creatively adventurous, participants will have the opportunity to experiment on a luminous canvas where there are no mistakes, no mess, and all are welcome to try. Family friendly for all ages and abilities; the demonstration requires no prior photography experience, and light tools will be provided. Reception to follow with light refreshments.

Through its luminous imagery and collaborative spirit, Unbroken Gesture: Light, Lineage, and Living Tradition offers a powerful reflection on lineage, transformation, and the ways the body carries history forward.

The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

Past Exhibitions

• Looking in, Looking Out | works by Kelsey Gilmore 
• dependent / variable | works by Joseph Branciforte
• A Retrospective of Four Decades of Work | works by Dr. Jerome Levkov: Scientist and Artist
• Visual Arts Student Exhibition 2025 | Curated by Professor Thomas Ruggio & Professor Jeffrey Price
• RADICAL ACTION: Tracing Dorothy Day | Kristi Pfister
• The North Star | works by Diego Garcia
• The Women Dandies of The DRC: Dressing Dapper As Gendered Resistance In Central Africa | Photographs by Junior D. Kannah
• Love Your Mother | Jennie Thwing
• Visual Arts Student Exhibition 2024
• Carthage | Paintings by Fedele Spadafora
• The Gratitude Project: Paintings and Poetry by the US Poets Laureate
• Time is a River | Curated by Cara Lynch
• A Gift Of Light | Works by Br. Kenneth Chapman
• Visual Arts Student Exhibition 2023
• Saving Beauty: The Contemporary Icons of Threatened And Endangered Species of Angela Manno by Angela Manno
• My Own Rose-Tinted 3D Glasses by Werner Sun
• Dublin Bay by Liam Hourican
• FORMATION: Images of the Body by Tobi Kahn
• Personae by Carlos David
• Visual Arts Student Exhibition 2022
• The Weight of Optimism: Works by Heather Layton
• Considering the Goddess: A Survey of Sculptural Works by John Cino
• Cesare Dandini’s Holy Family with the Infant St. John: A Rediscovered Florentine Baroque Masterpiece
• A Hidden Wholeness: The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton*
• Art as a Spiritual Practice
• A Woman's Work..., Curated by Beth Giacummo
• Struggle - An Exhibit of Our Times, The Lincoln Park Conservancy, Inc.
• Female Gender Identity and Equality by the New York Society of Women Artists
• Unapologetically Me by Alvin Clayton
• Women in the Abstract: A Solo Exhibition by Award-Winning Artist, Steve Lyons
• Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition
• Plastic Paradise by Elena Kalman
• Female Gender Identity and Equality By New York Society of Women Artists (NYSWA)
• The Visual Arts Student Exhibition, curated by The Visual Arts Faculty
• SHE Voices: Expressions of Femininity, featuring Esther Kong Lo, Gloria Crouch-Nixon and Judith Weber.
• Influenced by Matisse: New Works by Alvin Clayton
• Shifting Focus: Hidden in Plain Sight, Curated by Rick Palladino
• More Fun Than Fun, featuring Andrea Beizer, Alysa Bennett, Ruby Silvious, Carol Taylor-Kearney, Peter Treiber, and Ruth Wolf