Up until July 21, 2025: Beauty is What We Are Fighting For Cade Gallery, Anne Arundel Community College

Cade Art Gallery | Beauty Is What We’re Fighting For

By East City Art Editorial Team on June 16 2025

Tue, May 6 2025 — Mon, July 21 2025.

JoinCade Art Gallery’s 2025 National Juried Exhibition, Beauty Is What We’re Fighting For, juried by Washington, DC-based curator, Philippa Pham Hughes. Featuring a range of works that engage with beauty not as an escape, but as an act of resistance, renewal, and reimagining, the exhibition speaks to beauty’s transformative power to inspire awe, foster connection, and envision flourishing futures.

Beauty operates on multiple levels: as resistance to dehumanization, as a catalyst for wonder that connects us to something larger than ourselves, and as a foundation for human flourishing alongside community, sustainability, and dignity. Through art that evokes awe – defined by researchers as our response to vastness that transcends ordinary understanding – we can shift from transactional to relational ways of being.

As artist David Wojnarowicz noted during the AIDS crisis, beauty is not a luxury but “what we’re fighting for.” It serves as both compass and destination, reminding us why we persist through struggle. Without maintaining our capacity to recognize and create beauty, we risk losing sight of the world we seek to build.

Artists on view in the exhibition:

Pixie Alexander, Anita Barnes, Carol Barsha, Graig Bracey, Wing Bui, Marina Bykova, Michèle Colburn, Chris Combs, Anna Demovidova, Gayle Friedman, Patricia Goslee, Marcia Haffmans, Kristopher Heng, Deborah Hesse, Tom Hill, Katie Hovencamp, Mariam Julianna, Maria Karametou, Ryan Lewis, George Lorio, Angie Meche Kilcullen, Lynn Nguyen, John Paradiso, Heidi Phelps, Lissa Rosenthal-Yoffe, Richard P. Stevens, Clark Stoeckley, Deidre Vertucci, Richard Weiblinger, Sara Wilkerson, and Antoinette Wysocki.