Ace Artist in Residence and Powerhouse Arts Present: WE’RE ALL JUST SOFTNESS SEEKING SOLID GROUND. by Jacob Olmedo

Ace Artist in Residence and Powerhouse Arts Present: WE’RE ALL JUST SOFTNESS SEEKING SOLID GROUND. by Jacob Olmedo on view March 13, 2025 – May 30, 2025

— The Exhibition

“We’re all just softness seeking solid ground.” is an installation by Jacob Olmedo composed of garments, tapestries, and structures that follow the artist’s continued practice of depicting powerful and human futures for queer existence. 

This body of work being presented at Ace Hotel New York is a profound reaction to the constant and ever-amplified violence that queer people in America face on a daily basis.

Jacob Olmedo (they/them) navigates textile making from the reaction of the fragile barriers of American frameworks and the demise in connection with the liberation of queer futures. Working across mediums, their work often takes shape in tender textile forms that are abstracted with harsh building materials that show familiar circumstances of restrictions and reveal the fragilities of instructed ways of being. Olmedo often works upon their personal and cultural resonance of grief, joy, rage, power, and vulnerability through experimenting with color, texture, and radiance. Through the lens of honor, the work often asks – what and who has been lost, and what does that mean for our future? 

With this, the work grounds itself in labor and its extended care of physical and emotional being.

Powerhouse Arts (PHA) is a not-for-profit organization committed to creative expression. The organization offers art fabrication programs for ceramic, print and public art, as well as space for communal education and events. The facility is also
home to MGC Community Print Studio, nonprofit decorative arts fabrication shop The Alpha Workshops, and architectural metal design fabrication firm Workspace11. The building also houses multi-use facilities for education, events, and public engagement.

Learn more about Ace Hotel’s Artist in Residence program.