Personal Incantations - An Intimate Archive of Scars

Name: Personal Incantations - An Intimate Archive of Scars
Start: 2025-10-03T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-03T21:00:00-04:00
Location: Flower City Arts Center

Schedule

Fri Oct 03 2025 at 06:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Flower City Arts Center | Rochester, NY

Dear Friends,
With gratitude and excitement, I invite you to my upcoming solo exhibition:
Personal Incantations: An Intimate Archive of Scars
An exploration of the body as an archive and self-representation as an act of resistance and healing
In this work, I bring together digital, analog, and alternative photography with collage, embroidery, video, and words that move in dialogue, layering meaning and activating memory. I work with the intimacy of objects and places to create rituals of belonging and resilience. For me, the camera is not only a mirror but also a site of negotiation; it reveals closeness and distance while holding the ethical questions that emerge in each capture. These pieces explore love, motherhood, and the ongoing deconstruction of structures that once promised a sense of belonging. I offer my body and my life in service to art, and art in service to me, to open a space for decoloniality, a space where love, displacement, and home can exist together in both tension and possibility.
Opening Night Celebration
October 3rd 2025
Artist Talk at 7:00 PM
Followed by a music and movement by @Analog

Closing Celebration
Friday, October 24th
6:00 -9:00 PM
Followed by a music and movement by @Analog
Dance Party Potluck — bring a dish to share and stay for the music and movement

Both evenings are a chance to gather in joy, reflection, and community, honoring scars as stories through art, conversation, and dance.
I would love to see you there!
In Solidarity,
Paola Macas Betchart

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Paola Macas Betchart is a queer, pan-Indian artist, educator, and environmental anthropologist originally from the Andes, now based in Gas’kosago, Turtle Island. She holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology and Sustainable Development and has extensive experience in community-based arts education and cultural activism. Paola integrates her academic background with her artistic practice, blending photography, collage, fiber arts, poetry, and ancestral storytelling to explore memory, belonging, and decolonial healing.