An international art show honoring heritage and memory will open in Brooklyn on Jan. 23, 2026 and run for one month. For Caribbean American artist and curator Dario Mohr, the moment is both professional and deeply personal.
The exhibition, Echoes of Home: Kenya Edition, presented by the organization he founded, AnkhLave Arts Alliance, will open at the historic Old Stone House in Washington Park in January 2026. This Brooklyn showing will feature large-scale outdoor murals by Kenyan artists and a week-long international artist exchange to connect creatives from Africa, the Caribbean, and the African American community.
This Brooklyn event follows the exhibition’s debut in 2025 at Tafaria Castle & Center for the Arts in Kenya, where 32 Black artists from the diaspora displayed work on the African continent, many for the first time.
“This is about coming full circle,” said Mohr, a first-generation Grenadian American. “It’s about reconnecting people who were separated by history but are still tied together by culture.”
Founded in 2018, AnkhLave Arts Alliance was born out of Mohr’s own experiences navigating New York’s art world, where he often found himself one of the only Black artists in gallery spaces.
“There wasn’t a real sense of belonging,” he said. “A lot of Caribbean and Black artists didn’t see themselves reflected in those institutions.”
That absence became the foundation of AnkhLave’s mission: to create space, visibility, and opportunity for Black, Indigenous and artists of color while building cultural bridges across the diaspora.
While the organization initially focused on highlighting New York-based artists, Mohr’s vision soon expanded beyond U.S. borders.
In 2024, AnkhLave launched the African Indigenous Mural Project, featuring artists Nishipia Foti of Ghana and Faito Moli of Nigeria. Their work later appeared in New York through a partnership with ArtBridge at NYC Health + Hospitals, marking the organization’s first major international collaboration.
“That project showed us what was possible,” Mohr said. “It proved that these conversations don’t have to stop at the water.”
That momentum led directly to Echoes of Home.
The Kenya exhibition brought together artists from the Caribbean, the United States, and beyond in a rare cultural exchange centered on ancestry, memory, and shared identity.
“There’s still a disconnect in the diaspora,” Mohr said. “Caribbean people, African Americans, and Africans don’t always see how closely our stories are linked. This work is about healing that separation.”
Kenya was chosen intentionally as the exhibition’s first stop.
“So much of the diaspora conversation focuses on West Africa, but East Africa is also part of our shared beginning,” he said. “Kenya felt like a place where everyone could arrive on equal footing.”
When the exhibition comes to Brooklyn, it will be accompanied by the AnkhLave International Artist Exchange: Kenya Edition. Two Kenyan artists — Wanjiku Nderitu, of Kikuyu descent, and Linda Daisy, of Luo descent — will travel to New York for a week-long residency, public programs, and the unveiling of two large-scale murals in Washington Park.
The Brooklyn exhibition will also feature panel discussions between African, Caribbean, and African American artists, exploring cultural memory, preservation, and the future of diaspora storytelling.
“In the Caribbean and in Africa, so much of our knowledge is still passed down orally,” Mohr said. “If we don’t make space for those stories, they disappear.”
Mohr said connecting with Caribbean communities remains central to AnkhLave’s mission.
“We were also carried across the Atlantic,” he said. “Our journeys may look different, but the root is the same.”
AnkhLave is currently raising funds to support travel and residency costs for the Kenyan artists while continuing its year-round work, including free studio space for artists on Governors Island.
For Mohr, the impact goes beyond exhibitions and murals.
“When Caribbean and diaspora artists see their work touch the continent,” he said, “it changes something inside. It reminds us that we were never as far from home as we thought.”
