Lincoln, Nebraska-based artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez explores the experience of living between cultures and languages. The artist uses aspects of storytelling — fables, chapters of novels, and museum displays — to form a structure for her evolving bodies of work. In her exhibition Chapter 5: River, large-scale ink drawings and small sculptures reveal multiple perspectives surrounding contemporary circumstances that have been disentangled from their colonial histories.

Raised in Bogotá, Colombia, the artist is attuned to historic and ongoing relationships of indigenous, displaced, and colonial cultures in the Americas, and the power structures that determine which of these narratives are included in history books. Friedemann-Sánchez explores the underrepresented histories of women, indigenous and enslaved peoples, supported by research of traditional objects and cultural practices at national history museums in North and South America. This exhibition features life-sized drawn figures depicting the social hierarchies of mixed racial and ethnic identities in Colombia, feminine lacework patterns painted into a border riverscape of heroic scale, and small objects conveying practical knowledge passed across cultures. Together, these different forms weave a rich and complicated tale of diaspora, migrancy, and power.

This exhibition is curated by Risa Puleo, Curator-in-Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. The curatorial residency provides the opportunity to work alongside residency and curatorial staff, actively contributing to the overall vision of the organization's renowned exhibition program. As an integral member of the Bemis Center’s Artist-in-Residence Program, Puleo stimulates intellectual discourse surrounding contemporary art practice through studio visits, knowledge-sharing workshops, and other organized programs with fellow artists-in-residence. She also serves as a part of the cultural fabric of Greater Omaha, as a professional resource for local artists and arts professionals, and as an ambassador of the Bemis Center in the community. This program is the first of its kind in Nebraska.