Take in the full exhibit at the Art Gallery on the second floor of the Connelly Center.
Hearts of the Harvest: Seeds, Stories, and Sovereignty is an art exhibit that opened on campus this week and is an opportunity for Villanova students, staff and campus visitors to explore the ever-evolving beauty of Indigenous art near and far.
The exhibit features a diverse combination of work from Shinnecock artists and Indigenous Ma’s House alumni, with an impressive range of art mediums including painting, photography, film, performance, mixed media, leatherwork and larger installations.
The gallery opened on Monday, Sept. 14, and will run through Friday, Jan. 15, 2027 at Villanova’s Art Gallery on the second floor of the Connelly Center.
The exhibit draws inspiration from the Villanova student film “Seeds We Bury,” directed by Olivia Hansen and Soledad Robins. The documentary explores the challenges Indigenous people face today. By incorporating voices from the Ati tribe in the Philippines and the Shinnecock Nation in the United States, the documentary’s impressive range helped it earn national recognition earlier this year.
With Villanova being the origin of this successful documentary, this campus is the perfect place for the Hearts of the Harvest exhibition to make its debut.
All are welcome to visit the exhibit. It is free and open to all. Jeremy Dennis of Ma’s House and BIOPIC Art Studio Inc. is the guest curator and a featured artist for Hearts of Harvest.
“This is a really powerful space to reflect [and] hopefully learn something new,” Dennis said. “I always encourage you to bring a friend if you really love it. Bring another friend if you love an individual piece but don’t have time. Come back alone.”
The cultural difference in how some Indigenous people view nature is at the core of much of the featured work.
“It’s titled Hearts of the Harvest,” Dennis said. “It is a lot of work around plants, about the landscape, and I’m hoping that students will also shift the way that they look at land. Especially here in the Hamptons, we see it as an investment, a property, private property, a party landscape, and I think for Indigenous people, land holds memory, responsibility. It’s a resource that we have to take care of. Sacred sites. It’s also a site of loss, trauma, survival and also a form of repair.”
For those interested in meeting some of the Indigenous artists in person, Villanova will host an opening reception for Hearts of Harvest on Tuesday, Oct. 27.
The reception will feature a live performance by musical artist Isabel Vazquez and will be free and open to the public. This is an opportunity to connect further with the creative work on display.
Whether through a camera lens, the stroke of a paintbrush or the stitching of leather, gallery visitors will leave with a clearer understanding of the prosperous Indigenous cultures of today.
“It’s so important at a young age, when your mind is developing as a student, to see Native and Indigenous stories as something in the present tense,” Dennis said. “It’s not history. It’s not something stuck in the past.”
Dennis hopes students will use the exhibit as an educational and inspirational tool.
“I think that bringing this show to Villanova is such a great way to amplify Indigenous art and voices, which so often get overshadowed,” Dennis said.
Showcasing these stories through art at a university dedicated to truth, unity and love starts a critical conversation among students about what the motto truly means.
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About the Contributor
Cali Carss is a junior Co-Culture editor of The Villanovan, studying History. A triple minor in Classics, English and Gender and Women’s Studies, she is quite the liberal arts poster child. She’s a New York City native and will bring her city up whenever possible. Cali’s love for writing, style and being a part of the Villanovan community first drew her to the Culture section, where she’s been ever since setting foot on campus. Cali loves covering student arts events on campus, from Lepage Center talks to musical theatre productions. If she’s not in The Villanovan office, Cali is probably people watching in Conn or writing her next paper in the history department.
