SPEAK TO ME
TWO-ARTIST EXHIBITION
SEPTEMBER 12–OCTOBER 11, 2026

JOY RAY + EMILY SILVER

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 6–8PM
Special poetry reading by Senon Williams
7PM · in the midst of the reception · 10 minutes

ARTIST TALK+Q&A: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 4–6PM

The Middle Room is pleased to present Speak To Me, a two-person exhibition featuring Los Angeles-based artists Joy Ray and Emily Silver. Curated by Shannon Rae Fincke, the show is on view September 12–October 11, 2026, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 12, from 6–8pm and an Artist Talk on Sunday, October 4, from 4-6pm. Both artists will be in attendance.

Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter. The text and textile works of Joy Ray and Emily Silver navigate the spaces between expression and material, abstraction and legibility, heartache and humor. Drawing from textile traditions while pushing into three-dimensional space, their works challenge the boundaries between text and image, asking viewers to encounter fragmented and reconfigured words not only as something to read, but as something to see and feel—where meaning hovers at the edge of recognition.

Within this shared conceptual framework, Ray and Silver move in strikingly different emotional and visual registers. Ray creates solemn, dense, monochromatic, contemplative works that reach toward what is remembered, inherited, and unknowable. Silver infuses her work with vibrant color, texture, and exuberant materiality, giving weight to sharp wit and tender vulnerability. The installation brings these distinct bodies of work into proximity, creating a dynamic exchange across the gallery space where intensity and levity, grief and resilience, the intellectual and the emotional exist in productive tension. The compelling physical surfaces carry complex narratives that extend beyond the literal meaning of words. Speak To Me considers what happens when language leaves the page and becomes physical—when words become both subject and visual elements, transformed into structure and surface while taking on functions and meanings beyond their literal definitions. The works invite close looking, revealing layers of meaning that emerge through the contrast between what can be understood and what can be felt, while leaving space for what remains unresolved.

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Joy Ray is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher who lives and works in Los Angeles. Ray uses installation, textiles, and digital media to investigate the palpable presence of the unknown, unseen, redacted, illegible, uncanny, and haunted. Central to her research into the unknowable are methods of abstraction, concealment, illumination, and reconstitution that extract visual language from archival texts. Ray’s research-based installations activate the poetics of archival material, bringing ghosts to life. Widely exhibited, her work has been featured at Cerritos College Art Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, MCA Chicago, Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, BravinLee, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Hawaii State Art Museum, and Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Ray’s work has been recognized with prestigious grants, fellowships, and residencies including Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency. Ray’s practice and exhibitions have been featured in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, and Harper’s Magazine. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Emily Silver is an artist working across textiles, sculpture, and installation who lives and works in Los Angeles. Beginning with processes of tracing, translation, and material transformation, her sculptural weavings translate language into structure. Silver embeds text, coded symbols, and shifting materials to produce forms that move between legibility and abstraction, where humor and grief sit uncomfortably close. Shaped by experiences of loss, bodily change, and broader instability, Silver’s work engages labor as a form of endurance. Fibers are bound, layered, and reworked through time-intensive processes that register care and persistence rather than resolution. Her work has been exhibited widely, including exhibitions at Eastern Star Gallery, Spring Break Art Fair, Lazy Eye Gallery, BravinLee, DMST Atelier, and The Quick Center for the Arts. Silver’s research is informed by material-based learning and residency experiences at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Fondazione Lisio, and the Icelandic Textile Center. In 2023, she received the Change Agent Award from NCORE. She received her MFA from Pennsylvania State University School of Visual Art and her BFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC.

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Senon Williams is a lifelong visual artist and musician, and a Los Angeles native. His love of language play, sounds, textures, and associations of word and object often explore the triumphs and conflicts inherent in identity, history, and community. Senon’s search for truth leaves him amazed and baffled. Creating art is his meditation on meaning, or no meaning in the face of our turbulent existence. The written word and poetry is a consistent part of his practice. He has published four books: Hunted & Gathered (2017, Hamilton Press), Words Don’t Mean Much (Hat & Beard Press, 2021), Rituals (Lauren Powell Projects/Keep or Gift After Purchase, 2023) and Scrapyard (Hat & Beard Press, 2025), as well as multiple zines.

The opening reception and artist talk are open to the public. For press and sales inquiries, private viewing appointments, or a checklist of the artwork, please contact info@TheMiddleRoomGallery.com.

The Middle Room is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1–3pm and by appointment while the exhibition is on view.