Jun 19 – July 26, 2026

Opening Reception: Friday, July 17th, 6 – 8 PM

Curatorial Statement

The Soul Selects Their Own Society is an exchange exhibition between Photographic Resource Center and Behind VA Shadows. Bringing together artists working across lens-based and interdisciplinary practices, the exhibition considers interiority as both a personal and social condition: how can art become a vehicle for investigating individuality, private identity, intimacy, and emotional interior worlds while also acknowledging the public systems we move through daily?

The works in the exhibition approach interiority expansively through figurative, architectural, objective, documentary, and abstract forms. Some artists reflect on warmth, domesticity, memory, and relationships as spaces of refuge and self-recognition. Others examine the tensions between inner life and public existence, asking what must be concealed, performed, or set aside in order to function within larger social, cultural, and institutional structures. Rather than defining interiority as a fixed psychological state, The Soul Selects Their Own Society approaches it as an ongoing process shaped by labor, migration, care, solitude, observation, and lived experience. The exhibition invites viewers to consider what allows a person to know themselves more deeply, and how private emotional landscapes continue to shape the ways we encounter one another in public life.

This show is co-curated by Behind VA Shadows’
Yolanda He Yang, Founder and Lead Artist
Shelby Feltoon, Curatorial Lead

About Behind VA Shadows:

Behind VA Shadows is an artists-run public art project founded in December 2021 by a group of Visitor Assistants at the ICA, Boston. Our initiative aims to break down barriers between art and the public, showcasing the creative work of museum workers while extending accessibility beyond institutional walls. By holding the alternative space for the public to engage with the creative identity of museum workers, we advocate for communal care to counter the issues of burnout within art museums and institutions.