ICP, Ward Gallery and The Road to Nowhere present: A Lens on Diaspora – a photography salon focused on image-makers from the diaspora. The event centers stories of identity, belonging, migration, home, and cultural hybridity, exploring how these experiences shape visual practice.
Presenting lens-based work from four diaspora artists, this salon reflects on communities across borders, inherited histories, hybrid identities, and the idea of home as something remembered, imagined, or constantly renegotiated.
The salon creates space for artists to share personal and collective narratives that challenge fixed notions of place and nationality, and to consider photography and filmmaking as a tool for preserving memory, questioning power, and articulating the diasporic experience as a lived, emotional and political condition.
Following the artist presentations, Ward and The Road to Nowhere invites audience members to engage in a round table style discussion around visualizing home and memory.
Tickets to attend the program are $5 and do not include admission to the ICP Galleries.
About The Road to Nowhere
The Road to Nowhere is a print magazine and digital platform sharing stories from the diaspora. Founded by Dalia Al-Dujaili in 2020, TRTN has published three print volumes covering photography, film, essays, interviews, creative writing, art and other media. TRTN has worked with The Barbican, The TATE, The Photographer’s Gallery, Zaha Hadid Foundation, Refuge Worldwide and many more cultural institutions. The aim of The Road to Nowhere is to celebrate the contribution of migration in culture and the arts. Volume 4 is forthcoming in 2026.
About Ward Gallery
Ward is a New York–based independent gallery and curatorial project founded in 2024 by Saam Niami and Gabrielle Richardson. Known for landmark group exhibitions “New York…NOW!” and “Mélange” in Paris, Ward has quickly become a touchstone in New York’s emerging scene, domestically and abroad. Ward’s mission is to highlight young artists engaged in critical investigations of society through rigorous practice and aesthetic brilliance. Project-based and community-oriented, Ward has attracted both grassroots audiences and institutional recognition. At a moment when many claim “the emerging art world is dead”, Ward insists on artistic excellence over private interests.
About the Speakers
Emily May Jampel is a filmmaker born and raised in Honolulu and based in Brooklyn. Her films have screened at festivals around the world, including the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Aspen ShortsFest, Champs-Élysées Film Festival, Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, and NewFest. Her short film Lucky Fish became a viral hit on TikTok after premiering on NOWNESS Asia. Emily previously worked as a Development Executive at the Academy Award-Nominated and Peabody Award-Winning production company The Department of Motion Pictures (Beasts of the Southern Wild, Monsters & Men, 32 Sounds, Gasoline Rainbow), was an associate producer on the podcast series Operator and a creative consultant on Constance Tsang’s debut narrative feature Blue Sun Palace, which premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week 2024 (Winner, French Touch Prize of the Jury) and was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards. Emily has curated short film programs for Metrograph, Allies in Arts, Brooklyn Art Haus, and NowHere Gallery, and served as a jury member at the Mint Chinese Film Festival and Oakland Drunken Film Festival. She is a 2026 New York State Council on the Arts grant recipient, a 2024-2025 participant in the UFO (Untitled Filmmaker Org) Short Film Lab, an 18-month fellowship hosted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She was a 2023 recipient of NewFest’s New Voices Filmmaker Grant in partnership with Netflix, and was listed on the 2024 Dazed100.
Still by Emily May Jambel
