CAB Art Gallery panorama view of the front of the gallery

Upcoming Exhibitions

Get more information about upcoming exhibitions to the CAB Art Gallery.

Summer 2026

Sarah Peoples

June 22, 2026 – September 9, 2026

Reception: Thursday, August 27, 2026 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Sculptor Sarah Peoples from Philadelphia has made a lasting impact on the art world with her thought-provoking works and community involvement. She holds a certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a BS from the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a Masters degree from PAFA in 2012.

Most recently, Peoples installed her ever-enduring Plastic Rainbow sculpture on the grounds of Mother in Law's Gallery in Germantown, Ny for Upstate Arts Weekend, 2025. She was a finalist for her public art proposal in a juried competition co-organized by the Association for Public Art (aPA) and the Parkway Council, called Art on the Parkway. In May of 2024 she engaged the public with a moving a ceremonial performance celebrating the Full Flower Moon narrated by a mythical musical score accompaniment and ice sculpture offerings. During her tenure as Artist in Residence at Glen Foerd from June 2022 to September 2023, she created three impactful large-scale public artworks addressing pressing issues such as environmental justice, collective consciousness shaping national identity, and our human connection to nature. The culmination of her residency was a vibrant public event at Glen Foerd, featuring Peoples' art alongside site-specific performative mindfulness practices and interactive community engagement activities.

Recently, Peoples was featured in the online exhibition "The Meaning of Everything" by the Dina Wind Foundation. Peoples' artistic journey also includes a solo public art exhibition, "Between Wind and Water," at The Havre de Grace Maritime Museum in Maryland throughout the summer and fall of 2023. Her insightful writing got her placement in the publication "Artist, Mother, Proud & Serious | VOLUME I," where she critiques the divisive "Art Mama" movement.

Noteworthy among her public installations is the 18-foot site-specific sculpture, "Plastic Waterfall," crafted from post-consumer recycled materials, which adorned the lobby of the Cira Centre in Philadelphia as part of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and HotBed’s Plastic Free Philly campaign in the Spring and Summer of 2022.

Peoples' commitment to community engagement is evident in her participation as lead artist in the DaVinci Art Alliance’s Everyday Future Fest at Palumbo Park in April 2022, where she presented "Deconstructed Landscapes," an exhibition featuring large temporary site-specific sculptures made entirely from post-consumer recycled materials.

Another notable sculpture, "Plastic Rainbow" in Fairmount Park served as a symbol of hope and unity during the early months of the pandemic, earning praise from Conrad Benner of Streets Dept.

Her street sculpture series, including "Oil Soaked Neckties," "Baptismal Font," "Props for Peaceful Protest," and "Props for Nature," have garnered acclaim for their innovative approach to public art.

Peoples has exhibited her work in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide, including AUTOMAT Collective in Philadelphia, PEEP Space in Tarrytown, NY, and MWoods in Beijing, China, where her work is part of the museum's permanent collection. Her talent was recognized with the 2018 Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge award.

www.sarahpeoples.com

Fall 2026

Shabnam Jannesari

September 17, 2026 – October 21, 2026

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 2026 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday, September 17, 2026, 5 p.m. in Cultural Arts Building Room 2033

Shabnam Jannesari is a distinguished Iranian artist whose work has been widely exhibited across the United States and internationally. She earned her Master of Fine Arts (MFA), with honors, from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Her solo exhibition She Sat Where the Light Awaited is on view at the Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA) from September 2025 through March 2026. Recent exhibitions include Made in the Plains at the Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, NE, 2025) and Look but Look with Love, a two-person show at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY, 2024).

She has presented solo exhibitions such as Each String is a Thread, Each Color a Chord at the Nebraska Arts Council (Omaha, NE) and The Carpet Grew Like a Garden at Gallery 263 (Cambridge, MA). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions including the Mid-Atlantic Biennial at the University of Mary Washington (VA), A Pot Nudged into Oblivion at Miranda Art Project Space (NYC), Narrative Imperative at the University of Connecticut, and Domestic State at Wheaton College (MA).

Her paintings are held in both private and institutional collections, including Fidelity Investments and the University of Massachusetts School of Law.

Jannesari’s work explores the struggles and resilience of Iranian women, addressing themes of identity, memory, and societal expectation.

She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2020, 2022) and the Distinguished Art Fellowship at UMass Dartmouth (2018–2021). In 2025, she was selected for the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency.

She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

www.shabnamjannesari.com

Fall 2026 Senior Exhibition

November 5, 2026 – December 11, 2026

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 5, 2026 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Senior Exhibition is a capstone requirement for all UNCW seniors graduating with a major in Studio Art.

Spring 2027

Dominique Muñoz: Myth in Patterns

September 17, 2027 – October 21, 2027

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 17, 2026 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday, September 17, 2026, 5 p.m. in Cultural Arts Building Room 2033

From birth, fabric cradles us—soft, worn, and imbued with care, a second skin that shields us from the world. In the exhibition, Myth in Patterns, Dominique Muñoz treats blankets and textiles in his photography-based practice not just as materials but as vessels of memory carried across generations, borders, and homes. Drawing from his Guatemalan heritage, Muñoz subverts the conventions of portraiture, challenging both the colonial and heteronormative histories of the medium.

In collaboration with his family, he constructs highly staged images within his studio and childhood homes, arranging blankets and their patterns in mesmerizing layers – queering the domestic space. These environments raise questions about traditional gendered expectations, becoming sites of fluidity and play. Cared for by the matriarchs in his family, these fabrics hold the weight of cultural identity. The vibrant motifs embed Mesoamerican mythologies as a form of knowledge, preserving and remixing traditional Guatemalan symbols and patterns. Photographic tools—C-stands, spring clamps—are left visible, exposing the mechanics of image-making, blurring the lines between authenticity and artifice. Mirrors, positioned behind the hand-cut silhouettes, shift the viewer’s perspective, revealing the textiles draped just beyond the camera’s gaze. These silhouettes punctuate his compositions allowing new patterns to emerge, echoing the fabrics that have shaped him. Muñoz embraces excess, not as something to be tamed but as a mode of joyful resistance. These aesthetic choices are not merely decorative; they assert the value of cultural expressions often dismissed as ‘tacky’ or excessive.

A wooden pallet, balanced precariously within the installation, echoes the instability of imposed structures—the rigid frameworks individuals are expected to navigate. It becomes a site of both constraint and possibility, mirroring the tensions of migration, identity formation, and gender roles. The peacock feathers serves as a symbol of beauty and masculinity while referencing a journey navigating traditional expectations. Scattered around the gallery space are handwoven baskets using alternative photographic process called cyanotype to reweave the patterns into new objects that hold audio files of his grandmothers voice.

Myth in Patterns examines how histories of care and migration shape identity, ultimately questioning how we continue to remake home in ever-changing landscapes.

Biography

Dominique Muñoz is a Guatemalan-American visual artist working in photography, printmaking, and installation. His practice examines how cultural traditions adapt, fracture, and persist through migration, reweaving pattern and light as collaborators in that inquiry. He considers how assimilation, queerness, and cultural survival entangle, using visibility as a conceptual framework to challenge photography's colonial and heteronormative histories.

Dominique earned his MFA in Studio Art from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2025 and his BFA in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015. He currently is a fellow with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He was named the 2025 Denis Roussel Fellow at the Center for Fine Art Photography and has attended residencies at Storm King Art Center, ACRE Projects, and Ox-Bow School of Art as a LeRoy Neiman Fellow. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including Provincetown Arts Association Museum (Provincetown, MA), The Greenville Museum of Art (Greenville, NC), Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh, PA), The National Building Museum (Washington, DC), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL) and Lump Gallery (Raleigh, NC)

www.dominiquemunoz.com

Spring 2027 Senior Exhibition

April 8, 2027 – May 7, 2027

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 8, 20267from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Senior Exhibition is a capstone requirement for all UNCW seniors graduating with a major in Studio Art.

2027 Studio Art Faculty Biennial

May 2027 – September 2027

2027 Studio Art Faculty Biennial will features current work in a diverse range of media explored by University of North Carolina Wilmington’s studio art faculty members.