Harlem's Emma L. Bowen Center unveils new photography exhibit by clients

Photography exhibit focuses on living with mental illnesses, recovering from substance abuse

NEW YORK -- A photography exhibit unveiled this month in Harlem shines a light on the lens of those living with mental illnesses and recovering from substance abuse.

The artists found their voice at the Emma L. Bowen Community Service Center.

"It's where my father taught me to ride a bike," said Rainbow Clubhouse member Miguelina Jaquez, reciting a poem she wrote. "That's even where I learned how to fight. The playground..."

The jungle gym outside the Bowen Center has been a central figure for Jaquez since her counseling started in childhood.

"From an early age of 14, I'm 60 now," Jaquez recited in a separate verse, "not realizing how this world could be so mean."

The Photo Voice exhibit

Jaquez's poetry and photos focus on a promise of positivity, a theme seen in each of the images in the exhibit Cafe Photo Voice: The Sequel.

"The message that they wanted to provide was amazing," said Rhaida Maldonado, a social worker who helped with the exhibit before recently graduating from Adelphi University. "In their writing, it's actually uplifting something that could be considered ugly, but it's so beautiful, depending on how you see it."

The creations come from clients in the Bowen Center's substance abuse recovery program and the Rainbow Clubhouse, a safe space for members with mental challenges, like Denver Chapman, whose collages combine sunshine, comfort foods and fun to inspire collaboration.

"It's just nice to have people working together on the same thing and see how they all act together or how they're all different," Chapman said.

"They want to be poets. They want to be artists"  

Together, the photographers fulfilled a familiar need for connection, in the face of city budget cuts that threatened to close the Clubhouse, which never came.

"We always focus on member goals, and these are their goals," said Rainbow Clubhouse program director Lilibeth Marchena. "They want to be poets. They want to be artists."

"That expression really takes the typical therapeutic intervention and expands it to something that feels very personal for them," added Ana Rodgers, program director for the Bowen Center's Community Behavioral Health Clinic.

Assisting with expression were social workers studying at Adelphi University, their second round since the project's first pandemic-era phase.

"Photos like...The Addicted Feet really speak to people's experiences with substance use and how it's not easy to recover," noted Chrisann Newransky, an associate professor at Adephi's School of Social Work.

"You don't stay stuck, and I'm glad I'm still alive because I've still got brothers dying," Jaquez said.

New supportive housing complex is under construction

Bowen Center's counselors are coordinating with clients ahead of services shifting 10 blocks south when their city-owned building is bulldozed in January. The new supportive housing complex being constructed in its place will include space for the Bowen Center to return upon its completion.

The Photo Voice exhibit will travel to Adelphi in the spring, before finding a permanent home in the Bowen Center's new space.

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