Unveil Gallery is pleased to present Beyond the Image, an exhibition showcasing works by Shelby Drabman, Lou Yezi, and Célia Rocha, three contemporary artists whose practices challenge and expand the visual language of memory, identity, and cultural reflection. On view from June 21 to July 23, the exhibition features a compelling selection of works on paper, textile-based pieces, and paintings, each offering a distinct approach to image-making in the 21st century. In an era of digital saturation and visual spectacle, Beyond the Image proposes the image not as a fixed representation, but as an active site of negotiation: between surface and depth, presence and absence, personal story and collective memory. The artists use intimate, often handmade materials and techniques to interrogate how images communicate emotional, social, and political meaning. By moving fluidly between mediums and methods, the works blur boundaries between realism and abstraction, art and artifact, memory and critique. Célia Rocha, drawing on activism and personal history, presents Birth Stories, a series based on real accounts from midwives shared on social media. Through pencil drawings and handwritten narratives, Rocha captures the intimacy and universality of birth as a cultural and bodily experience, positioning the image as a vessel for social storytelling. Lou Yezi reimagines the portrait through an emotionally charged figurative painting practice. Moving away from strict realism, her work embraces distortion, ambiguity, and subjectivity to reflect on cultural suppression, identity, and the estrangement of modern visual life. Lou’s paintings question the evolving role of figurative art in an age dominated by photography, digital images, and AI-generated visuals, proposing instead a fragile space of emotional resonance and resistance. Shelby Drabman works across textiles and video installation to explore the performative nature of materials and narrative. Inspired by gothic literature and horror cinema, her textiles incorporate imagery drawn from vintage toile, iron gates, and architectural details. Drabman’s work transforms fabric into a stage for haunting introspection, where literary fragments become physical, immersive, and uncanny. Together, the artists push against the limitations of representation to activate the image as a living, affective space, one that invites viewers to look again, and deeper.