Xela Institute of Art is proud to present the debut solo museum exhibition by Dominican-American artist Nara Nicole Winston Betancourt. Rooted in ancestral memory, matrilineal craft, and the spiritual resonance of land, Morir Soñando – To Die Dreaming is an intimate exploration of honoring land and familial legacy. Named after the beloved Dominican beverage, morir soñando translates to “to die dreaming.” Revealed in material poetics, the entrance of the exhibition presents two stained glass works inviting viewers into Winston’s Matriarcha: a lived and inherited matrilineage owing through craft, memory, and sacred indigenous stones. Winston draws directly from her mother’s stained glass artistic practice influencing the glass works on view. They serve not only as material artifacts of love and lineage, but as emotional conduits for Winston’s deeper inquiry into how culture is layered across history, memory, and enduring influence of family on the identity. “This project began as an exploration of land as a visual subject, but as I delved deeper, the land became a source or a living archive from which part of our family story emerges and plays out.” Beyond the stained glass are a series of paintings of where Winston’s mother’s family is from–a rural countryside village called Sabana Larga, located on the outskirts of Baní in the Dominican Republic. In these, Winston animates the soil, stones, and stories of her grandfather’s homeland. But the paintings do not remain rooted there–they migrate to Baní, where her mother is from and was raised, and to the U.S., where her grandmother and much of the family settled beginning in the 1990s. Fragmentation and collage define her approach with visceral motifs expressed in raw flesh and meat–symbols of life and death. The paintings reside hidden, within an openable cupboard installation offering viewers a subversion of colonial traditions of the curiosity cabinet towards the subject of live, intimate inheritance. With reverence and resistance, Morir Soñando – To Die Dreaming weaves a fabric of land and heritage, the Caribbean diaspora, and the invisible threads that bind us. For press inquiries, images, or to schedule a viewing, please contact info@xela.art. About the Artist Nara Nicole Winston Betancourt is a Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist (1998) currently based in Los Angeles. As a child, she was raised in countries throughout Latin America and Asia until 2010, when she returned to her mother’s native country, the Dominican Republic. After graduating from the Chavon School of Design in the Dominican Republic (2018), she transferred to the Netherlands and finished her Bachelors in Fine Arts from The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. About Xela Institute of Art Xela Institute of Art is a nonprofit art exhibition space located in Wrigley Village, Long Beach/Los Angeles County, dedicated to supporting the careers of emerging, mid-career, and senior artists. Our physical address is: 2176 Pacific Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90806 Please book a free public visit through our Calendly to schedule at least one-week in advance. We are open to the public by appointment only to accommodate staffing. The Xela Institute of Art welcomes all education levels to explore and learn about the exhibitions on view.