In wartime, beauty is not frivolous. Claude Monet, as bombs echoed near his garden at Giverny during World War I, continued to paint his water lilies — a radical act of continuity. The title of this group exhibition, curated by Shelley Holcomb, echoes “lacrimae rerum” (Latin: “the tears of things”) from Virgil’s Aeneid — a poignant expression of the sorrow embedded in the human experience. Things Themselves Have Tears brings together works created during and in the aftermath of war: paintings, drawings, sculptures, and textiles — gestures arising from societal fracture. Daniel Adolfo’s abstractions translate memory and displacement into emotional landscapes. Salomón Huerta’s surfaces transform the ordinary into charged terrain. Samala Meza reimagines modernist abstraction through feminine experience. Christine Olowonira elevates the ant as a luminous metaphor for feminine strength. Pauline Shaw’s felted textiles weave ancestral patterns and scientific imagery into porous landscapes of remembrance. Lauren Fejarang’s sculptural compositions evoke the persistence of natural forms. Things Themselves Have Tears invites viewers to sit with this tension: to make art in wartime is not always an act of hope. Sometimes it is ritual. Sometimes it is refusal. Sometimes it is simply a way to live another day. The psyche craves evidence that not all is lost. Beauty reminds us of our humanity. Image: Salomón Huerta "Gun with Tangerines," 2025