Member’s Spotlight Exhibitions

The Member’s Spotlight Exhibitions at The Contemporary Dayton celebrate the vibrant creativity of our local and regional artist community. Open to all current artist members, this ongoing series offers participants the unique opportunity to present a focused body of work in a solo exhibition curated by Heather Jones, Interim Director and Chief Curator.

Each exhibition is installed in The T. Chase Hale & Jonathan A. Hale Gallery and remains on view for one month, opening with a public reception on the first Wednesday and continuing through the last Saturday of the month. These exhibitions not only highlight the diverse practices and perspectives of our members but also provide a professional platform for artists to gain visibility and engage directly with audiences.

Most artworks are available for purchase, with proceeds supporting both the artist and The Contemporary Dayton’s mission to advance equity, diversity, and access through contemporary art. Participation in the Member Spotlight series is one of the many valuable benefits of being an artist member of The Contemporary Dayton.

Upcoming

Elham Bayati, The Room Remembers, 2026, acrylic and collage, 40 x 40 inches, $3,000. Courtesy of the artist.

Elham Bayati: Where Memory Blooms

October 7-31, 2026
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 6-8 pm

In Where Memory Blooms, Iranian-born, Columbus-based artist Elham Bayati explores the ways memory, cultural identity, and personal experience shape our inner landscapes. Working across painting, collage, printmaking, and drawing, Bayati creates layered, dreamlike compositions where the familiar and imagined, beauty and melancholy, and past and present coexist.

Flowers and textiles are central to Bayati’s visual language. Inspired by the patterns of her grandmother’s scarves and her mother’s dressmaking fabrics, these motifs connect her to memories of family, home, and her Iranian upbringing. In her paintings, flowers and patterns emerge, overlap, and disappear beneath layers of imagery, reflecting the shifting nature of memory: what remains vivid, what becomes fragmented, and what is transformed over time.

This body of work also grew from Bayati’s emotional response to images of people whose lives were suddenly lost. Although she did not know them personally, their faces remained with her, prompting questions about how we can carry the memory of people and experiences we have never physically encountered. Through flowers, fabric, branches, fragments, and gestural marks, Bayati explores grief, tenderness, vulnerability, and resilience.

In Where Memory Blooms, beauty becomes inseparable from remembrance. The flowers are not simply symbols of beauty; they hold traces of loss, connection, and persistence. Bayati invites viewers into the space between reality and dream, a place where inherited memories meet present experience and where our own memories can find unexpected points of connection.

Artist Statement

My work explores the layered intersections of personal history, cultural memory, and the  emotional landscapes I navigate as a woman. Through painting, drawing, printmaking, and  collage, I create layered compositions that exist between the familiar and the imagined, where  memory and imagination, intimacy and displacement, light and shadow can coexist. 

Floral motifs and textiles have always been central to my practice. Drawn from the patterns of  my grandmother’s scarves and my mother’s dressmaking fabrics, they carry memories of my  Iranian upbringing, family, home, and the passage of time. In these new works, these familiar  patterns and flowers become part of dream-like spaces, sometimes warm and intimate, and at  other times unsettled and mysterious. 

This body of work grew from a period in which I found myself deeply affected by images and  faces I encountered from far away. Some belonged to young people whose lives were suddenly  lost. Although I did not know them personally, their faces stayed with me. I began thinking about  how we carry people and moments we have never physically experienced, and how an image can  become part of our own memory. 

As I worked, those feelings found their way into layers of flowers, fabrics, branches, fragments,  and patterns. I became interested in the way memory changes as we carry it: some things remain  vivid, while others become obscured, fragmented, or transformed. The paintings move between  beauty and melancholy, vulnerability and resilience, darkness and light. 

Flowers in these works are not simply symbols of beauty. They hold memory, tenderness, loss,  and persistence. They emerge through layers and sometimes disappear beneath them, much like  the memories we try to hold onto. The patterned textiles connect the present to an inherited past,  while the fragmented spaces allow that past to meet the uncertainty of the present. 

Where Memory Blooms is ultimately about what remains with us. It is about the  people, places, images, and feelings that become part of our inner landscape. I am interested in  that space between reality and dream, where grief can exist alongside beauty and where memory  can become a form of connection. 

Through these paintings, I hope to create a space for reflection, a place where viewers can bring their own memories, experiences, and emotions, and perhaps recognize something of themselves  within these layers.

About The Artist

Elham Bayati is an Iranian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Columbus, Ohio. Her work explores memory, femininity, cultural identity, migration, and the relationship between personal experience and inherited traditions. Working primarily through painting, collage, and printmaking, she creates layered compositions that combine floral imagery, patterned textiles, drawing, and gestural marks. Bayati’s practice is rooted in the belief that images, patterns, and materials can hold personal and  collective memories, allowing past and present to exist together within a single space.

Bayati received her MFA in Visual Art from Columbus College of Art & Design and her MA and BA in Painting from the Iran University of Art in Tehran. Her work has been exhibited at the Akron Art Museum, the Riffe Gallery and Contemporary Art Matters in Columbus, and the Harris Art Gallery at the University of La Verne in La Verne, California, among other venues. In 2018, Bayati was awarded First Place in the Ohio Art League Fall Juried Exhibition.

Participating Artists and Dates:

September 2026: Deanna Newsom
October 2026: Elham Bayati
November 2026: Michael Hicks
December 2026: Emery Spina
January, 2027: Jan Heaton
February 2027: Ezra Stinson
March 2027: Judith Huacuja
April 2027: Joey Lotz
May 2027: Rachel Girard Reisert
June 2027: Bil Tipton
July 2027: Olga Evanusa-Rowland
August 2027: Stephen Rumbaugh