It Takes Courage to Love All Unconditionally
Artist Halim Flowers has filled the Bogomolny-Kozerefski Grand Foyer with original artwork for the 2026 Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival
This festival celebrates Courage, reflecting the personal journey I’ve been on for quite some time. Many choices I made in my childhood led to consequences that were not a result of my being a “bad kid,” but rather due to my inability to overcome negative peer influences and community pressures.
I believe in love, especially in a world that often encourages us to hide our authentic selves. It takes immense strength and courage to embrace who we truly are and to love ourselves. This body of work represents an extension of my identity and self-worth. I had to learn to love myself, even when society labeled me as a menace and treated me accordingly.
The colors in the pieces I created for this exhibition emerged organically; they chose me. I usually don’t work with earth tones or neutrals, but this time, the mediums — my tools of mass construction — were paintbrushes, oil sticks, canvas, and fashion. The colors arrived uniquely and unexpectedly.
— Halim Flowers
Halim Flowers is an artist, poet, and activist whose work is shaped by resilience and transformation. At 16, he was sentenced as an adult to two life terms for a crime he did not commit.
While incarcerated, he developed a deep love for language, beginning with freestyle rap before evolving into poetry as a way to process the traumas of surviving prison and growing up during Washington, DC’s crack epidemic. After serving more than 20 years, Flowers was released in 2019 following criminal justice reform in DC. Soon after, he expanded his creative practice into visual art, drawing inspiration from Jean-Michel Basquiat and translating his experiences onto canvas through vibrant, layered works.
Flowers has received fellowships from Halcyon Arts Lab and Echoing Green, was featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, and is a 2025–26 Obama Foundation USA Leader. His work is exhibited internationally.
Presented in partnership with District Gallery, the exhibition channels Flowers’s signature blend of vivid color, vulnerability, and radical hope. Extending his vision beyond the exhibition walls, Flowers is also collaborating with youth culture brand Xhibition to craft exclusive festival apparel inspired by the theme of courage.
Interested collectors are invited to learn more about the works here.
Shop the exclusive streetwear collection at Severance Music Center events, the Xhibition Van Aken location, or online.
Halim Flowers Exhibition generously sponsored by JoAnn & Robert Glick.