Opening March 28 at Creative Legion in Hudson, the multimedia exhibition “Presence inAbsence” speaks a contemporary conversation about memory and grief into a space already marked by both.
Photograph by Inbal Abergil, 2025
Opening Event Saturday, March 28 | Creative Legion, Hudson, NY | 7pm
Opening March 28 at Creative Legion in Hudson, the multimedia exhibition “Presence inAbsence” speaks a contemporary conversation about memory and grief into a space already marked by both. The building, a former American Legion hall, retains the imprint of its past life as a gathering place for veterans—an echo that deepens the show’s focus on what lingers after loss.
The opening night program brings together documentary photographer Inbal Abergil and interdisciplinary artist Lexa Walsh in dialogue with Spencer Mandell, whose earlier career included overseas service with the CIA and work as a conflict photographer for global news outlets. Framed as an open conversation, the event explores how artists approach absence not as emptiness, but as something with weight and texture—something that can be shaped, revisited, and made perceptible through image, archive, and narrative.
Abergil’s work offers a particularly grounded entry point. Her long-term project spans photography, video, and recorded testimony, focusing on the afterlife of conflict. Traveling across the United States, she collaborates with Gold Star families, photographing domestic interiors, personal objects, and portraits that hold the imprint of loss. The work is deliberately quiet: a uniform folded on a chair, a bedroom left unchanged, the face of a loved one left behind. Through this accumulation of detail, Abergil constructs a visual language of mourning that emphasizes grief’s physical presence.
Abergil’s work has been widely exhibited internationally and is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and she currently serves as an associate professor of photography at Pace University.
Walsh’s practice moves through similar themes from a more conceptual and participatory angle. Working across exhibitions, objects, and event-based projects, she creates context-responsive environments that invite conversation, collaboration, and the exchange of stories. Walsh often employs archives, found materials, and communal frameworks to examine how value, power, and memory are constructed—what she has described as building “platforms for interaction across hierarchies” that make space for multiple voices. Her work frequently incorporates elements of radical hospitality including meals, gestures, and shared rituals, as a way of transforming audiences into participants. Over a 25-year career, she has exhibited and performed internationally at institutions including SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Exploratorium.
Together, the two artists approach remembrance as an active process, one that unfolds over time and across multiple forms. Their conversation will delve into how to depict what cannot be fully seen.
Creative Legion itself reinforces the exhibition’s inquiry. Now home to exhibitions, performances, and community programming, the space has quickly become part of Hudson’s expanding network of independent art venues. Its transformation from a veterans’ post into a contemporary arts hub adds a subtle but unmistakable layer to the evening’s themes. The lived experience of loss and sacrifice haunts the room.
