Welcome to the People’s House—where past, present, and future meet through exhibitions that reflect our city’s diversity and spirit.
Gracie Mansion Convervancy Presents:
Cathartic Connection
Marisa Mu | Charlie Serotoff
June 6 - Aug 8 2025
Gracie Mansion Conservancy Curatorial Statement
In celebration of Pride Month, the Gracie Mansion Conservancy proudly presents Cathartic Connection, a new installation by LGBTQ+ artists Marisa Mu and Charlie Serotoff. Set within the historic walls of Gracie Mansion, this exhibition invites reflection on the emotional landscapes that shape our identities, relationships, and communities.
Cathartic Connection brings together two artists whose practices are rooted in the act of making the unseen felt and the unspoken known. Through vivid abstraction and deeply tactile form, Mu and Serotoff create space for emotions that elude language—grief, longing, vulnerability, and hope—and honor their psychological journeys in pursuit of understanding, belonging, and healing.
Mu’s vibrant abstract paintings explore identity, ancestry, and belonging through her queer, diasporic lens, offering emotionally charged reflections on self and culture. In contrast, Serotoff’s hand-tufted textiles turn complex mental health experiences into tactile, approachable works, using texture and contrast to express psychological states and foster empathy around emotional well-being.
Together, Mu and Serotoff reveal the profound potential of catharsis—the release that comes through expression—not just as a private act, but as a collective offering. Their work affirms that when we externalize what is difficult to name, we open the door to shared recognition, connection, and healing.
Cathartic Connection speaks to both artists’ processes: the personal clarity found through creating work that gives form to inner chaos, and the connection sparked when others see their own truths reflected in that work. This is art in its most essential civic role—fostering empathy, inclusion, and dialogue across difference. In a setting as symbolically significant as Gracie Mansion, a space long associated with institutional authority, the presence of these deeply emotional, openly queer, and unapologetically personal works is both a celebration and a reclamation.
This exhibition shines awareness on the necessity of emotional honesty and diverse narratives in our public discourse. As we mark Pride Month, Cathartic Connection stands as a powerful reminder that healing is not only possible, but communal—and that art, when grounded in truth and shared experience, can serve as both mirror and bridge.
With Pride, Empathy and Connection,
Andrea Shapiro Davis, Executive Director
&
Chioma Ohakam, Director of Public Engagement
Gracie Mansion Conservancy
Joint Artist Statement
“Cathartic Connection” unites two distinct voices in a powerful exploration of emotional truth, psychological depth, and the healing force of visibility. Through vibrant painting and tactile textile work, artists Marisa Mu and Charlie Serotoff transform the intangible into form— creating space for the emotional experiences that resist easy language; the psychological landscapes we navigate in search of healing, understanding, and belonging.
Marisa Mu’s intuitive paintings pulse with color, energy, and life. Her work navigates identity, lineage, and the search for belonging through the lens of her diasporic and queer experience. Bold abstract and figurative compositions become vessels for personal and cultural storytelling—honoring the vibrant force behind Queer Expression and Intersectional Feminism. Her practice is both deeply personal and inherently political: a celebration of visibility, a reclamation of space, and a testament to the power of creating one's own narrative.
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Charlie Serotoff’s hand-tufted textiles render complex emotional and psychological states into tangible, textured form. Through high-contrast colors and soft, inviting materials, his work brings mental health experiences—such as hypervigilance and sonder —into the realm of touch and sight. These pieces do not simply represent—they embody. They invite us to feel what cannot be easily said.
Together, Marisa Mu and Charlie Serotoff offer a shared vision of catharsis: the emotional release and relief found in honest self-expression, and the deep connection that emerges when others recognize their own story within it. This is art as bridge—between isolation and belonging, silence and voice, self and community.
"Cathartic Connection" is not just a title—it’s a call. A call to honor the full spectrum of human emotion, to make space for complex identities, and to understand vulnerability as a source of strength.
Set within the historic halls of Gracie Mansion, this exhibition inserts emotionally honest, queer, and culturally rooted voices into a civic space that has long been defined by tradition. It insists that healing is a public conversation, and that diversity—in identity, experience, and expression—is central to our collective story.
In bold hues and textured layers, Marisa and Charlie celebrate the resilience, beauty, and magic of the LGBTQIA+ community. This is art that sees you. Feels with you. And reminds you: you are not alone.
Marisa Mu is an interdisciplinary artist currently based between Melbourne and New York. Her work explores themes of Queer Expression, Intersectional Feminism, The Asian Diaspora and Body Liberation.
In 2019, she was awarded the Emerging Artist of The Year Award and was featured on the Cover of Broadsheet Magazine for her latest culturally significant body of work ‘With Pleasure’. She has completed her studies at National Art School and the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.Her livelihood as an artist explores the multiplicity of her identity, allowing intuition and curiosity about being a third culture kid navigating their queerness and sense of place come to the forefront.
She is Australian born with East Timorese and Hakka Chinese lineage with her arts practice negotiating complex narratives, weaving the personal and political through painting, sculpture, installation, poetry and performance.With her focus on the amalgamation of her personal narratives and cultural histories, her visual story-telling and literary works are about overcoming loss, instilling hope, remembering the past and understanding universal love languages ascend generations.
Her works share a unique perspective on diasporic experiences, cultural preservation, and the intersectionality of queer identities.Through harnessing her Hakka and East Timorese heritage, language and QBIPOC storytelling, she advocates and brings these largely under-represented narratives vividly to the surface.
The rigorous research and experimentation within her practice enables her to generate thought-provoking and socio-politically engaging activations, creating culturally relevant resources for our collective future.
Charlie is an artist based in NYC. Beginning his journey into textile art in late 2023, he has developed a practice that transforms personal emotional experiences into tactile, visual narratives through hand-tufted rugs.
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His artwork explores psychological experiences discovered through his mental health journey—from the surreal awareness of everyone's hidden complexity to the relentless scanning for danger that trauma creates, to finding cosmic meaning in random moments.
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He’s entirely self-taught as an artist, and his partial color blindness influences his bold color palette, as he selects yarns based on contrast and visual impact rather than specific hues, creating dynamic relationships between colors that enhance the emotional resonance of each piece.
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His work has been featured in solo exhibitions including "Hangin' by a Thread" at Helm Contemporary (March 2025) and "Rugs of Reflection" at Columbus Circle (May 2025).
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Charlie has always been very left brain/right brain, needing both analytical and creative outlets. Working in digital product management satisfies his analytical side, while textile art has finally given him a creative outlet that feels meaningful.