curated by beth kantrowitz / bk projects
august 16 – october 12, 2025
opening reception:
august 16 • 7-9pm
location:
Distortion Society
155 main st, beacon, ny
distortionsociety.com
@distortion_society
above images:
Delvin Lugo, Poses, 2024, oil on found embroidered vintage linen 18 x 16 x 3 inches.
Amber Mustafic, Skye, 2025, hand embroidery on linen, 4 x 4 inches
BEACON, NY — This August, Distortion Society presents Threads of Love, a two person exhibition curated by Beth Kantrowitz/bk projects featuring work by Delvin Lugo, a narrative figure painter working directly on vintage textiles, and Amber Mustafic, an embroiderer who hand-stitches personal mythologies that draw from memory, symbolism, and mysticism. Through their varied practices, Lugo and Mustafic explore domestic environments, familial lineage, intimate relationships, and human connection. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, August 16, 2025 from 7-9pm and the show will run through October 4, 2025.
Delvin Lugo’s vibrant oil paintings depict queer love and chosen kinship within the LGBTQ+ community. Drawing from his personal and family photo archives, Lugo paints figures in familiar environments, capturing the layered tension between comfort and alienation that shapes domestic queer life. These lush environments—with hues inspired by the rural landscapes and painted homes of the Dominican Republic—appear flattened against the complex expressions of his figures, highlighting the fluidity of memory.
Growing up with tailor parents, Lugo considers textiles to be his first artistic tool. He paints directly onto vintage tablecloths, pillow cases and other home linens, honoring their natural form by hanging the work without stretcher bars and incorporating the embroidered details and lace within the painted compositions. These tender, materially-rooted works honor the persistent beauty of domestic queer life and in making these personal spaces visible, Lugo’s work is an act of resistance in a polarized cultural reality.
Amber Mustafic’s delicate embroideries explore the sublimity and mysticism of intimate moments that bridge human connection, solitude and our relationship to the natural world. Her ethereal dreamscapes depict herself and loved ones while also embodying universal archetypes and her alter-ego, working through themes of transformation, sensuality, and liberation.
A first-generation Albanian-American, Mustafic connects to her heritage through her maternal embroidery tradition and recurring references to Albanian mythology. Sacred icons from Albanian folklore—the sun, ocean, specific flora and fauna—appear throughout her work, carrying symbolism of ephemerality, infinite cycles, and overwhelming power. Trained as a painter, Mustafic uses cotton and silk threads as her pigments. By intertwining ancestral narratives with her personal experiences, her work investigates beauty and mysticism in the face of environmental and political uncertainty.
Although their stories differ, many figurative and conceptual threads connect Lugo and Mustafic’s work: identity, home, textiles, family, love. Together, their practices illuminate the enduring power of art-making to hold memory, resist erasure, and articulate personal truths. Threads of Love invites viewers into intimate spaces where tenderness becomes a form of resilience.
Threads of Love is a two-person exhibition curated by Beth Kantrowitz/bk projects featuring work by Delvin Lugo, a narrative figure painter working directly on vintage textiles, and Amber Mustafic, an embroiderer who hand-stitches personal mythologies that draw from memory, symbolism, and mysticism. Through their varied practices, Lugo and Mustafic explore domestic environments, familial lineage, intimate relationships, and human connection. The exhibition is on view at Distortion Society, a combined contemporary art gallery and tattoo studio in Beacon, New York, U.S. through October 12, 2025……
Read the full article by Michelle Silver
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Delvin Lugo (b. 1977, Dominican Republic) is a New York City- based artist. He began his studies at the Maine College of Art before moving to New York to complete his education at the School of Visual Arts. He is a 2024 Bronx Art Museum AIM Fellow, a current LMCC Workspace resident, and a recipient of the 2025 Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant presented by The Provincetown Art Association and Museum. His work has been featured in New American Painting issue #152 and ESSE Magazine #107 and has been acquired by the Microsoft Art Collection and Fidelity Investments Art Collection. Lugo’s work will be featured in the 2026 AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum of Art. @delvinlugo
Amber Mustafic (b. 1997, New York, NY) graduated in 2019 with a B.A. in Art History & Minor in Museum Studies from Colorado College where she received the Honor’s Convocation Award for her thesis Islamic Material Culture in the West. She has exhibited throughout the US and is a CERF Plus Grant Recipient (2022) and has participated in the Ninth Semester in Design Fellowship at Colorado College (2019), the DNA Residency at Freight+Volume (2022, 2023) and an upcoming residency at Vermont Studio Center (2025). Her work has been featured in Wovenutopia Magazine, CERF Plus, and AMcE Creative Arts. @mustafica
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Beth Kantrowitz/bk projects is an independent curator representing emerging and mid-career contemporary artists primarily from the Northeast. She is the Co-Director of Drive-by Projects in Watertown, MA and previously the acclaimed Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston. For the past 30 years, she has worked with artists, galleries, curators, museums, universities and institutions across the US to support artists and facilitate dialogue within contemporary art. To learn more, visit bk projects and follow her @beth_kantrowitz.
PRESS CONTACT
Michelle Silver, Gallery Director: [email protected]
