Current
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Tower of Babel
cassie renée peña
August 01 – September 14, 2025︎︎︎ schedule viewing with Calendly
︎︎︎ exhibition checklist
(Philadelphia, PA) Fuller Rosen Gallery is delighted to present Tower of Babel, a solo exhibition by cassie renée peña. Tower of Babel features new ceramic and furniture pieces highlighting renée peña’s passion for ancient and contemporary cultures. renée peña’s art practice investigates the spaces where disparate civilizations intersect and how physical artifacts show cultural transition and transference.
Join us for the opening reception of Tower of Babel at Fuller Rosen Gallery on First Friday, August 01 from 6-9 pm.
cassie renée peña, from Tower of Babel, 2025
Tower of Babel materialized over a year in response to witnessing American and European reactions to the genocide in Gaza and to Demian DinéYazhi’s work at the 2024 Whitney Biennial. DinéYazhi’s piece, text on a neon light that flashes: “we must stop imagining apocolypse/genocide + we must imagine liberation,” called cassie renée peña to move past observation to conceive a different reality. renée peña recognizes the tension with historical revision and imagined utopias. She does not want to ignore and minimize the current reality that land, artifacts, and lives are stolen today in the name of European supremacy as expressed through the ongoing genocide in historical Palestine, Sudan, against Armenians in Turkey, and in other countless ways in a mutitude of countries.
cassie renée peña, from Tower of Babel, 2025
cassie renée peña, from Tower of Babel, 2025The political turmoil between the United States, Israel, and Iran is a continuation of the surface story of Babel and Babylon. Babylon was the world capital for several empires, including the Assyrian and Persian Empires, until the rise of the Hellenistic world. In Judaism, Babylon symbolizes an oppressor and in Christianity, Babylon came to symbolize worldliness and evil. Until the historical city of Babylon was discovered, Europeans depicted Babylon as an “Oriental” amalgamation of the Egyptian, Greek, and Ottoman Empires.
For renée peña, the practice of creating an imagined past, the mythical Tower of Babel, represents an ideal of humanity; one where the cultures and languages meant to divide us are shared and celebrated. In this exhibition, collectivism and pluralism dismantle the Western mythologies that are meant to explain who is noble and who is barbaristic. renée peña provides audiences an opportunity to re-locate themselves in an egalitarian and democratic world that belongs to all cultures across all times.
cassie renee peña (b. 1984, Camp LeJeune, NC, she/her) is a self-taught artist whose focus is on functional-conceptual sculptures that evoke existential and spiritual themes through the practice of manipulating and recontextualizing pre-historic and historic ceramic forms. Bridging the relationship between use and meaning in craft, her art practice is meant as a form of both play and ritual-making rooted in the history of anti-capitalist art craft. renée peña has shown work in Philadelphia at the Clay Studio, Vicarious Love, Utility Works, and in other artist created arts spaces. She has also exhibited in North Carolina in various galleries and art spaces across the High Country.
Her work has been published in Heads Magazine and Art Maze Magazine. In conjunction with her studio practice, renée peña works in public health. She received her MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Expressive Arts Therapy from Appalachian State University. renée peña currently resides in Philadelphia, PA.