Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing
that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
Freight + Volume is pleased to present It Takes a Village, a three-woman exhibition of paintings by Andrea Castillo, Nancy Elsamanoudi, and Baran Shafiey. While the three artists take different approaches to presenting the human figure, their practices are united by the elevation of the mundane and the importance of communities of individuals intentionally or unintentionally acting in solidarity.
Baran Shafiey’s paintings combine personal and family narratives with the visual language of modernist art history, using cubist and muralist compositions and motifs to depict scenes of personal significance. Perspectives shift within Writer #1 and Writer #2 (both 2026) as bits of a mysterious narrative coalesce within each canvas creating a greater story from the sum of its parts. Time is fluid in Shafiey’s work as personal and familial memories blend together through the artist’s hand. Some of her compositions are based on family stories that were passed down to her, stories that might have gone extinct had she not passed them on. The narratives viewers manage to piece together add them to the chain of transmission, keeping the stories alive even if their exact meanings can seem obscure.
Andrea Castillo’s paintings depict sign-covered neighborhoods and bodegas and their various inhabitants. E. LA Tires (2025) depicts two figures, presented in a reflection in a rearview mirror, against a wall of ads and signs seen through the windshield of a car. Other works similarly elevate the vernacular advertisement, with a figure stretched across an ad-emblazoned tire in Tire Repair (2025) and a group of women seated next to a tower of signs and brand names in Tam’s Burgers (2025). While many drown out such ads as part of the constant white noise of contemporary life, their presence in Castillo’s work presents them as an aspect of the neighborhood environment. Unlike Warhol’s soup cans and Brillo boxes, these ads and brands aren’t plucked from their environments but exist as something as much a part of LA as cars and palm trees, part of the neighborhood’s social ecosystem and a fitting backdrop for the community built by those who pass by them daily.
In Nancy Elsamanoudi’s paintings, women and animals inhabit ambiguous interior and exterior spaces. A woman with large red boots in Pet Lobster (2026) shares a bottle of wine with the titular crustacean, and a stylized white rabbit sits between the figure’s feet in Bunny Hop (2026). Some of her paintings verge on the surreal or absurd: in Plane (2026) a woman watches a plane landing (or crashing?) through binoculars next to a charcoal grill. Paintings like Night Cap (2025) and White Boots (2026) are quiet interior scenes of nude women smoking and drinking by themselves. In their solitude or alongside their animal companions, the women in Elsamanoudi’s paintings exhibit Sartre’s notion of seriality, united in their shared alienation from the rest of the world: alone together.
All three artists, through their stylized figures, elevate the mundane acts of life like telling a story, going to the bodega or having a smoke before bed into something aesthetically significant. This valorization of our everyday lives speaks to the revolutionary potential that can be gleaned from the mundane. Change isn’t always found in grand displays of power: sometimes it’s getting ice cream from the local bodega instead of a chain store or passing on family stories that may have otherwise died with their original tellers or relishing in silent solitude knowing that it’s shared by countless other lonely souls. In times as turbulent as these, it’s vital for artists, and citizens in general, to affect change by any means possible. With the constant and growing threats of fascism and international war, intentional and unintentional acts of quiet resistance build on each other and can, with time, coalesce into significant change.
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Andrea Castillo (b. Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles) received her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in 2014. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, New York; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; Charlie James Gallery, Swim Gallery, Ruscha & Co., and New Image Art in Los Angeles; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Plaza de la Raza, and CCCM (Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts) in Los Angeles; SOMArts, San Francisco; and Flux Factory, Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, VoyageLA, ArtMaze Magazine, and YoungSpace.
Nancy Elsamanoudi is a Brooklyn-based artist. She received an MFA in Painting and Drawing with distinction from Pratt Institute in 2014. She has shown her work at various venues in New York an elsewhere, including Spring/Break Art Show, Readymade Gallery, The LeRoy Neiman Art Center, Equity Gallery, Bishop Gallery, The Painting Center, Amos Eno Gallery, Pelham Art Center, and SFA Projects. Her work has been featured in Bomb Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, Art Spiel, and Let Them Talk with Paul DeRienzo.
Baran Shafiey (b. 2003, Tehran, Iran; lives and works in Providence, RI) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025. Her work has been exhibited at Leila Heller Gallery, New York; East Manning Projects and Woods Gerry Gallery in Providence; Family Gallery, Pawtucket; The Trophy Room, Los Angeles; and Sahar K. Boluki Gallery, Toronto. She has participated in residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Aspen, and the Refuge for Travelers and Makers, Vinalhaven. She is the recipient of the Innovate Grant (2026), the Florence Leif Award (RISD, 2025), and grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2024–25).