UNTITLED ART, HOUSTON: PERATA BRADLEY AND EYAKEM GULILAT
Courtesy of Eyakem Gulilat
Courtesy of Perata Bradley
September 19 - 21, 2025
Untitled Art, Houston | Booth A31
George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas, Houston, TX
VIP and Press Preview: Thursday, 18 Sept, 1-9pm
Opening Hours: Friday, 9/19, 12-8pm | Saturday, 9/20, 12-6pm | Sunday, 9/21, 12-6pm
Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Basket Books & Art are pleased to present the work of Perata Bradley and Eyakem Gulilat, two artists invested in the specificities of place, sharing a common intention to bring attention to how architecture and space shape the spirit and liveliness of a community. On view from September 19 - 21, 2025, at Untitled Art, Houston, Booth A31, the pairing of Bradley’s dioramic homes with Gulilat’s Cornerstones photographs opens up a spatial dialogue that points to complicated personal and public histories. Selected works aim to inspire complex and nuanced conversations around belonging, hope, and the nature of hospitality.
The work of Perata Bradley is unbounded by disciplinary specificity. Their work as artist seamlessly informs their role as activist, cultural historian, and preservationist. Born and raised in Houston’s Fourth Ward, Bradley’s primary work at present is the restoration of the Norris home, a cornerstone of that community and former home of Rev. Ed Norris and his wife, Sister Lenora Bell Norris. The Norris family served the Antioch Baptist Church congregation, and their home was a vital gathering place, nourishing children, family, and faith. Through Bradley’s efforts and a like-minded team of artist-volunteers, their historic home will be reborn with fresh dedication to the arts as a powerful vehicle for preservation and community transformation, exercising the strength born of togetherness. A concurrent, and ongoing project is the sculptural reconstruction in scale model of architectural typologies that once occupied the neighborhood in which she was raised. These works present as dioramas – made from readily accessible materials, such as cardboard, paint, and glue – with a material pragmatism in their construction. These are urgent and approachable works, constructed to preserve a visual history of place, reconstituting the memory of a structure that might have otherwise been wiped from the historical record—an economic byproduct of Houston's infamous lack of zoning—and a prime catalyst for gentrification. These sculptures are also memorials, deeply personal and affective renderings of time, place, and community.
Eyakem Gulilat is an artist invested in exploring what it means to be rooted to a place. Through the mediums of performance and photography, Gulilat, whose sensitivities to subject are acute, explores the bonds and bounds of community. His richly observed photographic work is both a marker and a memorial to people and place. Home, community, and supporting infrastructures are subjects and concerns; the work is in inhabiting and defining boundary edges, both seen and unseen. His work speaks to the deeply humane effort to find common ground, a space for mutual understanding and care, and as an embedded practitioner, his work is always, also, performative. This mode forms a clear through-line of concern in the radicality of works like Collaborative Self, in which Gulilat, in an effort to explore the storied American West, invites subjects to don his traditional Ethiopian garb and pose for a photo in that landscape. The final work is realized as a triptych: an individual in Ethiopian dress, a landscape, and Gulilat himself. This is boundary exploration rooted in connection to people and place. More recent work: Cornerstones makes this specificity of interest explicit; the artist documents the crumbling edifices of now freestanding mason-built walls. The walls, though lacking the fortifying function of an adjoining corner, stand resolute witness. No longer serving to restrict entry, these walls are being reclaimed by the land they were built to demarcate, and Gulilat’s genius lies in rendering the beauty and profundity of that failure.
This presentation, featuring Bradley’s architectonic sculpture alongside Gulilat’s Cornerstones photographs, offers a spatial dialogue that suggests intertwined histories, both personal and public – the goal of which is to create space for complex and nuanced conversations around belonging, hope, and the transformative power of presence.
SATELLITE PROGRAMS
Eyakem Gulilat, Maps of Conversation, 2025, Coffee grounds and paper
Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony as Dialogue: Belonging, Listening, and Presence — Guided by Eyakem Gulilat
Sunday, September 21, 10-11 am | Basket Books & Art, 115 Hyde Park Blvd, Houston, TX 77006
Free RSVP, Limited Seating
Join Oklahoma-based artist Eyakem Gulilat for a participatory Ethiopian coffee ceremony that transforms ritual into dialogue. Rooted in centuries of tradition, the ceremony becomes both a grounding practice and a research space—inviting participants to slow down, share stories, and reflect on community, identity, and resilience. Houston-based poet Ayokunle Falomo will be present alongside Eyakem Gulilat.
Guided through three intentional rounds of conversation, guests will engage themes of belonging, presence, and collective insight while savoring the aroma and taste of freshly prepared Ethiopian coffee. Each phase of the ceremony encourages mindful listening, storytelling, and reflection.
The shared experience of preparing and drinking coffee provides a sensory anchor and medium for connection and understanding—a way to listen deeply, hold space for one another, and imagine how ritual practices might foster empathy and belonging in contemporary society.
Exhibition Celebration: Perata Bradley and Eyakem Gulilat — Hosted by Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Basket Books & Art
Sunday, September 21, 11 am-12 pm | Basket Books & Art, 115 Hyde Park Blvd, Houston, TX 77006
Join us for a celebratory gathering with artists Eyakem Gulilat and Perata Bradley, whose paired works are featured at Untitled Art, Houston. Together, they will create a welcoming space for conversation and reflection, enriched by the aromas of freshly brewed Ethiopian Asikana Organic coffee and brunch by Bahel. Houston-based poet Ayokunle Falomo will present a short reading to open the celebration.
Guests will experience special readings and the rhythms of Ethio-jazz, set among the curated shelves of literature, poetry, and critical thought at Basket Books & Art. Together, these artists invite us to make connections through art and ritual.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Perata Bradley was born and raised in Freedmen's Town, located on the southwest side of downtown in Fourth Ward. She graduated cum laude from the University of Houston with a BA in art and is a Certified Nonprofit Professional (CNP). Bradley is a mixed-media artist who spotlights gentrification through the use of photography and sculptures at the intersection of architectural design and social narrative. Bradley's commitment to the Fourth Ward runs deep, transforming her studio into a space for education and activism and showcasing artworks alongside protest posters. Bradley's approach to her practice shows how artists can use their studios as platforms for education, advocacy, and community building. Bradley was in residence with the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2024 and exhibited work in the HCCC, In Residence: 18th Edition.
Originally from Ethiopia, Eyakem Gulilat roots his work in the search for belonging. Through photography, he navigates the complexities of cross-cultural interactions, exploring how time, memory, and place shape our experiences. His images provoke questions about the relationship between subject and photographer, the borders that define us, and how perspectives shift when viewed through the camera’s lens. Gulilat holds a BA from Abilene Christian University and an MFA from the University of Oklahoma. He has been an artist-in-residence at renowned institutions such as the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon; and Light Work in Syracuse, New York. His work has been honored with awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, the National Photography Fellowship at the Midwest Center for Photography, the En Foco Photography Fellowship, and the Project Row Houses and University of Houston Fellowship. His work has been widely exhibited across the U.S. and Canada and is held in notable public and private collections. Gulilat is currently a 2024-2026 Tulsa Artist Fellowship awardee.
ABOUT GUEST AUTHOR
Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections, and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published in print and online publications: The New York Times, Houston Public Media, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review, Write About Now among others. You can find more information about him at afalomo.com.
ABOUT UNTITLED ART
Founded in 2012, Untitled Art is a leading contemporary art fair taking place annually on the sands of Miami Beach and in 2025, will expand to Houston. Guided by a mission to support the wider art ecosystem, Untitled Art offers an inclusive platform for discovering contemporary art that prioritizes collaboration within each aspect of the fair.
ABOUT BASKET BOOKS & ART
Basket Books & Art is a bookshop and art gallery fostering a diverse network of artist relationships, serving as a hub for community and conversation, and as a portal to the vast world of ideas swirling in the contemporary ether.