WVC MAC Gallery to showcase “Long Way Home” by Portland artists Morrison and Vichayapai

WENATCHEE — A new multimedia exhibition by Portland-based artists Ame Morrison and Nina Vichayapai will open May 2 at the Wenatchee Valley College MAC Gallery. Titled Long Way Home, the collaborative installation reimagines the American road as a site of personal transformation and cultural resistance.

The exhibit will run through June 20, with an opening reception scheduled for Friday, May 2, from 5 to 7 p.m. as part of Wenatchee’s First Friday Art Walk.

Through soft sculpture, family archives, photographs, and video projections, Long Way Home draws on Morrison and Vichayapai’s shared experiences of otherness while traveling across the United States. A centerpiece of the show is a large-scale fabric sculpture of a car—symbolizing both movement and memory.

According to the artists’ exhibition statement, “On the road, one horizon bleeds into another. Forests dissipate into open land. Mountains melt into plains and then back into mountains. In Long Way Home, Ame and Nina Vichayapai trace their personal histories and migrational lineages within the Western United States.”

Vichayapai recalls her childhood travels with her Thai immigrant parents, who navigated American highways with a rice cooker in tow and limited English. “For her Thai immigrant family, road trips were an important way to situate themselves within the American landscape,” the artists wrote.

Morrison, who identifies as queer and trans, explores how road travel and car living have offered them freedom from rigid gender norms. “For Ame, movement makes room for shapeshifting. They have found intermittent liberation from gender categories through road-based travel and car living. For them, being transitory is analogous to transgender identity.”

Their combined work seeks to challenge dominant narratives. “At the unlikely intersection of these experiences, Ame and Nina have collaborated on Long Way Home to explore otherness on United States highways. Through soft sculptures, family archives, photography and their friendship, they reimagine the road as a site for possibility and pleasure beyond the white hetero-patriarchal culture that has dominated travel narratives in the American West.”

Morrison is a multimedia and social practice artist whose work focuses on belonging through the lens of queerness and embodied trans experience. They are completing a BFA in Art Practice with a Minor in Film Studies at Portland State University this June.

Vichayapai’s interdisciplinary art includes soft sculpture, public installations, and unconventional mediums like pie-making and guerilla gardening. Her work has been featured at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Henry Art Gallery, and other venues, as well as informal community spaces across the Northwest.

The MAC Gallery has hosted contemporary art exhibitions for more than a decade and serves both the WVC student body and the broader Wenatchee Valley community. Organizers are encouraging donations to support continued programming.

More information about the artists can be found at aj-morrison.com and nvichayapai.com.