NinaJohnson

Room 109

Nina Johnson is pleased to present a selection of work by Megumi Shauna Arai, Rob Davis, Elsa Hansen Oldham, Minjae Kim, Estefania Puerta, and Katie Stout at this year’s edition of the Dallas Invitational. 

The presentation will highlight a series of watercolor works on paper from Rob Davis’ recent solo exhibition, Lace, examining the material’s shift from a marker of social status in 17th-century Dutch painting through its contemporary, mass produced ubiquity. 

Elsa Hansen Oldham will present a new body of textile works including a quilt and framed embroideries featuring iconic Texans such as Washington Phillips, and other celebrated figures including Chavela Vargas and Frida Kahlo. 

Minjae Kim will debut a new hanging lamp alongside a ‘mixer’-motif sculpture made from resin and carved wood, transforming a familiar domestic form via his distinctive sculptural language.  

Megumi Shauna Arai’s textile work centers on silk as a dynamic material—dyed, folded, stitched, and painted into a gestural composition that unfolds through movement and a quiet sense of energy.

On view by Estefania Puerta will be a new series of small-scale works alongside a recent wall relief, Laughing Death Drive (2025), formerly exhibited at the Aldrich Museum (Ridgefield, CT), exploring transformation, containment, and the material traces of memory. 

Also included in the presentation is Katie Stout’s new glazed ceramic vessel, Fey (Yellow), a continuation of the artist’s playful engagement with form, surface, and functional sculpture. 

The presentation will be on view in Room 109 of the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek during the Dallas Invitational, open April 16-18, 2026. 

About Megumi Shauna Arai

Megumi Shauna Arai (b. 1989) lives and works in New York City. She is interested in many things, including points of encounter, practices of embodiment, enfolding and unfolding aesthetics and the material and immaterial as interconnected. She has an interdisciplinary BA in Sociology, Embodiment Studies, Political Science and Mysticism from the CUNY Unique and Individualized Studies Program. Recent exhibitions include the host, the guest, curated by Nichole Caruso, ATLA Gallery (Los Angeles, 2026), Sinew, Koki Arts (Tokyo, 2025); Immanent Infinite, Object & Thing (New York, 2025); Group Shop, Bridget Donahue Gallery (New York, 2024); Summer Arrangement, Object & Thing at LongHouse (East Hampton, 2023); The Third Kind, Management Gallery (New York, 2023) Madoo, Object & Thing (Sagaponack, 2022); At The Noyes House, Blum & Poe, Mendes Wood DM and Object & Thing (New Canaan, 2020); Lore: Reimagined, Wing Luke Museum (Seattle, 2018) and Midst, Jacob Lawrence Gallery (Seattle, 2018). Recent residencies include Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library; Headlands Center for the Arts and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Pedagogical collaborations include Field Meridians, an art-based urban ecology curriculum creating tools for resilience through social practice in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, The Museum of Modern Art public programs and The Mothership, an eco-feminist art and ecology center in Tangier, Morocco. Arai has given artist talks at Asia Art Archive in America, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library, Topical Cream, Montez Press Radio, Parsons School of Design, Wing Luke Museum and Henry Art Gallery. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Topical Cream, Architectural Digest, The Here & There Collective, Impulse Magazine and Artnet among others. Arai’s work is in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

About Rob Davis

Rob Davis (b. 1970, Norfolk, Virginia) earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. His work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, including at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Sommer Contemporary (Tel Aviv), and Rental Gallery (New York). He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

About Elsa Hansen Oldham

Elsa Hansen Oldham (b. 1986, Louisville, KY) lives and works in Louisville, KY. She has exhibited at KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY; Dickinson Gallery, New York, NY; and Rental Gallery, East Hampton, NY, among others.

About Minjae Kim 

Minjae Kim was born in Seoul, Korea and lived in multiple different cities in Korea growing up. After spending time in both England and the U.S. during his years as a student, Kim moved to America to study Architecture and Painting at the University of Washington. He moved to New York to attend graduate school studying Architecture at Columbia University, and has been living here ever since.

About Estefania Puerta 

Estefania Puerta’s (b. 1988, Manizales, Colombia) work incorporates organic and inorganic materials to form a new poetics of transformation and translation. She is interested in what is gained and lost in the process of making and the new worlds that can emerge from recontextualizing materials. Her practice is rooted in world making, shape-shifting, border crossing, and language failure. Her research in psychoanalysis as it relates to the history of hysteria, natural medicine, and folklore, and personal histories of immigration and undocumentation in the United States has led to questions around what is considered “natural” and “alien” in her materially diverse work. Puerta was awarded the 2024 Philip Guston Rome Prize. Her work has been exhibited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Lyles and King, Micki Meng Gallery, Hesse Flatow, and Someday Gallery. In 2022 her work was included in the New England Triennial at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Puerta received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2018. She lives and works in Vermont and New York.

About Katie Stout

Katie Stout is regarded as one of the leading designers of her generation. Her works have been featured in T Magazine, the New York Times, Apartmento, Artforum and numerous other publications. Stout’s work can be found in museums and private collections across the globe, including the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. Katie Stout’s first solo exhibition was in Miami with Nina Johnson (then Gallery Diet) in 2015.