By Ann Marie Jackson—
Join Kate Van Doren and many of the women featured in The Healing Words Project on Friday, March 6, at 7:00 p.m. at the Museum of Art in Querétaro (MAQRO) for the opening of a three-room solo exhibition that is less about a single artist and more about collective voice. The Healing Words Project is a living body of work composed of hundreds of women’s and gender-expansive people’s stories of survival, displacement, grief, resistance, and healing—expressed through painting, photography, drawing, and video. The exhibition will run from March 6 through June 6, 2026.
Created by artist and registered art therapist Kate Van Doren, The Healing Words Project centers self-authored narratives. Each participant contributes her own words—often a mantra, prayer, or declaration—which are written directly onto the body and documented through portraiture. These images then become the foundation for artworks that reflect both the individual and the shared human experience. The words are not decorative; they are the work itself.
At its heart, the project asks a quiet but radical question: What happens when women are believed? And further—what becomes possible when their stories are not edited, interpreted, or extracted, but honored exactly as they are offered?
The exhibition in Querétaro arrives at a moment of global reckoning. Across Mexico and beyond, conversations around gender-based violence, migration, displacement, and collective trauma are increasingly urgent. Many of the women represented in the exhibition are refugees, activists, mothers, artists, and survivors—some forced to leave their homelands, others navigating systems that have long silenced them. Rather than framing these stories through victimhood, The Healing Words Project centers agency. The women are not subjects of the artwork; they are collaborators and co-authors. Learn more at healingwordsproject.com.
Van Doren describes her approach as empathic realism—a socially engaged form of realism rooted in ethical collaboration and deep listening. Her paintings are technically precise, yet emotionally porous. They do not dramatize suffering or offer easy narratives of redemption. Instead, they hold space for complexity: grief alongside strength, anger alongside tenderness, vulnerability alongside power. Each portrait is an act of witnessing rather than interpretation.
The exhibition unfolds across three rooms, inviting viewers into an immersive encounter with these voices. Moving through the space, visitors are met not by spectacle, but by presence. The cumulative effect is intimate and expansive at once—each individual story standing on its own, while also contributing to a collective chorus. The repetition of words, faces, and gestures becomes a form of visual testimony.
Importantly, The Healing Words Project is grounded in reciprocity. For many participants —particularly those impacted by war, displacement, or economic instability—the project extends beyond visibility. Mutual aid, commissions, and shared resources are integral to the work. Art, here, is not symbolic; it is practical. It creates connection, sustains relationships, and, in some cases, directly supports families and communities.
Querétaro’s role as host city is significant. With its deep cultural history and contemporary art scene, the city provides a powerful setting for an exhibition rooted in remembrance, resilience, and forward movement. Opening during International Women’s Month, the show invites reflection not only on women’s experiences, but on how healing operates collectively—how it moves between people, generations, and places.
“When one voice heals, it echoes,” Van Doren says. The phrase functions less as a slogan than as a lived truth. In witnessing the healing of another, something shifts internally. The exhibition does not promise resolution or closure. Instead, it offers permission: to feel, to listen, to recognize one’s own story in the presence of another.
The Healing Words Project ultimately reminds us that art does not have to be loud to be powerful. Sometimes, its greatest strength lies in its ability to listen—and in doing so, to create space for collective care in uncertain times.
I have had the honor of bearing witness to the power of The Healing Words Project over the last several years. For so many of us, nothing is more healing and empowering than finding our voice and sharing our truth.
You can find Kate’s work at http://www.katevandoren.com @catvandoren on instagram.
Ann Marie Jackson is a book editor and the award-winning author of The Broken Hummingbird. Jackson is also co-founder of the women’s microlending organization Mano Amiga and a longstanding board member of Casita Linda, which builds homes for families living in extreme poverty in central Mexico.
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