Gainesville Fine Arts Association Hosts Greater Gainesville International Center “Destined Home” Art Exhibit
On Friday, July 25, the Gainesville Fine Arts Association (GFAA) premiered an art exhibit by the Greater Gainesville International Center (GGIC) titled “Destined Home: A Story of Resilience and Belonging.”
The exhibit is centered around the six refugee families GGIC housed in Gainesville from July 2024 until January 2025, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning refugee resettlement.
The artistic portion of the exhibit was created by GGIC refugee resettlement treasurer Terrence Ho. The majority of the narrative portion is told from the refugees’ point of view but press releases state GGIC director and former mayor Lauren Poe wrote the words.
A promotional poster for Destined Home states the exhibit is partly funded by the City of Gainesville and Alachua County.
GGIC is a nonprofit organization and acts as a trade name for the Sister Cities of Gainesville.
Founded in the 1980s, the Sister Cities of Gainesville has established mutual exchanges between several foreign cities and Gainesville. A sister city connection is created when the local government in Gainesville signs an agreement with a foreign city’s local government.
The exhibit features accolades from several of Gainesville’s sister cities, such as Rzeszów, Poland; Quaqilya, Palestine; Novorossiysk, Russia; and Kfar Saba, Israel. Also added were multiple art pieces depicting a skate park in Quaqilya.
Destined Home features several plaques, each depicting a different part of the settlement process or aspect of life the refugees had to adapt to.
The introductory section of the exhibit references the creation of GGIC’s refugee resettlement program, stating the “board’s deliberation was emotional and profound. Did we have the trust of our community—and the internal capacity—to ensure that newly arrived families would succeed? In November 2023, GGIC agreed to help with refugee resettlement, expecting fifty refugee cases in 2024 ramping up to one hundred and fifty over a few years. Gainesville and GGIC were ready to serve our newest neighbors.”
The housing section of the exhibit states, “The apartment we lived in when we first arrived was a blessing, but we needed better permanent housing for our family. We visited apartments and homes around Gainesville, often deemed ineligible due to our initial lack of income or guarantor.”
The exhibit does not reference Ignite Life Center (ILC), despite the church being the headquarters of GGIC and the location where the refugees were temporarily housed.
Ignite Life Center head pastor Mark Vega speaks about working with GGIC on their refugee resettlement program in a June 2024 live streamed sermon that was later deleted
In an interview with GnvInfo, Terrence Ho said ILC is “just an office space“ but also confessed it’s where GGIC housed the refugees before finding permanent housing.
GGIC has continued to work with ILC despite the church’s several controversies, including multiple arrests for child sexual abuse, lawsuits over coverups, previous partnerships with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and homophobic comments from pastors, one of whom, Nicole Gomez, is featured on the art exhibit in GFAA.
Ignite Life Center pastor Nicole Gomez denounces the LGBTQ+ community in a guest sermon at the Outside Church in Fort Pierce
Before GGIC moved to ILC, the nonprofit was located at GFAA, state business records show.
GnvInfo reached out to GFAA executive director Katy Lemle for comment, and she provided the following statement:
"GFAA was unaware of GGIC's new location, Ignite Life Center Church, or its connection with GGIC. We cannot speak to their relationship or how it relates to the exhibition.
GFAA was not involved in GGIC’s resettlement work or in the creation of the exhibition beyond hosting it in our space. Our relationship with GGIC has been in the arts & cultural sphere (events & hosting the exhibition), and GGIC rented out an office space in our building for about a year."
The Destined Home art exhibit will be available at GFAA through August 22.
