We believe that family is not one single definition, it’s a feeling, a memory, a choice. Sometimes it’s found in parents and grandparents, sometimes in the people who choose us and stay. We’ve learned that home doesn’t have to be a house, and family doesn’t have to be by blood. Both can be made from quiet love, shared moments, and the kind of care that stays, even across distance.

In Held Close, we come together to explore these ideas through our own stories and photographs. Jordan reflects on her adoptive parents and the layered relationship between their past and hers. Nora documents her grandparents’ home, where the walls speak even in their absence. Norah searches for home in the spaces between memory and longing, working with personal archives and various printing methods, in small postcards, holding fragments of what was.

Our approaches are personal and distinct, yet rooted in the same desire: to understand what it means to belong. Through this exhibition, we offer a space for tenderness, complexity, and connection. A reminder that belonging is not always a place, it’s something we carry, choose, and keep.

- Norah, Nora & Jordan