The Radial Arts Center invites you to the opening reception of "In Case I’m Not Here Tomorrow" — a solo exhibition by Vanessa Lekule.

Artist Statement:

In Case I’m Not Here Tomorrow is not a farewell. It’s an urgent call to the present.

What if everything I believe is worth saying is already in the work? My thoughts on beauty, control, joy, chaos, and mourning—all illustrated through color, surface, and form. Could the compositions I leave behind be a lasting legacy? Could the marks outlive the conversations I’ve had, the colors bring joy where I may have brought pain?

I often think about the inescapable truth that one day I will leave this world. What of me will remain? What have I done with twenty-eight years on this plane?

Maybe these paintings don’t offer answers—perhaps they hold contradictions. Forgiveness, empathy, love, anger—all at once. Using oil, pastel, collage, and pencil, I layer opposing elements—structure and chaos, softness against harshness—into compositions that speak without needing to explain.

This is a visual journal of now: of what is being felt, seen, and experienced in real time. In Case I'm Not Here Tomorrow.

Artist Bio: Vanessa Lekule (b. Tanzania) is a mixed-media visual artist based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She earned her BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in painting from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she received the Shelly Arnold Waggoner Memorial Scholarship and the Jean R. Faulkner Memorial Art Exhibition Award.

Lekule has been awarded residencies at the Black Mountain College Active Archive Residency (NC), Tofte Lake Center (MN), and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (NE), among others. Her work has been exhibited at the Burkholder Project Gallery, Tugboat Gallery, and the LUX Center for the Arts.