When the Children Come Home explores themes of home and meditates on an expansive definition of familial connection through over thirty paintings, works on paper, and objects. The exhibition presents a dynamic selection of works made over the past two decades, including three new paintings and drawings that debuted at ICA Philly. The works include the monumental painting “Puerto Rican Pieta en la calle de la Fortaleza” (2006), on loan from El Museo del Barrio (NY). The centerpiece of the exhibition is an immersive site-specific installation in the museum’s Living Room Gallery filled with wallpaper, furnishings, chandeliers, and other performance objects that echo the formal characteristics of the paintings on view.

Works from Cruz’s ongoing chosenfamily series, conceived during the COVID-19 lockdown as a visual record of queer chosen families in the US, are prominently featured. Begun at the height of the pandemic, when structures of home, family, and safe spaces took on heightened significance and reevaluation, the project explores how enduring interpersonal relationships can serve as resilient sources of hope and support. These large, colorful works expand on Western traditions of portraiture while conjuring themes of queer joy, resilience, play, ancestry, and belonging.

On view from September 10, 2024, through February 16, 2025, When the Children Come Home is curated by Monique Long and is an exploration into the dynamics of homecoming, building upon a decade-long conversation on issues of art and belonging between Cruz and Long, both from the same neighborhood in Philadelphia and now residents of Harlem. This will be the second iteration of the exhibition, which originally opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Fall 2023.