To Do in RI: 6th Edition, FABRIC Arts Festival 2025, in Providence and Fall River

Photo, top: Branko

The program has been announced for FABRIC Arts Festival 2025 which will take place from October 9th to the 12th with dinner-performances, exhibitions, sound installations, and gatherings across Fall River and Providence.

Now in its sixth edition, FABRIC presents an ambitious lineup of dinner-performances, exhibitions, sound installations, concerts, and community gatherings that highlight the festival’s mission of connecting cultures through art, food, and dialogue.

“FABRIC Arts Festival is a celebration of Fall River’s vibrant spirit as a crossroads of creativity and culture. We see the city as a dynamic space where diverse geographies and histories intersect, and our festival seeks to honor and amplify this rich tapestry through a multidisciplinary approach that connects local artistry with global dialogues,” said Michael Benevides, co-founder of FABRIC.

FABRIC’s 2025 edition will include exhibitions, performances, talks, a guided walk, and a series of communal dinners conceived as artistic events.

The dinners—now a signature of the festival—invite artists and chefs to collaborate in creating immersive experiences that combine food, storytelling, and performance. The program also expands through co-curation with regional partners, reinforcing FABRIC’s commitment to shared authorship and community collaboration.

“Our main goal has always been to bring people together through arts and culture. This year, food has taken center stage in the FABRIC Arts Festival. While we’ve previously included dinners in our program, this time, the act of eating is fundamental to our approach. It creates a vibrant space for new artistic collaborations and serves as a medium to explore memories, emotions, and our diasporic experiences,” said Jesse James, co-founder and curator of FABRIC

Organized by Casa dos Açores da Nova Inglaterra (CANI), a Fall River-based non-profit fostering cultural and educational exchange between the Azores and the Portuguese-American diaspora, FABRIC continues to build bridges between local traditions and global creativity. This year’s edition coincides with the annual gathering of the World Council of Casas dos Açores, welcoming representatives from 13 diasporic organizations around the world to Fall River.

FABRIC 2025 is supported by a network of local and international partners, including the Barr Foundation, SouthCoast Community Foundation, Mass Humanities, Mass Cultural Council, Communidades Portuguesas, FLAD – Luso-American Development Foundation, and the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; is sponsored by the following individuals and organizations: Bristol County Savings Bank, BayCoast Bank, Matouk, BankFive, Senator Michael Rodrigues, SouthCoast Wind, SuperBock, and Neptune; is presented in partnership with venues such as ODD-KIN, CRIB, AS220, Portugalia Marketplace, and The Cultural Center and collaborative partners, including The City of Fall River, Southeastern Massachusetts Visitors Bureau, Fall River Arts & Culture Coalition (FRACC), Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Brown University, Potter’s Printing, Courtland Club, and Chroma Council. Media support is provided by WJFD 97.3, The Public’s Radio, and Viva Fall River.

Updates to be added to the festival’s website, FABRICfallriver.com

2025 FABRICS Program

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9 – FALL RIVER – 7 PM | SALO SALO  – DINNER-PERFORMANCE

Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan St., Fall River

BHEN ALAN & COMPANY (HALIKA, UPO KA, TIKIM KA, SAMAHAN MO KAMI SA GUNITA)

This is a ticketed event with limited capacity. Follow the link on our website for tickets or click here.

Artist Bhen Alan invites guests into a unique dinner-performance blending food, movement, and ritual. Co-created with local immigrant mothers (including Bhen’s), Courtland Club’s bar team, and performers, the evening offers a sensorial experience that blurs the line between meal, performance, and gathering.

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – FALL RIVER – 5-8 PM | POST SCARCITY SCULPTURE OPENING RECEPTION – EXHIBITION

Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art (FR MoCA), 44 Troy St., Fall River

HANNA UMIN, ALEX TUM, SERENA CHANG, KARYN NAKAMURA, MATTHEW AZEVEDO
CURATED BY HARRY GOULD HARVEY VI

Free and open to the public.

Exhibit open October 10, 2025 – January 2026. Visit frmoca.org for gallery hours.

This exhibit gathers four artists and one sound artist whose practices operate as Futique Agents, working with material residue and technological detritus in a post-prophetic tense. Post scarcity names a politics that imagines an end to artificial scarcity enforced by capital, envisioning conditions where technology and collective organization free energies from deprivation. Here, sculpture emerges from soldered brass, plaster, resin, foam, circuits, video systems, and found refuse, forming a biomechanical site where future and past converge. These works, coded with fragments of war material, biological trace, and machinic residue, appear as future antiques—at once evidentiary and prophetic of social and aesthetic revolution.

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – Fall River – 7 PM | CALAFONES: BACK FOR A BEAT OF SAUDADES  – DINNER-PERFORMANCE

The Cultural Center, 205 S. Main St., Fall River

PROJECT CALAFONAS & HUGO FERREIRA

This is a ticketed event with limited capacity. Follow the link on our website for tickets or click here.

Project Calafonas invites guests into a dinner-performance exploring the Portuguese-Azorean diaspora through food and sound. DJ Milhafre (Henrique Ferreira) will guide a listening party blending archival tracks with contemporary interpretations. The menu, created by Azorean chef Hugo Ferreira, will be executed in collaboration with Mitch Mauricio, a local chef and recurrent partner of the festival. Together, they create a festive and reflective evening where food, music, and heritage converge.

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11 – PROVIDENCE – 2-5 PM | LOAFHEAD – EXHIBITION

ODD-KIN, 134 Matthewson St., East Providence

HUGO BRAZÃO & DIRT PALACE

Free and open to the public.

ODD-KIN is an artist-run space in Providence that supports experimental, queer, and transdisciplinary practices through exhibitions, residencies, and public programming. For FABRIC 2025, it presents a collaboration between Portuguese artist Hugo Brazão and Dirt Palace, a Providence-based publishing and programming platform dedicated to queer publishing as resistance. Brazão debuts LoafHead—a hybrid figure of body and bread—exploring themes of sustenance, scarcity, and renewal through drawing, sculpture, and storytelling. In dialogue with Dirt Palace’s zines and printed ephemera, the exhibition highlights queer imagination and resistance, with food by the artist adding a shared layer of hospitality.

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Saturday, October 11 – 6-8 PM | CROSSCURRENTS/CONTRACORRENTES – SOUND INSTALLATION, NEW COMMISSION

AS220, 95 Empire St., Providence

DANIEL WYCHE & MATTHEW AZEVEDO

Free admission.

Daniel Wyche & Matthew Azevedo present a durational sound piece developed during a FABRIC residency, using field recordings from the Azores and New England to explore memory, migration, and the Atlantic as a living connector between communities.

With shifting fabrics and haptic hammocks, the installation creates an immersive sonic and visual environment where audiences may arrive and depart freely throughout the session.

 

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Saturday, October 11 – 10 PM | LATCHKEY – PARTY/DJ SETS

CRIB, 108 Hayward St., Providence

BRANKO with Mango & Ginger, Slick Vick and Where’s Nasty

This is a ticketed event. Follow the link on our website for tickets or click here.

Doors open at 9:30 PM.

Stay Silent and FABRIC Arts Festival present LATCHKEY at CRIB, a night of music, dance, and global sounds. Headliner BRANKO—one of Portugal’s most influential producers and founder of Enchufada—brings DJ sets that fuse electronic music with rhythms from across the Portuguese-speaking world. Joining him are LA-based duo Mango & Ginger, Boston’s Slick Vick, and Providence’s own Where’s Nasty. This transatlantic gathering connects Lisbon’s club scene with diasporic sounds and audiences in Providence and beyond.

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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12 – FALL RIVER – 11 AM – 1 PM | GATHERING GROUND: A WALK THROUGH COPICUT WOODS – WALK

This is a free admission event with limited capacity. Follow the link on our website for registration or click here.

Alicia “Truthseeker” Mitchell will lead a reflective walk through Copicut Woods—a place shaped by memory, care, and ancestral presence. The walk invites participants into gestures of grounding, listening, and quiet relation with the land and one another. It offers a space to pause, reconnect, and carry forward what has been shared.

Please wear comfortable clothing and shoes suitable for walking outdoors. We also recommend bringing water, sun protection, and anything else you may need to feel grounded and at ease.

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Sunday, October 12 – 2 PM | COMIDA CASERA – LUNCH/WORKSHOP

Portugalia Marketplace, 489 Bedford St., Fall River

Evelyn Rydz

This is a free admission event with limited capacity. More information to be announced on the website.

Comida Casera is Evelyn Rydz’s ongoing participatory project that gathers people around the table to share food and stories of home. For FABRIC, the artist invites local communities to bring dishes connected to memory and heritage, creating a space of care, listening, and dialogue. Blending recipes, storytelling, and collective presence, Comida Casera transforms the act of eating together into an artistic practice of connection and belonging.

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RESIDENCIES 2024/2025

Since 2022, FABRIC has invited artists for a year-long residency that includes several moments of encounter, research, and production, resulting in a new commission presented in FABRIC’s following edition. In 2024/2025 the Artist in Residency program includes Chicago-based musician and researcher Daniel Wyche, Portuguese architect Nuno Pimenta and Project Calafonas—Music from the Azorean and Portuguese Diaspora 1970’s-1980’s, led by Azoreans Henrique Ferreira and Diogo Lima.

Additional details on exhibitions, talks, educational initiatives, and registration will be available on the festival’s website, FABRICfallriver.com, and @FABRICfestfr on Instagram and Facebook.

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ABOUT FABRIC

FABRIC Arts Festival is a multidisciplinary celebration of contemporary art, music, and community rooted in Fall River, Massachusetts. Since its inception in 2019, the festival has explored the power of artistic expression to spark dialogue, foster connection, and inspire collective imagination—drawing on the region’s rich diasporic heritage and cultural intersections.

Each edition unfolds across diverse venues in Fall River and Providence, featuring exhibitions, performances, concerts, communal meals, talks, and site-specific installations. With a curatorial emphasis on collaboration and commensality, FABRIC invites local and international artists, institutions, and communities to come together, share experiences, and co-create new ways of relating.

More than a festival, FABRIC is an evolving proposition: that art can be a powerful catalyst for gathering, listening, and imagining new futures across geographies and identities.

Learn more at FABRICfallriver.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

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ABOUT CASA DOS AÇORES DE NOVA INGLATERRA (CANI)

Casa dos Açores da Nova Inglaterra (CANI) is a cultural nonprofit based in Fall River, Massachusetts, dedicated to fostering connections between the Azores and the Portuguese-American community of New England. Established in 1982, CANI serves as a vital bridge between generations, preserving Azorean heritage while embracing new forms of cultural expression. With a membership of over 1,000, it continues to be a cornerstone of the region’s Portuguese cultural life.

Through events, exhibitions, and public programs, CANI celebrates Azorean traditions and champions innovation within the cultural landscape. Since 2019, it has extended its mission as the organizing force behind the FABRIC Arts Festival—a multidisciplinary platform for contemporary art and transatlantic dialogue.

In 2025, CANI will host the annual World Council of Casas dos Açores, welcoming representatives from 13 diasporic organizations around the globe for a landmark international gathering.