“What is Home?” A paired exhibition by Wille Baronet and Leah den Bok

A paired exhibition featuring
WE ARE ALL HOMELESS by Willie Baronet
HUMANIZING THE HOMELESS by Leah den Bok

On display April 3-24 • Regitz Gallery

What Is Home? brings together two powerful bodies of work that challenge viewers to reconsider their assumptions about housing, belonging, and the human stories behind homelessness. Through mixed media installations and intimate portraiture, artists Willie Baronet and Leah den Bok invite us to look closer—and to see differently.

At the heart of this exhibition is a shared question: What does it truly mean to have, or not have, a home? Is home a physical structure? A feeling? A memory? A place of safety—or a search for it?

WE ARE ALL HOMELESS — Willie Baronet

For more than three decades, artist and professor Willie Baronet has traveled across cities collecting signs purchased from people experiencing homelessness. What began as an attempt to navigate his own discomfort at intersections evolved into a deep, ongoing exploration of empathy, identity, and shared humanity.

Baronet’s installation uses these handwritten signs—each a fragment of someone’s story—to form a larger narrative about visibility and vulnerability. Every sign becomes both an artifact and a mirror: a reminder of the person who wrote it, and of the ways we see or fail to see one another in public space. Through his collection, Baronet asks us to reflect on our own emotional landscapes: the discomfort, guilt, generosity, or avoidance that shape how we respond to those asking for help.

His project suggests that homelessness is not only a physical condition but also an emotional and spiritual one. And it challenges us to consider that home, perhaps, is not a building but a state of being—one that all of us seek, and one that many are denied.

HUMANIZING THE HOMELESS — Leah den Bok

At fifteen years old, Canadian photographer Leah den Bok began traveling the world to document the faces and stories of people experiencing homelessness. Her portraits—honest, unadorned, and profoundly humane—invite viewers into direct eye contact with individuals too often overlooked.

Each photograph is paired with a personal story, many shared during moments of vulnerability and trust. Through these narratives, themes emerge: trauma, resilience, mental illness, addiction, grief, but also humor, gratitude, and hope. Den Bok’s work confronts the quiet epidemic of indifference that surrounds homelessness, echoing the sentiment that the deepest form of suffering is the feeling of being unwanted or unseen.

In her images, the eyes of her subjects become an entry point—revealing layers of emotion and reminding us that homelessness is not an identity but a circumstance. Her portraits ask us not to look away, but to look into—and in doing so, to recognize our shared humanity.