First Name Only is a visual origin story, ancestral, autobiographical, and sovereign. This exhibition navigates the space between memory and myth, mapping the artist’s journey through lineage, grief, and reclamation. Drawing from her Gullah-Geechee and Indigenous roots, Jona Monét uses photography, painting, ritual, and sacred geometry to build a language of visual testimony.

The title reflects names as inheritances rather than historical labels, subtly rejecting imposed identities. It serves as a mirror to selfhood, revealing who we were before history

This work does not seek approval or explanation.
It offers presence.
It invites remembrance.
And it asks, simply:

Who were you before the world told you who to be?


Saturday, Jan 10 - Jan 24, 2026
At Station 3510,
3510 Rhode Island Ave Suite 100,
Mt Rainier, MD 20712

Artist Bio

I create to reclaim. Each piece I make is a layered act of remembering, naming, and becoming. My work is rooted in the spiritual technologies of my Gullah-Geechee, Seminole, and Cherokee ancestry, drawing from family histories of labor, land, grief, and survival. Raised between Southern fields and digital screens, I understand both root and code.

Through mixed media, sacred geometry, performance, and photography, I build visual rituals that blur the boundary between archive and altar. I’m interested in the thresholds: between the physical and spiritual, between the swamp and the throne, between what was taken and what remains.

I paint because the body remembers. I design because the story deserves form, and I create because I was never meant to be forgotten.

VIEWS FROM Inside the gallery

  • Throne Installation Close Up

  • Left wing + Orientation wall

  • Left wing + Orientation wall

  • Left wing

    Left wing

  • Left wing + Orientation wall

  • Orientation wall + Photography wall

  • Throne + Orientation wall

  • orientation Wall

  • Photography wall

  • Left Wing: Throne Installation

about the gallery

Station 3510 - 3510 Rhode Island Ave Suite 100, Mt Rainier, MD 20712

Station 3510 provides a 1000 square feet of creative space for the development, cultivation, and sustainment of the arts. As a studio, Station 3510 offers creative workshops, classes, and other creative community-based activities that are hosted and taught by local artists currently practicing in their craft. As a gallery, Station 3510 presents the work of local artists on a rolling basis. As a marketplace, Station 3510 offers the opportunity for local makers to present and sell their products to the public.

Learn more by visiting the site

Who were you before the world told you who to be?

Who were you before the world told you who to be?

STAY TUNED

SHOP LOADING FEB 1, 2026

2025

Jona Monet as Karaba,
shot by Naim at Studio Muze

“I did not inherit silence…

…I inherited memory.”

Jona Monét

Your Thoughts Belong Here

This exhibition is a conversation.

If something in First Name Only stirred a memory, raised a question, or named something familiar, we invite you to share it here. You may also leave your email if you’d like to stay connected to future exhibitions, events, and releases.