Hannah Traore

On first approach, Hannah Traore Gallery feels like any other downtown New York arts space. Sunlight pours in through the big glass doors; the air is still; white bouclé-covered settees anchor the room, looking, at first, like art themselves.

But on the walls—the true real estate—is something different: color. Hues, the gallery’s first show, features artists working with a rainbow’s worth of different shades: glittery yellow, electric turquoise and iridescent multicolor patterns. One wall is painted green, another is two-tone—yellow and candy cane red. All works in Hues are also by artists of color. It is not a gimmick or a one-off; here, marginalized artists exist at the center.

Traore, 27, grew up in Toronto, the daughter of a white Canadian mother, a fiber artist and collect...