[DOGHOUSE CONTEMPORARY]
This bilingual, hands-on workshop explored doll-making as a means of resistance and covert communication in politically dangerous times. In this workshop, we stitched together fabric dolls that carried our own hidden messages in the form of notes, embroidered symbols, or sewn-in objects. As we sewed, we reflected on the intersection of crafts and encoded communication.
This workshop was hosted in collaboration with Alf Bojórquez (she/her), a trans nb writer from Mexico. She works in radio and has conducted workshops on literature, art, and critical theory in Latin America, the United States, Europe, Morocco, and the Philippines.
[IVESTER CONTEMPORARY]
“Unbecoming” is a collaborative performance that explores themes of decomposition and transformation through other-worldly encounter. In the piece, performers activate a centuries-old storytelling device known as a “moving panorama” or “crankie.” The device was popularized in the 19th century as a means of transporting audiences to distant places. Here the crankie transports us to an underworld, both a refuge and painful transitional space, where a figure sheds societal expectations and finds the relationships necessary to survive above ground. The performance is a reflection on the interplay of safety and visibility as well as the more-than-human linkages that sustain us in uncertain times.
[MASS GALLERY]
During the HOTBOX residency at MASS Gallery, Venese Alcantar and I held three workshops, engaging more than 20 community members in the process of dyeing, sewing, and dancing as a collective. With an emphasis on improvisation and skill sharing, these workshops fostered a place to explore the arts from a range of backgrounds. In this creative process, we wanted to collapse the distinction between healing and creating as a private matter and instead center art making as an interventional strategy towards collective care.
