Sat Nov 21, 2020 4-6pm EST Google Meet Register on Eventbrite
Stitch n Bitch (Melt) will create an Environmental Justice Cunt Quilt Arpillera in anticipation of the US election. Following the US withdrawal from Unesco in 2017 and recent environmental pulses including forest fires, increased storm frequencies, and energy independence struggles; climate justice is central to the survival of our intersectional community. Quilters will democratically create a crowd sourced image to address questions on Climate Crisis & Denial, Environmental Justice and Energy Independence with Latinx leaders, environmental advocates and feminists online nationally. The arpillera will become a protest flag for the climate justice movement.
Cohosts Ramon Cruz (Sierra Club), Paola Pagan (¡Solar Libre!) and a local progressive candidate will lead an in depth discussion with policy experts and eco-feminists. Exploring ways to improve environmental conditions for our vulnerable community, this casual event will lead participants to build quilting skills, advocacy knowledge and ways to participate in activism to improve our environment with art therapy. Moderated by artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, the first hour of the Stitch n Bitch begins as an a deep dive into participant’s questions. The second hour will be a critique of images in a democratic debate style and end with the creation of a new image made of, by and for our feminist community. This livestream and archived event is FREE and open to the public.
STITCH n BITCH After the 2016 election, the artist began a national Underwear Audit to collect worn out women’s underwear through the US postal service, to sew onto Queen sized bed sheets at Stitch n Bitch craft salons. The Cunt Quilt is born on protesters backs at demonstrations as evidence of an intersectional feminist movement. A performance of citizenship in three acts; the Underwear Audit accounts for our bodies, the Stitch n Bitch builds solidarity, and the Cunt Quilt holds our governing bodies accountable. The endurance project will continue until there is a woman in the White House.
Participants of all genders and skill levels celebrate the political heritage of women’s work such as Arpilleras Desaparecidos, Railroad Codes, and Concentration Quilts by skill-sharing, self-caring and identity building at Stitch n Bitches. Participants will create, converse and pin-down an image exploring a theme central to their community in a democratic, crowd-sourced fashion. Collaborating with a non-profit expert working in the field, the artist and participants will engage in factual and narrative conversation about timely topics. A recent Cunt Quilt was created at Stitch n Bitch Crown where Doula Nicky Dawkins (Period Miami & Work it Mommas birthing advocacy) lead a discussion about how the Birthing Justice crisis is crowning during the Coronavirus pandemic.
About Cunt Quilt & Underwear Audit
Reading & Resources
Uninhabitable Earth interview with NY Magazine editor David Wallace Wells https://soundcloud.com/audmapp/the-uninhabitable-earth-audio-version
NRDC action items to prevent global warming https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-you-can-stop-global-warming
Listening
Femme AF spotify playlist
PARTICIPANT BIOS
Paola Pagan is a PR based eco feminist and the Field Manager for the Solar Libre Apprentice and Workforce Training Program in Puerto Rico. In 2018, Solar Libre transitioned from a short-term, disaster relief mission; providing solar generators to humanitarian aid facilities throughout the island of Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. The organization moved toward a long-term mission of workforce development, with a priority on giving Puerto Rican women the skills to benefit from the growing green economy on the island. Paola has been instrumental in achieving that mission. She manages all day-to-day operations for a team of ten solar apprentices, coordinating their classroom training and field installations.
Ramón Cruz is a Brooklyn based, Puerto Rican American eco feminist and president of the Sierra Club. He was elected just months before the Central Park Birder incident and the pandemic began. The first Latino elected to that position in the organization’s 128-year history, Ramon Cruz holds degrees from American University, and Princeton University. He has over 20 years of experience in advocacy at the intersection of sustainability, environmental and energy policy, urban planning, and climate change. He was deputy director of the state environmental regulatory agency in Puerto Rico, and held senior positions at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Partnership for New York City, and the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy.
Coralina Rodriguez Meyer is a Colombian-American, Brooklyn and Miami based artist who translates structural violence into marginal heirlooms. Raised queer between the rural American South and the Caribbean; Coralina mends her indigenous, mixed-race, latinx identity into satirical booby-traps. She lives with epilepsy after surviving man-made and natural disasters and combines her personal history, public trauma and aesthetic memory into a suffragist masterplan. Coralina’s background in urban design and architecture informs her sculpture, digital media, performance and community organizing work. She began building the City of Today for Feminine Urbanism (Femilia) in 2010 to propose intimate solutions for urban scale problems. Made in the lineage of her Andinx ancestors, her work is a navigational tool to survive American Mythology. Coralina studied painting at MICA and completed her architecture BFA at Parsons The New School and MFA at Hunter College CUNY. Coralina received awards from Oolite, VSA Arts, the Kennedy Center, NYFA, Scholastics and Young Arts. She has been featured in the NY Times, Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Univision, Nylon Magazine and Jezebel. Her work was shown at the Queens Museum, Bronx Museum, Miami Art Museum, the Smithsonian Museum, Kunsthaus Bretanien Berlin, KMAC Museum and the Corcoran. Coralina is currently an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design at Florida International University in Miami.
Lambastic 