Four years of Cunt Quilt would have culminated in an exhibition in Spanish Harlem with fellow BIWOC Latinx political artists, but was canceled after grant support from NYC Department of Cultural Affairs was suspended just weeks before the exhibition opening during Latinx Heritage Month on 10.14.2020. The canceled grant from NYC DCLA would have saved the exhibition after Carnegie Hall also withdrew a grant (covid cancelation) for an exhibition program. After considering moving forward anyway (maybe just install Cunt Quilts?) with zero financial support, it was no longer feasible since the nonprofit artspace Whitebox Harlem- who would have hosted the timely exhibition and ambitious program- may close down. Thanks to the support of loving friends and generosity of art world connections, the word of mouth recommendations helped me recover from the blow by pitching to other nonprofit art spaces in NYC. Several grant applications and disheartening conversations with other institutional directors later, I finally gave up on pushing the exhibition to 2021. There are only so many hours in the day for long phone conversations, and unanswered emails. Tears were shed for friends who died of covid, not for failed solo shows. If the most famous white, male political painter fell victim to cancel culture in 2020, then some brown girl’s social justice project isn’t impervious to la Cabrona.
Cunt Quilt will continue to appear in the streets at protests and virtually during Stitch n Bitch salons until there is a Woman or a Momala in the Whitehouse. Ongoing support by feminists who attend S&Bs and continuing to advocate on behalf of the project by sharing exhibition opportunities, grants and curate the work into shows; ensures this abject history is secured in an otherwise Whitewalled canon.
FEMILIA City of Today for Feminine Urbanism: ¡La Lucha Continua!
CANCELED 10.1.2020
Performance art, Conversations & Cunt Quilts arpilleras Exhibition
Socially distanced, masked Opening Wed 10/14 5pm-8pm
@ WhiteBox Harlem 213 East 121st Street New York, NY 10035
October 14 – November 15, 2020 & Weekly virtual event series
Model Citizen demonstrations, discussions and performances include:
Stitch n Bitch (Melt) Sat 11/21 6-8pm Paola Pagan, Ramon Cruz STILL HAPPENING!
Stitch n Bitch (Care) Sat 11/14 6-8pm Karla Croqueta, Bryn Gay STILL HAPPENING!
Resistance & Sustenance Sat 10/24 6-8pm Francheska Alcantara, Joiri Minaya, Juan Sanchez, Alicia Grullon
Coquito y Charla Sat 10/24 5-6pm Amanda Septimo y Abuela
Engagement & Operation Sat 10/31 1-2pm Heather Reyes, Janel Martinez, Maria Elena Ortiz
Election Night Sedition Tue 11/3 8pm – Medianoche Open Call event featuring BIWOC Latinx artists Diversity Unity Harmony and many more.
Congregation & Resilience Sat 11/7 6-730pm Elia Alba, Juana Valdez, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz
A FEMILIA affair at WhiteBox Harlem activates femme identifying Latinx sovereignty and solidarity in their full electoral power during Hispanic Heritage Month through the US election. FEMILIA (City of Today for Feminine Urbanism): ¡La Lucha Continua! show features livestream events, performance art and Cunt Quilt arpillera installations.* Participating model citizens are creators whose cultural practice is central to their resistance work, including but not limited to: community organizers, artists, storytellers, curators, candidates, educators, performers, artists and agitators. Asserting that ¡La Lucha Continua!, the virtual and physical exhibition integrates performances, discussions and rituals as navigational tools for survival. Performing their citizenship as a refuge from appropriation and a refusal to assimilate; participants will engage in a weekly Saturday virtual event series beginning October 14 and ending November 15, 2020. Culminating on an election night Sedition event, FEMILIA imagines interdependent social structures as varied in identity as our nation’s matriarchal Latinx population. ¡La Lucha Continua! show empowers our essential and excluded community to examine the way contemporary US politics intersects with our visionary culture.
Artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer founded the FEMILIA (City of Today for Feminine Urbanism) in 2010 to propose intimate solutions for urban scale problems as a masterplan for survival. Rodriguez Meyer’s intersectional family is part of a growing US Latinx population who represents the largest minority group in the US but are an overlooked and often vilied electorate. Viewers will gather under the arpillera Cunt Quilt (the official flag for the FEMILIA city); on site at Spanish Harlem, and online nationally. Participants will stitch new arpilleras, engage with creative and political leaders while immersing themselves in video installations inspired by indigenous gathering spaces that survived colonization. Cunt Quilt honors the abolitionist and resistance practices of Arpilleras Desaparecidos, Underground Railroad quilts, American Plains adaptive architecture, and the AIDS quilt. The installations recall our ancestor’s interdependence, while signaling the intimacy of daily rituals the artists engage to sustain their activist practice.
A FREE weekly event series supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Aairs, will feature female identifying Latinx artists and political candidates in live stream conversation, demonstrations and performances. The events will be archived as a communal survival strategy for the election and beyond. A Bronx democratic candidate and her abuela will give a Coquito y Charla cocktail and activism demo. Representation & Action addresses the complicated history of Latinx sovereignty in the US and the future of our representation. Engagement & Operation explores the complexities of embedding our community’s narrative into screens, museums, and performance venues. Congregation & Resilience shares solidarity-building exercises with prolic performance artists and educators. Resistance & Sustenance is a conversation between visual artists working at the intersection of community organizing, policy, and academia. In a craft salon, the Stitch n Bitch (Melt) & (Care) arpillera-making demos bring feminist healthcare workers, drag performers, ecofeminists and the audience together to create a protest flag. A Saturday weekly event series will fundraise for progressive Latinx candidates. On election night, an in-person and live-stream Sedition event will begin with performances of citizenship by latinx BIWOC artists and end with a Sound & Vision disco hosted by your favorite queer Latinx DJ.
Cunt Quilt is a protest art collaboration between intersectional feminist activists, progressive organizations and the artist. After the 2016 US election, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer started a National Underwear Audit collecting worn-out women’s underwear to sew into Cunt Quilt arpilleras at quarterly Stitch n Bitch workshops. Panties are donated through the US Postal Service and sewn by feminist quilters, onto stained Queen-sized bed sheets. The quilts are born on protester’s backs to demonstrate an intersectional feminist movement. Abolitionist Stitch n Bitches feature activist leaders in conversation with feminist craftspeople to create protest ags with democratically sourced images that represent a diverse movement. The project is a performance of citizenship in three acts: the Underwear Audit accounts for our bodies, Stitch n Bitch builds solidarity, and the protests hold our governing bodies accountable. Responding to social justice and public health issues, such as LGBTQI+ visibility, climate impact, the wage gap$, racial justice and more; the Cunt Quilt will continue until there is a WOMAN IN THE WHITEHOUSE. Anticipating the end of the project or perhaps a turning point, the exhibition will serve as an archive and GPS for feminine Latinx sovereignty and solidarity building.
Lambastic 