SAGE and lgbtqia+ community Sculpture & Photography Workshop
@ Bronx River Art Center 1087 East Tremont Avenue Bronx, NY 10460
Thursday November 18 ,11am-1pm
RSVP FREE eventbrite open to all LGBTQIA+ community members
Centering BIPOC families (chosen and inherited), the Mama Spa event series invites community members to a 3 part reproductive health healing program at Bronx River Art Center in the Unbearable Fruit: Mother Mold, Linea Negra, Mama Spa Botanica exhibition. Part 1 is a virtual talking circle with local and national doulas on 11/13. Part 2 is an in-person photo and sculpture casting workshop for BIPOC families and SAGE lgbtqia+ members on 11/18 respectively. Part 3 is a multi-sensory healing fiesta on 11/20 celebrating BIPOC families and reproductive health allies.
Mama Spa Botanica is a reproductive justice care program created by and for femme and non-binary procreative communities of color to heal and navigate the reproductive health crisis in America. Culture is full spectrum medicine in a femilia multisensory salon where matriarchal resistance traditions are celebrated from biological to biographical interdependence and wellness traditions that strengthen our reproductive community’s health. Centering BIPOC families (chosen and inherited) who are SAGE members of the LGBTQIA+ community to collaborate in a free hands-on documentary photography and sculpture casting workshop. To visualize our colorful care support system, workshop participants will make plaster “mother molds” of their faces and hands to engage their embodied wisdom with critical perspectives on transcending trauma while honoring ancestral traditions. Healing rituals are exchanged with reproductive health advocates ranging from community organizers, doulas and artists. The sculptures and photographs will join maternal figures in artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer’s immersive installation at BRAC. Participants will reclaim their work as mementos for future agency building when the exhibition ends on December 12, 2021.
SAGE participants will explore critical resource mapping, identity constructions within the LGBTQIA+ BIPOC reproductive health community by creating self portraits in photography and sculpture. Celebrating our queer resistance mythologies, survival skills and community building traditions, the workshop will digitally and sculpturally archive participant’s wisdom by filming conversations, photographing retablo portraiture and casting their faces or hands to join the immersive retablos at BRAC. A safe physical and emotional space at BRAC’s Mamá Spa Botánica will serve as a healthy reproductive habitat where participants will critique and transcend inherited structures of violence that traumatize LGBTQIA+ community members. Participants will identify, celebrate and pass on their survival support traditions to future generations of non-binary youth, elders and ancestors.
RSVP & Free Tix open to all SAGE LGBTQIA+ members https://www.eventbrite.com/o/bronx-river-art-center-5987115479
A Matriarchal Monument honoring NYC’s beloved trans activist Mama Lorena Borjas, the workshop will collectively envision a tribute to House Mothers whose legacy thrives in our every-day rituals and resistance to binary definitions of motherhood. Lorena’s tragic passing during the pandemic reminds us that the void mutual aid workers and community organizers leave behind is an invitation to heal and celebrate our interdependence networks with radical acts of non-binary citizenship. A beautiful bio and aural memorial of Lorena is available on NPR Latino podcast to serve as inspiration for reimagining our biological and biographical care families. https://www.latinousa.org/2021/05/28/lorenasalcance/
About the Artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer
Coralina Rodriguez Meyer is an indigenous Andinx (Muisca,Inca) Colombian American, Brooklyn and Miami based artist who translates structural and domestic violence into American heirlooms. Raised queer in the rural US South and Caribbean; Coralina mends her mixed-race, Latinx identity into navigational tools to transform American colonial mythology and transcend trauma. Her role as a Quipucamayoc (urban designer, culture keeper, community organizer) activates her vulnerable barrio to perform their citizenship by building sovereignty and solidarity through civic action. In the wake of Ferguson and the Great Recession, she founded FEMILIA (City of Today for Feminine Urbanism) in 2009 as a masterplan for survival, proposing intimate solutions for urban scale problems. Her collaborative Cunt Quilt Arpillera city flags (2016-2020) were featured on the streets at protests and at museums across the US, to account for our bodies and hold our governing bodies accountable with intersectional citizenship. Coralina’s current Mother Mold sculptures, Linea Negra photographs created in the Mama Spa Botanica is a collaborative monument to the reproductive health crisis in America that centers ancestral wisdom and BIPOC procreative people.
Unbearable Fruit: Mother Molds, Linea Negra photographs from the Mama Spa Botanica workshop are currently on view at Bronx River Art Center Oct 30-Dec 12, 2021. The exhibition centering BIPOC procreators is created by, of and for birthing justice workers, and pregnant people of the diaspora whose death rate in America is 6-10 x that of white women birthing in hospitals. Immersive, multisensory retablos ask local BIPOC to visualize their own healthy reproductive habitat in a series of Mother Mold sculptures, Linea Negra photographs and Mama Spa Botanica workshop events to strengthen interdependence by celebrating ancestral healing rituals.
RSVP FREE Tix open to all BIPOC procreators, reproductive health advocates, birthing justice allies and those in the maternal health diaspora. https://www.eventbrite.com/o/bronx-river-art-center-5987115479
The exhibition and programming is supported by grants from NYC Cultural Affairs, NY Community Trust, NY Council on the Arts, Bronx Care Health System, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Young Arts & Oolite Arts
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