By Us For Us | Cecilia Sweet-Coll
Cecilia Sweet-Coll (Los Angeles, CA)
April 2019. Index of artworks using museum collection past projects, wood, ribbon; writing. Dimensions variable.
By Us For Us is a collection of conversations with other QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) artists and works at Elsewhere and a celebration of the museum spaces by and for queer folks. The project consists of two wooden boxes, one in the Velvet Retreat bathroom on the 1st floor for visitors, and one in the ribbon room on the 2nd floor for residents and staff.
Curated with both audiences in mind, each vessel contains writing and components of projects by past, QTPOC, Elsewhere artists including: Zeelie Brown’s Fear No Joy, Diana Laurel Caramat’s Social Sensory Stimulation, Alexander Hernandez’s Spirits/Guests, Daniel B. Coleman’s Warriors, Lucas Baisch’s Conveyor Belt, Saba Taj’s Interstellar Uber/Negotiations With God, and Josh T Franco’s PICTURES ELSEWHERE.
Sweet-Coll also began a new project: an animation series based on real interviews around the questions of what safety means to QTPOC, and what makes them feel safe. The artist states: “In abolitionist workshops I’ve coordinated, facilitated, and occasionally led, this question kicks things off. The existence of cops and jails is supposedly a matter of ‘public safety,’ and it clearly is not working, so in order to build a world without cops and jails, we need to know what it is that actually makes us feel safe, and cultivate that, in our systems and in our lives.” For this project, the artist began by interviewing NC based organizers JuJu Holton and Cherizar Crippen.
Wooden box sculpture is installed in first floor Velvet Retreat bathroom.
Above: Wooden box sculpture installed in first floor Velvet Retreat bathroom.
