When I was asked to participate in 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone, I wanted to approach my project for the show site-specifically. I had made a series of light boxes in 2019 that examined narrative and visibility pertaining to the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 in New York City, which is a critically important event in the timeline of queer and trans liberation. When I visited the Aldrich and the town of Ridgefield, I noticed that there were actual walls made of stone threading through the terrain. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art itself sits on stonewalls.
Ridgefield also happens to be where my friend Julie lives. Julie was my summer camp counselor when I was thirteen years old at a weight loss camp for kids and teens in upstate New York. At that time in my life, I was very hopeless and in a lot of distress. Julie was my first queer friend and I credit that friendship for saving my life.
For 52 Artists, I dug up stones from the grounds of the Aldrich and stones from Julie’s yard in Ridgefield and built my own stone wall in the museum. The title of my piece is called Anywhere, Everywhere. It acknowledges friendships as revolutionary--bond that keep us living as a political act built on love. These life-sustaining friendships, in my eyes, are just as critically vital as large-scale revolutionary events that bring a sea change of culture. This project dialogues with the stone walls found in the landscape that surrounds the Aldrich, acknowledging colonialism and the occupation of land through violence and borders. This particular stonewall, being built by my hands is a re-contextualization of the "Stonewall" in this area, bringing in the nearby history of queer liberation.
Anywhere, Everywhere also takes the shape of a make-shift monument. A steel plinth protrudes from the stonewall with two photos from my archive that have been embedded into a light box. The images on the light box--graffiti and textiles also reinforce the idea of “anywhere, everywhere,” as graffiti is an act of improvised mark making and textiles permeate everyday life with the possibility of being transformed in infinite ways. A small television is embedded into the rocks of the wall documenting me digging the rocks from the land to make the wall. After the exhibition closes the rocks will be returned to the grounds of the Aldrich and Julie’s yard. Like feminist art, the piece is one that can be dismantled, shape-shift, and scattered but always has the potential to be built again in similar or altered ways or left to the earth forever.
