We Hold Us Gently
This work unfolds in three parts, each reflecting a phase in my pursuit of community and interconnection, grounded in an exploration of the inner self. For years, my art has been fueled by a combustible, unrelenting anger toward the patriarchy and the harm it perpetuates, but this method of working and processing has left me fragmented and isolated. In the impending consequences of the recent U.S. election, I find myself questioning whether this approach can continue. It no longer feels sustainable—nor does it feel like enough.
In the first phase of the work, my hands rest on a table, reaching outward. They meet another set of hands—my own, doubled within the frame. They reach for each other. As they touch and overlap, their form softens, their colors deepen. I ask to be held. I need reassurance to believe I am not alone. At first, I can only trust myself. Then, more hands appear, joining mine. “We are right here.”
My hands again rest on a surface to meet others as they stack stones and shells on my nails. The act of performing femininity, once isolating, becomes a shared ritual. In gathering—whether as groups, circles, or covens—even under the guise of patriarchal expectation, we subvert it. The plans fail. “We are holding you.”
My fingers comb my mother’s hair. My mother combs my hair with her fingers. In this gentle, intimate exchange, I am held, and I hold her in return. Together, in these moments of care, I find the foundation for something new. This is where I choose to root myself: in gentleness and connection, in the domestic and the shared. In this act, I honor the feminine and queer wisdom of the body and the lived experiences of mothers and elders, whose knowledge passes from hand to hand. In these small, profound gestures, we become, as Janine Antoni describes, “vehicles of interconnection to ourselves, to others, and to the world.”
In the first phase of the work, my hands rest on a table, reaching outward. They meet another set of hands—my own, doubled within the frame. They reach for each other. As they touch and overlap, their form softens, their colors deepen. I ask to be held. I need reassurance to believe I am not alone. At first, I can only trust myself. Then, more hands appear, joining mine. “We are right here.”
My hands again rest on a surface to meet others as they stack stones and shells on my nails. The act of performing femininity, once isolating, becomes a shared ritual. In gathering—whether as groups, circles, or covens—even under the guise of patriarchal expectation, we subvert it. The plans fail. “We are holding you.”
My fingers comb my mother’s hair. My mother combs my hair with her fingers. In this gentle, intimate exchange, I am held, and I hold her in return. Together, in these moments of care, I find the foundation for something new. This is where I choose to root myself: in gentleness and connection, in the domestic and the shared. In this act, I honor the feminine and queer wisdom of the body and the lived experiences of mothers and elders, whose knowledge passes from hand to hand. In these small, profound gestures, we become, as Janine Antoni describes, “vehicles of interconnection to ourselves, to others, and to the world.”
