NIAD ART CENTER
Contributing editor and writer for Me and My Gal
2022
Produced and edited by nan collymore, with collaboration from mara poliak and Celia Lesh
Artists: Karen May, Felicia Griffin, Shantae Robinson, Jean McElvane, Julio Del Rio, Maria Radilla, Deatra Colbert, Donzell Lewis, Ann Meade, Evelyn Davis, and Danny Thach
NIAD, Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development
Richmond, California
I’ve watched my body become unrecognizable. Watched my body sprout forms that feel like strangers. Hid my body of foreign forms with clothes that say, please do not ask me who this visitor is. I’ve spent my whole life thinking about clothes. I’ve spent my whole life trying to recognize the body that is thinking about the clothes. Wearing forms to perform the delicate act of belonging. Clothes on the right kind of body, forming the right kind of capital. Clothes of the right kind of capital informing: this body is allowed here.
My colleague tells me: clothes are the rhetoric of the body. I’ve spent a lifetime in this form, using clothes—using my body—trying to persuade myself into my own existence. A lifetime taking care of my body, other bodies—watching what forms when bodies take care of each other. Using clothes to create one form, one body, performing the act of becoming recognizable. Arguing that these bodies are allowed here.
