Sitting here listening to Ani Difranco on New Year’s Eve day. Just read my shero’s blog post and thought what an inspiration she has been to me this year. Rachel Lynett, goddess, playwright, just overall badass queer human, gave me the courage to do what I thought I could never do. So, this blog is dedicated to her. (btw docs would not let me type “shero”, it kept correcting it to hero. Only fitting to end a year drenched in patricachrial, sexist moments that we females keep fighting)
Instead of leading you into a long rant on how I feel about 2019 I decided to do an art piece. A self portrait. Self portraits are my worst nightmare. Looking at artist who dedicated their work to self portraits(Frida Kahlo being the most prominent) can be questionable for me. The love of their expression to just put it all out there for the whole world to see is quite frightening. Do I want the world to see me the way Frida made herself available to everyone? She was fierce and bold how could I possibly be that transparent? Well, seems that on this last day Frida and Rachel are pushing me into the fear….
My work for the past ten years even before that has been about women and how we survive in a mans world. From the work I created in college that focused on my twin sister in a domesticated situation, as she crawled and scraped her way to get an education, leading to the most recent way we look at women in todays society with all the do’s and don’t’ s we require of the female role.
Side note: Dawn, my twin sister, is one of the silent shero’s in my life. The abuse she endured for so many years would have broken most people. She held strong as a woman of steel. Shattered the chains that held her back and in my eyes became Wonder Woman, a superheroine who even through her faults still fights the good fight for all of us women.
My role. 2019 pushed my role to the edge. For 10 years I thought I had created a safe space to speak out. To lead my community to a new understanding about how we look at women and people of color. How we look at racism in the south. How we look at politics and the creative society. The area that I lived in I thought was ready. Wrong.
It began at the end of 2018, and ended the day I left in 2019. Be quiet. Be kinder. Don’t say those kinds of things. Don’t be so difficult. Don’t bring in that artist. That artist has views that doesn’t fit with the “ways” of this organization. I was actually told I might get fired over this one! Shhhhh, be quiet Eve. Why are you curating an all-female exhibition year, as if that question would have been posed if it were an all-male curated year? Don’t speak up Eve! Don’t question the big racist elephant in the room. Don’t say white men are the problem. Be kinder. Be quiet. Don’t ask for a raise, you should be grateful. Even though before I left the only male working in the organization got a 10K raise provided to him by a male boss. Don’t say anything Eve! Be quiet. Don’t say anything about the discrepancy between the wages of the newly hired white girl and the POC who was ten times more qualified. Don’t say anything Eve! Be quiet, don't say anything! Be quiet! Don’t call out the tokenism! Be quiet! Be grateful you have a job!
I was told to be kind and grateful and to be quiet so many times that I began to think I wasn’t grateful for the things in my life. I was being gaslighted! As if my gratitude was not present because I was willing to call out the social injustices and inequality that surrounded me.
In 2019 I bit my tongue so many times that I began to taste the blood as I packed up my Uhaul truck and left the only area I had known for 20 years. I left with a pain in my heart so big I’m still repairing the wounds. I still question speaking up. I still question whether to speak power through my work! I still hear the words in my head, be kind Eve. Stop being so difficult. Be more grateful!
Well, at the end of this day I will not usher in good tidings for a new year. I will conjure up all the thoughts of the women in my life that have fought! That has crawled and scraped their way to the top! That has had to endure sexism in the workplace! That has had to speak out against discrimination and lose their space for it! I will take all of their force and use it to SPEAK OUT in 2020! No longer will I be quiet. No longer will I bite my tongue until the blood runs out!
Featured Image:
Until the blood runs out
Self Portrait/Digital art
12” x 12”
2019
