Jadelynn St Dre with Eliza Barrios, Angela Hennessy, Lydia Greer, Jo Howard, Vanessa Rochelle Lewis, LeahAnn Mitchell #lamfemmebear, Quinn Peck, Reaa Puri, Leslie St Dre
Choreographies of Disclosure: What the Mind Forgets
Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, 2018
Choreographies of Disclosure was a socially engaged, long-form project, organized and curated by St Dre in collaboration with LGBTQ multidisciplinary artists who have been impacted by sexual violence. Survivor-collaborators consented to share aspects of their story(ies) with St Dre, who then transformed these disclosures into pieces of written choreography – sequences of actions which functioned both as performative instruction and poetic document. These documents were then provided to Bay Area queer and trans artists, who developed multidisciplinary works to the content in the medium of their choosing, all responses to the somatic expressions of a survivor in the act of disclosure. The resulting artistic works – four written choreographies and four response works – anchored the exhibition, in addition to a mural and music composition created as responses to the process as a whole. These works were supplemented by performances, panels, as well as community forums facilitated by local organizers, artists, and community leaders. These events provided opportunities for transformative encounters within our artistic and social communities, celebrating and reflecting upon queer and trans survival, resistance, and resilience.
Choreographies of Disclosure: Headdress
Headdress: Jadelynn St Dre with Cassandra Clark and Bay Area LGBTQIA2s+ community members
Mannequin Head: Jadelynn St Dre
Ribbons, queer and trans visions for a world without sexual violence, mannequin head, jewels
Pro Arts Gallery, 2018
Visions Headdress, a collaborative product of Choreographies of Disclosure, is a ribbon headdress piece that sits on top of a mannequin head created in 2018. Various colorful silk-like, shiny ribbons are hung down from a crown of flowers around 3’ per ribbon. Red, ocean blue, deep green, pink, sky blue, purple, white, and black make up the various ribbon colors. Each ribbon carries a different message, such as “Back off and leaves me alone,” “sext: can I hold your hand?,” “children would not be gender police,” “…resilience, safety, softness, LOVE,” and other phrases about personal boundaries and communications reflecting a world without sexual violence. On the left side of the headband, is a larger cluster of black flowers with heart shaped pedals containing some gold sequences. Directly to the right are light pinkish/purple smaller flowers with many petals unfurling from the center. To that right side, is a gold bright, gold shaped fan piece. And above all of that cluster are some longer strands of black flowers jetting off of black stems that also have slightly gold tipped stamens in the center of them.
The ribbons attached to this headdress reflect queer and trans visions of a world without sexual violence, and were collected from LGBTQIA2s+ viewers throughout the exhibition and through facilitated community workshops. Although the practice of maintaining belief in the possibility of an end to sexual violence may feel, at times, futile, it is within community spaces that the spark of hope is lit and the fire of our collective belief is sustained. Here, we highlight LGBTQIA+ visions, as ours are communities that have relied on the magic of our intuitive wisdom and the liberatory expanse of our imaginations to survive.