Stitch N' Bitch at PAMM
CuntQuilt (Care) 2020 by Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, courtesy of the artist.
Welcome to Stitch n Bitch (Crip)! Artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer invites the audience to perform their citizenship in an art therapy, arpillera-making salon with local and national disability justice leaders.
Stitch n Bitch (Crip) for disabled people's rights | Info & RSVP
Saturday March 27 from 3-5 PM at Pérez Art Museum Miami & Livestreamed
Part of a daylong series of interdisciplinary performances around the group exhibition MY BODY, MY RULES
Coralina hosts a casual, two-hour quilt-making and solidarity-building session featuring guest speakers Victoria Dugger and Oaklee and Jaklin Romine of the Disability Independence Group. These movement leaders will share resistance practices, survival strategies, and coalition-building efforts in our intersectional community.
Hosted both online and in-person, participants will create a new Cunt Quilt arpillera during the interactive discussion. Spanning public policy, navigating ableism, and mutual aid during the pandemic; the hosts will lead a layered discussion about how mental, physical and civic health is central to the survival of people with disabilities.
About the Project
After the 2016 election, Carolina began a national Underwear Audit to collect worn out women’s underwear to sew onto bed sheets at Stitch n Bitch craft salons. Protesters carry the Cunt Quilt at demonstrations as evidence of an intersectional feminist movement. The project is a performance of citizenship in three acts — the Underwear Audit accounts for our bodies, the Stitch n Bitch builds solidarity, and the Cunt Quilt holds our governing bodies accountable. The project will continue until there is a woman in the White House. Participants across intersectional identities and skill levels celebrate the political heritage of feminist work by honoring the Arpilleras Desaparecidos, Railroad Codes, and the AIDS quilt through skill-sharing, self-caring and identity-building at Stitch n Bitch salons.
Previous Salons
At Stitch n Bitch (Crown), Doula Nicky Dawkins (Period Miami & Work it Mommas birthing advocacy) led a discussion about how the Birthing Justice crisis is crowning in Miami during the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, Cunt Quilt (Care) was created at a virtual Stitch n Bitch by participants in a conversation about LGBTQIA+ Healthcare visibility with local Drag Queen/House Mother Karla Croqueta, Treatment Action Group (ACTUP) advocate Bryn Gay and trans therapist/NYC policy advisor Reverend Moonhawk Riverstone. The last Stitch n Bitch (Melt) for Environmental Justice featured Boriqua eco-feminists Paola Pagan (Director ¡Solar Libre!) and Ramon Cruz (President Sierra Club).
Q&A with the artist
What has been the most surprising outcome of your Stitch n Bitch sessions?
The Cunt Quilt project began in my living room with an intimate group of women who were crushed after the 2016 election, but who were motivated to begin participating in direct political action artwork. At first I struggled to convince even my most progressive friends to participate. I was surprised by how quickly the Stitch n Bitch sessions grew in scale and presence at museums, and how the abject nature of the project became accepted in public and other cities across the U.S. Reaching a wider audience with this unique form of protest between the sheets, streets and whitewalls enabled a more layered conversation about the history and future of feminism in the US and abroad.
I was concerned when many of the early white feminists who supported the project as part of the Women's March, for example, were reluctant to protest for Black Lives Matter or George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's murders. Working through the discomfort and negotiating privilege at the Stitch n Bitch session was a way to mobilize more white folks to get out on the streets. The outcome of the Stitch n Bitch motivated people out of their discomfort and complacency, and into justice work.
What has this collaborative practice revealed for you that you may not have anticipated?
In 2017, a random woman at Bronx Museum removed her underwear in front of a large audience and added it to the quilt. Social intercourse and media shifted from respectability politics towards an over-titillated culture after the election of President Trump. While hosting these events in public, I observed that alienation in the process of art creation or consumption only leads to transcendence if consent is collaborative.
Contentious conversations during the Stitch n Bitch sessions transition into democratic debate when the movement leader hosts share their wisdom on communication ranging from negotiation tactics to role-playing or other diffusion strategies. Instead of deflecting difficult topics, they help participants navigate protests, get involved in advocacy or policy-making, and extend our civic engagement beyond our screens. My role as an artist building a sanctuary city, is to ensure that in the creation and maintenance of the democratic process, we practice and perform our citizenship collaboratively, through direct action.
In recognition of Women’s History Month, Performance 4 Ways: My Body My Rules is a free livestream and outdoor masked event on the terrace at PAMM with an ASL interpreter.