Silence Breakers

• Opening Reception, Thursday, March 8, 5-8pm.
• Closeing Reception, Thursday, April 5, 5-8pm.
• Ely Center of Contemporary Art51 Trumbull Street New Haven, CT, 06510

An unjuried exhibition in collaboration with Nasty Women Connecticut

This year, Ely Center of Contemporary Art is collaborating with Nasty Women Connecticut for the group exhibition Silence Breakers. We invite artists working across disciplines, to create artwork that addresses issues of abuse, consent, and identity as well as themes of domesticity and home. The show will look at the often-blurred line between security and insecurity in the home, providing room to explore ideas around gender, equity, sexuality, individuality and domestic life.

Each year during Women’s History Month, the Ely Center of Contemporary Art (ECOCA) showcases In Grace We Trust, an annual exhibition that commemorates the philanthropic work of Grace Taylor Ely.  During her lifetime, Grace transformed her home at 51 Trumbull Street into a space for local watercolorists and ceramicists to gather and show their work.  Since her passing, the Ely Estate and Friends of John Slade Ely House of Contemporary Art have carried on this tradition, stewarding the building as a nurturing pillar of New Haven’s artist communities. In Grace We Trust addresses ideas of tradition and change — a nod to the past as we confront current societal challenges, and rise together to create our future narratives.

Throughout the month of March, the Ely Center will host a series of programs related to this year’s theme, including a panel discussion moderated by Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, performances, film screenings, nights, workshops, and artists talks. 

On a personal level I'm really excited to be showing two pieces in Silence Breakers at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, CT. The two pieces I'm showing are shall we say, difficult pieces to place. They are openly political and come directly out of my fear and anger due to the election of Donald Trump as president: 

November 9, 2016  I went to the studio and wrote the word “FUCK” on a clean white canvas. It was all I could do that day. Fuck was the perfect word; it can be a declaration of anger or a declaration of exhaustion and defeat. It was all I could say that day. All other words failed me. 

It took days of fumbling around in the studio to figure out how to make art in this new world. The studio had always been my refuge from the world. This  place where I feel safe, where I go to rid myself of fears and anxieties, had been taken away from me.  My near constant anxiety manifested in my art. Colors became darker and more intense, shapes became twisted and tense.

The works in this show reveal my conflicting emotions in this new world. It represents darkness, satire, and even hope inspired by the march on Washington DC and other cities all over the world. New art for a new era.