juice wood: I Could Show You..
Opening Sunday, September 24, 2023: RSVP HERE
I Could Show You is an immersive mixed media exhibition and experience taking place in 3 parts.
Wassup! I’m juice wood, a Revolutionary boi from da wood tryna stay on my marathon while using art & abolition as vehicles to leave behind a legacy of agape love, radical bravery, and unconditional care. I practice humanity - the exploration, understanding, and reflection of our shared humanity. I spend all my time thinking about: how I can contribute to the healing and liberation of all my peoples across the diaspora, how I can empower and protect my city, and how I can honor my God... my momma... my family...my ancestors...and my village - then I try to execute those ruminations in my day to day life. Those executions usually manifest through different types of art, service, connecting people, and resisting imperialism and its many designs - within the lanes my resistance is most effective. While saying these things help people understand to some degree, I have found that the words are never really enough and to know me and know my practice is to experience it by walking with me. I COULD SHOW YOU.. better than I could tell you! & that said... this fellowship and CDM have given me the opportunity to do just that, so welcome!
“When we practice abolition, we are inside a healing practice. One that asks us to transform ourselves as we transform the world. It's not easy, it can be joyful and it happens in community. We heal ourselves, we heal the world and when we change ourselves, we change the world.” – Patrisse Cullors.
Like my big sis says, when we practice abolition we are inside a healing practice. In doing the inaugural CDM-FAACE fellowship, not only am I getting the opportunity to show you my practice, my essence and my artistry, but I am also showing myself to myself. This fellowship is specific to the intersection of art and abolition so in accepting the fellowship I also accepted the challenge of walking daily in abolition this year. So, to walk in abolition, it’s a healing practice that asks us to transform ourselves. And while this year may be the first year I am aware enough to be consciously working to transform myself, I have unknowingly been on a transformation journey my whole life and I feel it's likely that if youre reading this you have in some way unknowingly been on a journey, too.
Since a young, I've been on a journey to get free, to free myself, to free my people, to decolonize myself! What is freedom? To live without fear like Miss Nina Simone says! What is decolonization? To be aware and active in my resistance against the ways imperialism has been conditioned into my mind, heart, spirit, beliefs, values, perspectives & day to day existence. I have tried many ways to free myself from
oppression, imperialism, and the way those systems manifest in my life—the most prominent being finding a home and permanent dance partner within suicide. My dance with suicide started as early as 9 years old and did not come to a peak in transformation until age 28 – concurrent with me doing this fellowship. I would say I became aware of being on this journey and began to be more intentional about it in 2017, a week before graduating from the University of Southern California after my 8th and most impactful attempt.
While I've been on this journey transforming my relationship to suicide, I've also been on a journey of transformation from athlete to artist. I’ve created a lot of art, I’ve done a lot of things, but I couldn’t see myself in any of it - I wasn't there, I wasn't present. I was just moving and doing in my flesh with only a dream, intense passion + hope, and sheer will power fueling me. This became clear in 2019 when my homegirl, Vidishi Chadha, allowed me to be part of a project that she wrote after getting into an argument with her parents: a poem turned self made short film that she used to secure her Visa and apply for US citizenship. I had never directly created art from a core feeling or internal response and every time I tried nothing came out. When I thought about what was there, when I looked inside, I thought ‘there's no way I could put this into the world just to create more chaos and tragedy ultimately’. However, though I hung up my jersey, it never hung me up. In a lot of ways being an athlete provided the foundation for who I am and how I navigate my artistry and it’s because of that foundation of discipline, realism and self assessment that I knew I either had to find a way to stop dissociating through my journey with artisanship or I had to leave it alone all together. And now, with this being my first project that I have been present for and been in tune with, I can say with all certainty that the only way to transform tragedy and chaos is to name it, understand it, and touch it. Then deeply listen to it, contextualize it, and give it air and the room to be - so that it may be transformed.
Aight, you ready? in the words of Anita Dashiell Sparks,
Here We G R O W!
Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship for Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE) Presents Inglewood & Prototyping the Abolitionist Imagination
The Three-Part, Culminating Exhibition will Feature Solo Exhibitions by CDM-FAACE Inaugural Fellows Autumn Breon, Oto-Abasi Attah, and juice wood
Los Angeles, CA [August 11, 2023] — Crenshaw Dairy Mart is pleased to announce the culminating exhibitions for the inaugural cohort of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship for Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE). Organized around the theme, Inglewood & Prototyping the Abolitionist Imagination, and featuring three solo exhibitions by 2022-2023 CDM-FAACE Fellows Autumn Breon, Oto-Abasi Attah, and juice wood, this cogent presentation envisions the future of Inglewood through an abolitionist framework. The first exhibition, Autumn Breon: Essentials, will open on Saturday, August 26, 2023, and remain on view through September 1, 2023.
CDM-FAACE is a one-year fellowship program that incorporates the philosophies and ethos of traditional artist residency programs through a distinct abolitionist framework, alongside a robust curriculum with frequent lectures, workshops, and seminars. CDM-FAACE fellows have been introduced to models of collective-care and collective-critique through regular studio visits and group critiques for the duration of this year-long fellowship. Each fellow was provided with access to healthcare insurance for the entirety of their fellowship. They also received a stipend of $100,000 to utilize for living expenses, studio expenses, art supplies, and materials expenses.
“Crenshaw Dairy Mart’s selection of Autumn Breon, Oto-Abasi Attah, and juice wood for the inaugural CDM-FAACE cohort honors the collective’s grassroots legacy and the programmatic contributions of all three fellows since its founding, while representing key tenets of the abolitionist framework espoused by CDM’s co-founders. The culminating exhibitions of all three artists work together to prototype a rubric of care within this framework, providing space for healing, access to economies of care, and a way to memorialize the community and honor the past.” - Crenshaw Dairy Mart
Engaged around the theme, “Inglewood and Prototyping the Abolitionist Imagination,” each exhibition will present the fellows’ independent research and fieldwork, largely centered around navigating Black community autonomy, community healing, and economies of care. The inaugural 2022–2023 CDM-FAACE fellows, each of whom are Inglewood-born and raised, prototype the abolitionist imagination in their own communities, recognizing the history and people of Inglewood through their respective practices and discourse.
The first of three culminating exhibitions, Autumn Breon: Essentials will feature sculpture and video works that invite the audience to interact with relics from “Esoterica”, described by Breon as an extraterrestrial location and the next destination for ancestors when they leave Earth. An interactive piece in the form of a vending machine encourages the viewer to use familiar cues as opportunities to engage with the concept of care.
Video diptychs of Black women adorning themselves incorporate both original and archival imagery. Borrowing from the design of double-paneled altarpieces, these diptychs magnify intimate moments of care into images that are larger than life. The videos frame a singular vending machine supplied with objects that Black women requested in response to the question: “What items represent and provide care?” The pink vending machine is fully stocked with condoms, tampons, pads, edge control, braiding hair, abortion pill resources, and science fiction novels written by Black women. All contents are free of charge.
Autumn Breon’s work serves as an intervention to the current culture, as does the character she embodies through her practice – an intermediary entity from Esoterica who educates and thereby liberates the Earth-bound with information about the proximal, atemporal universe she inhabits. The artist’s process of worldbuilding is a radical, decolonial act of imagination that is deeply aligned with CDM’s guiding pedagogy of Abolitionist Aesthetics.
Presented across CDM's galleries, the groundbreaking exhibition amplifies the work of three foundational artists to CDM and underscores the pivotal roles each played in shaping CDM's inception. Autumn Breon, celebrated for co-curating the space’s inaugural exhibition Yes on R! Archives and Legal Conceptions in 2020, embodies the essence of community-oriented care; Oto-Abasi Attah, the visionary behind the captivating mural paying tribute to Nipsey Hussle, will transform one of the CDM galleries into a grassy space that will be used for communal gathering, collective rejuvenation, and creativity; juice wood established the first Inglewood Community Fridge at CDM and for this exhibition, will provide meticulous documentation of local narratives, effectively preserving and honoring the Inglewood community. Representing a holistic convergence of creativity and care around the central theme, Inglewood & Prototyping the Abolitionist Imagination also sets forth a replicable prototype for fostering care through an abolitionist framework while inviting visitors to engage with the essential fabric of their communities.