Sew Says the Lichen
2021, Lexington KY
found and repurposed fabrics, embroidery
Sew Says the Lichen explores the metaphors of the composite organism, lichen. Defying how we see what an organism can be, the lichen embodies more than one being. Algae and Fungi come together in solidarity to withstand the harshest conditions, forming a new alliance, and a new species. This coalescing of creatures pushes back on the western colonial mindset that favors the individual, and stops short at the ideas of transformation. What can emerge from lives bound together? I look to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Within these pages is where I found this symbiosis blurring lines of the individual, and community. “In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid become critical for survival. So say the lichens”. In the current moment we are in, these words have never rang more true. In a world where safety of selfhood is looking more scarce, I turn to those around me to find a deep well spring of queer community. Here I find the collective body of love bigger than those foaming at the mouth with fear of joyful freedom. Through this piece, I stitched myself into the multiple beings that live within and around me, that have come and gone, that are waiting for us in the bright blazing warmth of a better future. Each stitch in Sew Says the Lichen serves as a meditation on my own self, transmuting back into a more fluid form. How the boundaries of the binary, and rigidity of individualism can soften into something sweeter. How time with the lichen can bring us closer to this truth.