Err and Lean Forward

19 July - 2 August 2024
Isabella Brown
Emily Ebbs
Alice Knight
Dani River King
Harry De Vries


Have we been sleeping all this time? Wake up now, we need you.
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I want you to think about what togetherness really looks like. I want you to think about what care really looks like.
I want you to think and hope and reach.
I want you to still yourself.
I want you to gather all of your fury and despair and hurt and disheartenment. I want you to gather each feeling until you can hold them all in your palms.
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I recently overheard someone repeat the Mariame Kaba quote that hope is a discipline, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It is easy to abandon hope when everything feels broken. But I suspect those who are responsible for the brokenness are depending on our lost hope and our emotional fatigue. I like to think of hope as a discipline because it pushes you to believe that alternative realities are possible. I don’t want this world, I want something very different. Tell me what you see when you imagine a changed place. Tell me how this disillusion feels in your stomach. Tell me again and again that things can be different.
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Find the place in your body where your humanity lies, then dig a well and let it fill with water and tend to it so that it never runs dry.
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Our world is fractured, it is hard to wade through without wounding yourself. These wounds can linger and stain, it is like a scar but on the inside. I know we find our own ways to keep moving. I think memories help us, the ones we want to hold on to. But how do we keep them safe? What holds them? Surely a heart, a person, a place, a home. What then if we lose one of these holding places? What if we lose them all. I want to know where the memories go, and I want to believe they aren't lost.
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It is okay if you need to find somewhere quiet and warm to rest and recover. It is okay if you need to hide sometimes, this isn’t easy.

Accompanying Text by Maya Bartlett