10 April—30 July 2021
Online
Dear readers,
In Love as the Practice of Freedom (1994), bell hooks writes, ‘The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.’ hooks argues that love is central to any social justice movements and has transformative potential.
Love Letters hopes to initiate a virtual platform, designed to nurture practices of freedom through creative dialogue. We adopt the epistolary format as an expression of feminist solidarity and love. Through this archive, we imagine correspondence as a generative practice of engaging with one another and the world.
The past year was marked by the Covid-19 health emergency, but also by an intensification of gender-based violence across the globe. Even, or perhaps especially, in a period of increased state care for public health and safety, we see that womxn’s rights to express their gender and sexuality, to make choices for the safety of their bodies, and to walk safely down the street are not protected. Creative, communal support across national and cultural borders is essential in a moment when security has taken on an even more nationalist tone, and artists struggle to work in isolation.
Responding to the ongoing oppression of womxn around the globe, we open a communal dialogue about the ways art can help us move towards collective liberation and an ethics of care. How do we respond when reproductive rights, human rights, are under threat? Art has the potential to connect people across national and cultural boundaries. It can help us understand the interconnections between communal rights and responsibilities, which enables equality and social justice.
The desire to communicate love to womxn globally is a direct response to the 22 October 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that abortions in cases of foetal defects are unconstitutional. This ruling follows several years of mass protests and actions in Poland and elsewhere against this curtailing of the rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. Millions of people have joined the protests organised by Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet (OSK) (the All-Poland Women’s Strike) in solidarity and support of women’s reproductive rights.*
This is a development that affects not only Polish womxn: it is a matter of reproductive rights, the right to one’s own body, health and democracy; it is a matter of human rights. Standing in solidarity for these rights in Poland and beyond, Love Letters aims to support the activists concretely, while also making these issues visible as central to an ongoing, transcultural conversation. The goal is to raise global awareness, enable creative connections and raise funds to support OSK.
The first iteration of Love Letters is conceived as a platform for an intimate and public correspondence, a bud which we hope will blossom into many transcultural exchanges of solidarity across digital and physical spaces, responding not only to the situation in Poland, but across the globe. Initiated by us, and supported by Almanac, this first online exhibition takes the shape of visual responses we received from six artists who answered our first Love Letter. Their works resonate with practices of care, love and solidarity across borders.
Every two weeks one of the six artists will be featured with a special edition of their making, which can be bought for a small price**. The profits of this will be donated directly to OSK. Besides the edition, the exhibition will feature one or two major works by each artist. These works are available for purchase on request, with the full profits going to support the artists’ practice in this challenging and precarious time. We will divide ten percent of the profits for each of these works amongst all six of the artists, in a model of shared solidarity.
The artists who are setting out on this exchange with us, and with you, are:
Gaia Fugazza
Małgorzata Markiewicz
Amanda Millis
Joanna Rajkowska
Victoriia Tofan
Katarzyna Zimna
With love,
Basia Sliwinska and Astrid Korporaal
*For more information about the situation in Poland, see here.
**Purchase by emailing info@almanacprojects.com
