Fear No Joy | Zeelie Brown

Special Residency
Written By Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency

Fear No Joy, Zeelie Brown (Brooklyn, NY; Pollard, AL)

Southern Constellations Fellowship. July 2017. Cello performance, bleach on denim, ribbons, roses, bubbles, love.

 “My queer childhood wasn’t spent drawing hearts in the margins of textbooks. It was spent being hurt. Queers often don’t grow up singing love songs. To me, they seemed abstractions until I met someone who treated me so nice that I sometimes want to cry thinking about how they could possibly be so kind to me. I’m 28, and for the first time in my life – after the hell I’ve gone through – I’m in love.

I spent this month building a queer black love song as beautiful, messy, and wild as I am. I want this space to lift away the misogyny of an art world so obsessed with seriousness and solidity that it forgets the power of a good meal, a tender embrace, or the joy of being given a rose. I want to slow down again. I want to get to know somebody. I want to spend hours with someone and get to know their touch.

The gallery needs love. The institution needs love.

A river’s caress will melt a mountain. Love will melt the stones of our society.”

– Zeelie Brown

 

Installation View in Ribbon Room:

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Featured
Zeelie Brown
Zeelie Brown

Zeelie Brown is a visual artist and cellist who through sound, textiles, and installations depth charges wells of Afro-Atlantic dynamism to conjure up works which provoke a sense of environmental and cultural shift. Her work meditates black freedom in the 21st century, and the renegotiation of the parasitic networks of power and privilege weft into the global, colonial world order. She was born in San Antonio and was raised between there and Pollard, Alabama. She graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Africana Studies (Fine Arts) which they used to open their heart and soul to jazz, philosophy, and other great arts of the black world.

During her residency at Elsewhere, Brown created Fear No Joy.

Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency
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