Cooking Memory Remembrances is reactivation of a 2017 performance called Cooking Memory where Lia Garcia returns broken ceramics to their home in Elsewhere’s kitchen. The performance creates an intimate space to reflect on creating resistance to the violence against trans lives, what exists outside of hegemonic femininity, what it means to touch, and what stories are told in the kitchen.

Elsewhere’s 12th Extravaganza is a series of departures and arrivals, starting at home, and ending with a street party!

Oree Holban (Tel Aviv, Israel) | November 2021

"A miniature installation of a scene taking place in the 2050s: a meditative drive-in and a prom. The work would like to envision the 50s of the 21st century as times when people enjoy cultivating inner peace, thus live in better harmony with themselves and, as a result, also with one another. It is more than anything a call for a more wholesome, inclusive, non-dual, playful, and quiet world here and now - as past present future are one.

This work is part of an ongoing project/research of the artist whose work is very much inspired by nostalgic American 50s of the previous century, spiritual life in queer present time, and premonitions of the 2050s. The video piece of the non binary TV show ""The Wonderful Journey Inside"" is an example of such ongoing project, through which the artist imagines making such worlds and themes accessible also to children.

The audience is invited to participate by meditating with the other toys, watch TV (inside/outside), read a book from the library, play a record player for the toy folks at the prom, hang out, connect with the inner-child, make friends or simply stare in space without having to do anything special."

Turn your home into Elsewhere with seven at-home versions of museum experiences.

We are launching an outdoor vending space in front of the museum twice per month that will feature up to 8 BIPOC LGBTQIA2S+ vendors. We want to support local vendors as an economic justice effort, leveraging our space, networks, and connections to build with vendors and bring support for their work.

Chairs are turned into musical instruments in this waiting room for the Bureau of Illumination.

Sukkot is a weeklong Jewish festival celebrating harvest and the shelters built with it.

Children and adults are invited to decorate and gather in our Sukkah in the Elsewhere garden!

Starting with Residency Cohort #107 in June of 2021, we set up each resident with an Elsewhere alumnus from previous years under a new initiative named Alumni Buddies.

Monthly showcase of Black women from across North Carolina.

The Temporary Photographic Archive Office (TPAO) proposes new archival methods for the Elsewhere Museum. The TPAO collects, scans, and shares photographic ephemera from the Elsewhere library—Polaroids, postcards, 4x6” prints, etc. By caring for these objects through digitization, archiving, and dissemination, the TPAO justifies more permanent, interactive methods of conservation for the Museum (permanence being a relative term). At the surface, the TPAO scanned, organized, and digitally shared photographic prints. On a deeper level, the TPAO chose to subvert the Museum’s pre-existing curatorial philosophy. This is to say that the Museum has previously taken an ambivalent approach to their collection, simultaneously enforcing strict rules regarding the former thrift store objects while allowing artist creations to degrade. The TPAO shifts that focus from out-of-circulation consumer products to human interactions—both human-to-human and human-to-object. The TPAO revises the Elsewhere story or rather reinterprets their history as people-centric.

Mahedi Anjuman (Reno, NV) | August 2021

Upon entering the museum, the sound of the bell will mentally and physically prepare the visitors to experience the museum and collections.

Seven colors of fabric columns and seven white donuts hang in seven different corners, the visitor will be touch each of them. Seven colors represent the chakra that has seven levels of intensity of meditation.

It is a collaborative project with 20 to 30 individuals from the Greensboro community. Where collaborators assisted in making 300-500 fabric balls out of the museum collection. I have collected those balls and sewn them together to create one body.

William Plummer (Kansas City, MO) | Exchange (Kansas City) | August 2021Tapping into the unseen historical and spectral forces at Elsewhere, this altered cabinet functions as a permeable screen by drawing attention to effects of light and air within the Ghost Room. Through this atmospheric exchange, the sculpture commands a theatrical presence while drawing attention to its contents; stockings, beads, and pearls that drift and sway without the help of a body. "Perennial Channels" acknowledges the items we own that are meant to feel special or inspire wonder. From playful accessories to glass marbles, these things point at a commonality--the ways objects can undeniably reveal and reflect something about the people that have interacted with them.

Craig Deppen Auge (Kansas City, MO) | Exchange (Kansas City) | August 2021

This series of 24 individual “sign posts” and/ or “flags” placed in the garden and spread throughout the museum explores the concept of way-finding and personal journey. Linked conceptually to one of the the artist’s other projects, Drifters, these embody the themes of the sojourner, “finding yourself,” or unexpectedly finding yourself “elsewhere.” These clusters of lean, wordless directional or distance markers are similar, but abstracted versions, to those you might find on an old, wooded footpath. The difference being that there is no explicit direction, only a formal, coded visual language speaking of what is on the path ahead, or what lies behind. These works were constructed intuitively and urgently, using only collection scraps and hardware, giving them a folksy, southern yard-art quality. The artist is interested in the concept of the nexus, and Elsewhere certainly acts as a nexus for community and creativity. But it remains open to interpretation, and its direction is ever-changing. This project suggests all of that; a sculptural play on the puzzling, multi-vocal outlooks found at Elsewhere, perhaps pointing to a multitude of other "elsewheres."

Craig Deppen Auge (Kansas City, MO) | Exchange (Kansas City) | August 2021

This work, which spans across the top of the front and back stairwells to the second floor, is an exploration of form, pattern and scale, as well as a contemplative remark. Images of these chairs were cut from a collection of 60 Italian furniture catalogs which were sourced from the Records Room Archive. They exist as remnants form the Carolina Sales Company, one of the latter day businesses here, predating the museum. The crosscut pattern itself acts as an invocation, perhaps inviting roaming spirits a place to rest, similar to the “haint blue” as a There is also a reminder here to take time and just be still with yourself amongst the dazzling cacophony of the collection, though ultimately that rest and meditation is illusive. The work also reminds us to stay aware of the many multiples found within the collection, and that, in fact, multiples of an object or image are the very definition of a collection.

Charis Fleshner (Loveland, CO) | June 2021

Personification and anthropomorphism of inanimate objects has always been apart of how I physically and emotionally navigate the world and connect to objects. There is actually a branch of metaphysics called object-oriented ontology that studies this. During my time sewing at Elsewhere, I became irreversibly attached to a vintage, collection Pfaff sewing machine, even naming it "Jaime". This work is simply my love note to Jaime, me amore! The fabric hearts used in the installation are hidden somewhere in Elsewhere.