and how it feels to live through it.
STORIES BUILT
FROM SCRAPS
COLLAGE AS
RESISTANCE
WE CUT, WE HEAL,
WE CREATE
Personal Essays
Workshops
Prints/Posters
and how it feels to live through it.
STORIES BUILT
Personal Essays
Workshops
Prints/Posters
The Summer I
Held A Poster
O.B. 2025A story of summer, resistance, grief, and queer presence.
6 a.m.. June 22, 2025. The first day. At the start of the year, I knew I wanted my summer to be different. A way of channeling my grief and hopelessness into resistance.
A way of using my art to say, “I see what is happening. And I refuse to look away.”
So for four months, leading up to the Summer, I collaged my grief, my pride, my resistance.
I cut through headlines and glued together truth. Determined to hold a mirror.
For 21 days, I showed up to the Minnesota State Capitol. Each day, I held a collage.
I wanted to pull up a chair and sit.
Not to shout into the void, shaking my fists,
but rather to take up space, to be a steady presence of silent protest.
For the first week,
I questioned whether I could really do it.
My skin was getting sunburnt, my clothes were getting soaked, and my mind was struggling.
I cried for queer stories erased from shelves, for communities being legislated out of existence.
I felt a deep disdain for a system built on stoking fear.
Every emotion was glued into the collage held.
Most days were quiet, some people said hello, others did double takes
or avoided my presence all together - feeling safety through aversion.
On July fourth, a lady named Wendy sat beside me.
For four hours, we talking about our why’s, what we hoped our presence meant
and in the end - what it meant to us.
Some asked why I wasn’t on the front, why I wasn’t trying to draw a crowd
or entertain through click-bait. The question always came early,
as if a quiet presence, a sustained defiance, a protest of peace,
rooted in queer resistance could only be legitimized
if the audience was larger than one.
But my summer, my summer of rage, of grief, of defiance, and resistance,
was rooted in reflection, not virality. I showed up each day, not to entertain - but to remind.
That even when no one’s watching, the violence continues, and so does resistance.
Through rain, heat, bug bites, and wind -
I held each poster with intention.
Each one was a mirror, a disruption -
a collage of resistance made from headlines and glue.
This was the summer I held a poster.
The summer I refused to look away.