​

Exhibitions & Performances

2022 - Conarté Nave Generadores, Monterrey Mexico

2022 - Carrol Gallery Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 

2021 - Front Gallery, New Orleans, LA 

​

Suspended and resting, in a permanent state of failing, in an ambitiously optimistic posture. Radically supported, sustained and sustaining, micro adjustments, micro deterioration, significant pressure. 

 

What is holding the telephone pole up that is leaning precipitously over St Claude, or the wires dangling from an uprooted tree stump on Broad and are communications still moving through them? What holds up the hearts of people abandoned and displaced. How long can the word resilience be ground down ?  

 

The a-frame, the lean-to, the counter balance, the rolling point of contact. The attention span for things that change too slowly to notice until they fail. What props it up? 

 

Glacial time, theatrical time, scrolling time, meditating time, musical time, the book that is always about to fall off the nightstand. The elasticity of skin releasing back towards its home in the earth. What part needs to be hard? What part needs to be soft? 

 

There is a moment the pressure goes from good to bad, or gets suspended in between the idea of good or bad, this is hard or this is easy, this is necessary or this is not necessary. 

 

Bodies managing. We can do it when we have to. Until we can’t.  Bodies with knots of anxiety and historic corsets of untaken breaths, or sobs, or uncollapsed collapses. Lea opens her back ribs to send her heart away for a little more space. I pretend I can keep the whole thing going just by squeezing my toes. It works. We try to find pleasure in the struggle. We figure out a way to continue.  

​

​

CREDITS

 

New Orleans - Shannon Stewart (Concept/performance/writing) with Lea Fulton and Rebecca Allen (collaborators).

Monterrey - Claudia Valeria, Carmen de la Tierra, Danyiel Colin, Karla Salais, Armanda Barbosa, Grisel Moj, Cesar

​

Warmest thank yous to Elliott Stokes and Rosalie Smith for including this work in Nothing Toulouse, and also to Samantha Best and Elliott Stokes for inclusion in Summer Reading at the Carroll Gallery.  

​

​

* COVID 19 PRECAUTIONS - we can manage includes live performers who are vaccinated but not wearing masks. The performers do not move quickly or breathe heavily. Visitors are encouraged to wear masks and to stay for as long as they want. Nothing Toulouse is a group show with incredible work by many artists on view.

​