Everything Living Fights Back
An exhibit in response to cancellation and censorship by Providence College
31 MAY – 16 JUN 2024
Featuring artists Shey Ri Acu Rivera Ríos, Feda Eid, Luana Morales, this was a reconfiguration of the exhibit ‘Nothing Living Lives Alone’ and its cancellation and censorship by Providence College.
May 31 – Jun 16, 2024
Aunty’s House, 25 Acorn Street, Building 35, Providence, RI
The Backstory
Artist and cultural worker Shey Ri Acu Rivera Ríos and collaborators Feda Eid and Luana morales, were set to open an exhibit titled ‘Nothing Living Lives Alone’ at Providence College Galleries in April 2024. In an unexpected turn of events, Providence College Administration and leadership censored and canceled the exhibit after searching for Shey Rivera Ríos’ work online and finding a past artwork that the Administration determined “shows contempt for the Catholic faith”.
Providence College Faculty, staff, and students organized and protested the cancellation of the exhibit, understanding this to be a violation of their academic freedom and related to other forms of LGBTQ+ discrimination that have taken place in the college.
The Providence arts community has stood up in defense of the artists and against censorship, providing statements, uncoupling from partnering with Providence College Galleries, and declining offers to participate in exhibits or workshops at the college.
Reconfiguring the Exhibit
The artists rallied to reconfigure the exhibit and find a new venue to present the work: a new community studio space called Aunty’s House that is founded by artist Lilly Manycolors and centers artist parents and families. This reconfiguration talked about the resilience and cultural power of people who come from lineages impacted by colonization. The works explored the role of healing as cultural power of survival and as a vessel for activism. Mediums included video, installation, mixed media works, and photographs.
31 May – 16 Jun, 2024
Aunty’s House, 25 Acorn Street, Building 35, Providence, RI
Meet the Artists
Feda Eid
-
Feda Eid is a Lebanese diaspora multidisciplinary artist rooted from Bilad Al Sham also known as the Levant in SouthWest Asia and lives in the occupied lands of Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Massachusett People- so called Quincy,MA. Her work explores the expression of heritage, culture, identity and tradition in the often tense but beautiful space between, what is said, what is felt, and and what is lost in translation. She captures these emotions through her bold use of color, textiles, adornment and pop culture linking the past and present. As the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who fled the country's “civil war” in 1982, Feda is guided by her family's journey, her childhood growing up as an Arab and Muslim in the US and the colonial borders imposed on her ancestors.
Feda studied Sociology at Regis College and photography at New England School of Photography. Her work has been exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Lesley University, and The Shed NY among others. She was 2019 Luminary and Visiting Studio Artist at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2022 Artist in Residence at Mass MoCA Studios, 2022 Collective Futures Fund grantee, 2023 Artist in Residence at Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts and 2024 Foundation For Contemporary Arts grantee. Her recent series صنع في أمريكا was exhibited in 2024 at the Boston Public Library central branch, Fort Point Arts Gallery in Boston, MA, FireFolk Arts in Waitsfield, VT, Gazala Projects in Gettysburg, OH and Selva in Brooklyn, NY.
Follow Feda on Instagram @fedaeid
Luana Morales
-
Luana Morales is a Birth, Death, and Ancestral Healing Arts Practitioner and facilitator devoted to the reclamation of ancestral practices to restore us to wholeness and to experience liberation in these bodies and this lifetime. She creates containers that support reflection, experimentation, healing, learning, collaboration, and joy for our individual and collective liberation. Prior to her current work focused on healing arts and movement work , Luana dedicated 18 years to working in human services with individuals in a variety of settings including residential long-term treatment, outpatient, and supportive housing with individuals and families struggling with mental health issues, trauma, addiction, chronic health conditions, and homelessness. She also dedicated 11 years to community-based parenting education, supporting families affected by substance abuse, mental illness, and trauma. In 2017 she founded Seeds of Our Ancestors, a mobile interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and multi-lineage healing squad. For the past 7 years Luana has collaborated with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum first as a Luminary and, for the past 6 years, as the co-facilitator of its Neighborhood Salon cohorts.
Follow Luana on Instagram @handsofgaiareiki
Shey Rivera Ríos
-
Shey 'Rí Acu' Rivera Ríos (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner who uses storytelling across mediums to create immersive artworks of magic and liberation. Rivera was born and raised in Borikén (Puerto Rico) and is based in Providence, RI, land of Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples. Rivera has 15 years of experience in the arts and culture sector, working to expand and strengthen artists’ role in community development with racial, gender, climate and economic justice. Rivera is committed to art as a catalyst for social change and the importance of community stories and lived experience as the knowledge that help us craft more just and generative futures. Rivera is founder of Studio Loba, a social practice and storytelling lab for art and culture projects for social change. Rivera is also a Providence Commemoration Lab Fellow, 2024-25. Notable projects include: theatrical productions Antigonx (2022) and Fire Flowers and a Time Machine (2021); transmedia artworks: MoralDocs (2020-21) and FANTASY ISLAND (2017); lead curator for El Corazón de Holyoke public art project (2020-21); and founder of LUNA LOBA performance series (2014+).
Follow Shey on Instagram @sheyriv @studio.loba_
Press/Media
Boston Art Review: In Providence, “Everything Living Fights Back” Gets a Second Life Following Censorship of Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos by Providence College
Hyperallergic: Providence College Cancels Exhibition Over “Anti-Catholic” Artwork
Motif Mag: Everything Living Fights Back – A timeline of PC’s cancellation of local artists’ exhibition
Collaborators
-
Studio Loba is a performance and social practice lab in Providence, RI. Founded by artist and cultural worker Shey Ri Acu Rivera Ríos, Studio Loba produces and holds culturally-rooted art projects and design processes for liberatory futures.
-
Aunty's House is a community arts space in Providence, RI, that prioritizes care and kinship through arts-based educational programs for the people, of the people and by the people. Founded by artist Lilly Manycolors, Aunty's House provides creative learning space and educational programming for young people, and studio space for artist parents and their children, as well as a fellowship for artist mothers.
