Framing Leadership: A Strong Woman in Queens. Project with Leaders of the Cultural Food Pantry
Queens Museum, New York, 2022
In 1982, Suzanne Lacy and Julia London produced the Freeze Frame performance with 120 women from San Francisco’s diverse communities in an early example of feminist coalition-building. In an upscale furniture showroom the women discussed the subject of “survival” before a live audience, allowing them to connect across social boundaries and create a platform to publicly register their ideas and concerns. Lacy later revisited coalition activation processes from this project in Immigrants and Survivors (1983) and Stories of Work and Survival (2007).
Lacy’s central installation in the Queens Museum “sunken living room” documents these and other projects (River Meetings: The Lives of Women in the Delta (1981–82) and Dinner at Jane’s (1993), and invites contemporary use of the space by local residents and museum guests. This new work shares the principle, common to all the projects nested in the furniture settings, of convening women for conversation and political ideation.
For the run of the exhibition, Lacy, Gianina Enriquez, and leaders of the La Jornada Cultural Food Pantry at Queens Museum, a woman-run initiative that has been in operation since June 2020, are creating a communal “living room” as a space for both private and public conversations. They are co-developing leadership workshops to deepen their activist work, and organizing public convenings this summer, including a Mother’s Day celebration and A Strong Woman in Queens, an upcoming conversation inside Lacy’s furniture installation, on July 24, 2022.
The La Jornada Cultural Food Pantry at Queens Museum is operated by Gianina Enriquez, QM Community Organizer, and Maria Zambrano, Coordinator of the Cultural Food Pantry, with support of 120 volunteers, led by: Adriana Aquino, Emma Confesor, Karina Mendieta, Maria Morales, Maritza Terrones, and Patricia Aldana.
Image: Suzanne Lacy: The Medium is Not the Only Message, Queens Museum (March 13 - August 14, 2022). Courtesy of Queens Museum, credit: Hai Zhang.