If I Give You My Sorrows

Submitted by the Event Organizer

If I Give You My Sorrows starts with a bed. People often hear the phrase “women in bed.” It’s a phrase that can conjure lurid sex, objectification, misogyny. In this historic moment repressing women’s choice and women’s bodies at the national level, we want to reframe women’s beds as a place where our complexity and depth live. Where our bodies rest, transform, grieve, and repair. What secrets do we leave in our beds? What wounds do we bury there? How do our beds hold what is messy, tragic, grueling? Research is rooted in the experience of three women, including trans women, currently and formerly incarcerated.

Featured activists include Betty McKay, Lisa Strawn and Tomiekia Johnson.

The project features original music composed by Carla Kihlstedt, Kalyn Harewood and Pamela Z, and performance by Laura Elaine Ellis, Sonsheree Giles, MaryStarr Hope, Jhia Jackson, Razelle Swimmer, Natalya Shoaf and Megan Lowe.

Audiences are invited to view The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison Through Art and Poetry, following each performance, which continues Flyaway’s artist-as-activist work of prison systems change, in partnership with Empowerment Avenue and Museum of African Diaspora. This exhibit is offered by Empowerment Avenue and co- curated by Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell Jeannette Black, who are serving time at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Works by six artists and three poets are featured in the collection and will be on view in person adjacent to Space 124 as well as on MoAD’s website as a digital exhibition.

October 6 – 15, 2023
Friday, October 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 7 at 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Sunday, October 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, October 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, October 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Sunday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.