Photo by Marcus Donner Join us at ARTS at King Street Station on December 4 for Pioneer Square’s First Thursday Artwalk! We’ll be celebrating the opening of Living & Loving Under the Carceral State, and getting another look at Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!. EL SUEÑO will also be hosting the last workshop in the Woven Stories series from 5-7 p.m. Read more about the evening’s events below!
ARTS at King Street Station is open Wed. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on First Thursdays. The gallery is located at 303 S. Jackson St., Top Floor, Seattle, WA 98104.
Woven Stories – Huichol Ojos de Dios
Make Huichol Ojos de Dios (or God’s Eyes) during this hands-on workshop led by Alicia Mullikin.
The Huichol Indians of Mexico who lived in the mountains made Ojos de Dios to watch over them. They were woven onto crisscrossing sticks, joining in the center. The center eye represented the sun and stood for the power of seeing and understanding things we normally cannot see. Alicia will guide us in using yarn and sticks to craft our own Ojos de Dios!
Living & Loving Under the Carceral State
Living & Loving Under the Carceral State is an exhibition of individual and collective experiences as women supporting currently and formerly incarcerated loved ones. Part of a collective that meets each month to share food, joy, tears, and advice, the artists create art about the experience of loving someone behind bars. Creating art together is not just therapeutic, it’s a method of healing, cultural preservation, and power building.
The art in this exhibition reflects the pain and isolation of loving under the separation and surveillance of the carceral state and the dignity in the unrelenting fight to free loved ones from the physical and psychological bars of contemporary mass incarceration.
Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!
Jo Cosme’s Welcome to Paradise: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! confronts the glossy image of Puerto Rico as a tropical haven, exposing centuries of colonization, U.S. rule, and disaster capitalism. The exhibition layers spectacle with critique: lenticular prints, neon signs, and a claw machine lure the eye, while hurricane relief tarps stitched into flags, a vending machine dispensing buried histories, and protest slogans revealed only under black light pull viewers into deeper truths. A slowed revolutionary anthem fills the space, its distortion casting a haunting weight.
