Remember Your Connection

03/30/2023

**Call for Queens-based BIPOC women and femme artists & cultural workers of all disciplines, in our late 30s and 40s** for "From Queens to Our Motherlands: Remember Y(our) Connection" **Cash stipend for art & cultural work**

Share story and contribute to a multimedia zine. Through this zine, we'll illuminate pathways to love and care more for people and place, in Queens & in our motherlands. Zine will be in English and translated into two other languages, TBD by the project team.

🌿 8-session series, conducted in English, starting in May 2023 to consider the places that shaped and shape us, and how we care for and protect the people and places most threatened by displacement

🌿 Zine release party, with interpretation into two other languages TBD by the project team, in September 2023

This opportunity is for Queens-based BIPOC women and femme artists & cultural workers of all disciplines, in our late 30s and 40s.

Interested? Email Cecilia by April 14 at rememberyourconnection at gmail dot com with "Application" in the subject line to request an application. Cecilia will email you a short list of questions to answer.

From Queens to Our Motherlands is the third part of the RYC/TAAU project, which is made possible through funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs & the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts Statewide Community Regrants Program (formerly the Decentralization program) with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul & the New York State Legislature & administered by Flushing Town Hall, and The Puffin Foundation.

10/08/2020

Salamat Cristina Dc Pastor and The FilAm for sharing the story of our project!🙏🏽✊🏽❤️⚡️

‘Bouquet of healing’ art project dedicated to Elmhurst hospital workers

https://thefilam.net/archives/32947

09/09/2020

**Community Offering**

Have you and/or someone you know:
• Been providing direct services or goods through the pandemic?
• Survived COVID-19 illness?
• Experienced the loss of a loved one due to COVID-19?

We would like to offer some support through the gift of one of our "Bouquet of Healing and Connection" posters which include the message to "Let the plants hold you." 8x10" posters are available in Urdu, Spanish, Tagalog, Punjabi, Nepali, Korean, Farsi, English, Traditional Chinese, and Bangla. We would love to gift posters for hanging in workplaces and/or in personal spaces. Queens-based community members will be prioritized. Please DM us!
@ Queens, New York

09/02/2020

From project team member :

When the shelter-in-place order for New York City was made in response to COVID-19, I knew my family would not be gathering for Nowruz and Passover. Traditionally my mother would prepare her rice, baghali polo, and I felt grief knowing that we would not share the taste of home this year.

On March 18, 2020, among feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and panic, I resolved to prepare sabzi, the first step in making my mother’s rice. When my husband arrived home from what would be the last trip to the grocery store for over a month, I felt joy to see the less-than-perfect gishnīz (cilantro), shevid (dill), and ja’farì (parsley).

I enlisted the help of my son who was a week away from turning 4 years old. He stood next to me at the sink and watched me rinse all of the herbs. I taught him the names of each green in English and Farsi. He smelled and tasted the herbs with me and helped separate the leaves and stems. I FaceTimed with my mom along each step, I watched her face and listened to her voice guide me. The process took all day and working with the herbs in my hands brought me such peace and connection. I imagined my small self watching my mother and I imagined my mother as a small girl watching her mother in Iran. By the end of that day I had prepared the sabzi and tasting it brought me to tears. It tasted like home. @ Astoria, New York

07/07/2020

Stills from our street installation for Elmhurst Hospital workers and visitors. Photo credit: @ Elmhurst, Queens

07/03/2020

Introducing Phase 2 project team member (nine of nine!) Cecilia Lim, a Jackson Heights-based Queens community care and cultural worker with , , , and . First generation US-born, Cecilia traces her ancestral roots to fertile lands on the Philippine island of Luzon and Southern China where an abundance of rice was cultivated. Her mom taught her to love and relate to plants. "Mom delighted in plants, indoors and out. She tended them wherever she lived. When we talked on the phone after I transitioned out of my parents' home, she always asked, Kamusta ang mga halaman mo? (Tagalog - How are your plants doing?) I care for Mom’s spirit when I care for plants.”

07/03/2020

Introducing Phase 2 project team member Milton X. Trujillo, an East Elmhurst-based Queens community leader who dreams big dreams for radical collective autonomy and solidarity in his neighborhood and beyond with , a local intergenerational and volunteer run community center where out-of-system networks and responses are built and nourished. An undocumented artist and organizer who was raised in Corona and Jackson Heights after migrating in 1999 from Quito, Ecuador, Milton has been thinking about a plant from his childhood, eucalyptus, which was not native to the Andes, and yet came to surround the landscape and eventually became an integral part of healing, cleansing and protection practices. He’s also trying to figure out his personal connection to dandelion and lessons to learn since he was visited by this plant. Milton admires dandelion for being a purifier when consumed in balance, for its ability to grow wild mostly anywhere, and how its individual seeds can hold each other in beautiful super-structures but can also gracefully fly on their own for miles. Consider, what lessons can certain plants teach us about how to exist and move in a multispecies world?

06/17/2020

Introducing Phase 2 project team member Lynda Brillant, a NYC-based community activist with and advocating for and to and . The great-niece of Nicolas Noël and granddaugther of Julio Nérée, Lynda was born in Haiti, a Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. She is inspired by performing artist, scholar, and social activist Katherine Dunham's work and spirit to transform American society. Lynda understands plant relationships to be part of her heritage. She recalls, "I would walk with my mother and she would start picking leaves from the streets and say this is so-and-so and it is good for this." Consider and comment below: What plant wisdom did you learn from your female relations?

05/17/2020

Introducing Phase 2 project team member Chun Ae Hannah Lee. Hannah is the President of the Parent Teacher Association at the Woodside Community School, PS 361Q, building a supportive and welcoming environment for multicultural and multilingual families. Hannah's relationship with plants begins with toddler memories of her family growing vegetables on their roof in South Korea and her father's love and care for a banana tree. "He would surround it lovingly with bubble wrap in preparation for the winter." Consider and comment below: what plants were part of your environment growing up? 가훈을 기억하라 @ Queens, New York