"This is your home and you should have been safe here"

I know we haven't had the chance to update you on how the show went, and I promise it's coming, but I need to write this post first. I am opening and ending this post with the artwork of NZ-based artist Ruby Jones because I don't have a better way to express how I am feeling. 

I want to take some space to acknowledge something that has been with us since the beginning of this project and that is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's history of racist works.  While she was an incredibly forward thinking feminist and The Yellow Wall Paper has long been lauded as an important work of early feminist literature, she also wrote works that are racist. We acknowledged this in the handouts that we gave out with our show and several people have reached out wanting to know more. Not being an expert I suggest you start with her Wikipedia page for more information. When I was introduced to this story in school, this other part of her history was never mentioned and it was only when I was doing research for this project that I came across it, which is wrong but sadly not surprising. After many conversations it was something we decided to go ahead with as a team for Fringe knowing we would continue to address this history as we made the project and beyond. Now we are preparing to open up this discussion with more people and more expertise. We are organizing a literary panel to critically examine the complicated relationship we all may hold with works of art, their creator, and the history of both. This is a very important and personal step for us as artists engaged with a work by this author and I hope you come on this journey with us. Please share your own experiences and any related questions or thoughts you have had.

March 15th marked the two year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Christchurch on the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre. Yesterday a man shot and killed 8 people in Atlanta Georgia, 6 of whom were Asian-American. Racism, islamophobia, sexism, hate and harm in whatever form it comes in is deadly and it is something we all need to combat in our world, whenever, wherever and however we can. See and hear people as whole beings with unique stories struggles and joy. To everyone who has been hurt by this hate here in New Zealand and around the world, in the words of Ruby Jones

"This is your home and you should have been safe here".

Abi and the team from Yellow Cat Collective