ABOUT THE SHOW
MALA LECHE: In Celebration of Community was an exhibition featuring the work of select artists and writers from the first and second issue of the new radical art zine, MALA LECHE. This exhibition invited the community to celebrate the essence of MALA LECHE, a platform for encouraging and uplifting the voices of women-identifying, non-binary, and genderqueer creatives in the Central Virginia area. The exhibition featured the work of artists/writers: Kate Boland, Miranda Elliott-Rader, Meesha Goldberg, Sam Gray, Makaela Johansen, Kendall King, Sri Kodakalla, Ramona Martinez, Kori Price, Allison Profeta, Guleer Shahab, Barbara Shenefield, Laura Josephine Snyder, Rochelle Sumner, Jess (JD) Walters, Dana Wheeles, and Abigail Wilson.
The first and second issues of MALA LECHE were available for free at Studio IX and online on our website. The newly released MALA LECHE #2: Fever Dreams of Mother Earth was curated by guest editor Meesha Goldberg, an artist, poet, and farmer based in Central Virginia whose work ‘Casualties of the Anthropocene’ appeared in MALA LECHE #1.
ABOUT MALA LECHE
MALA LECHE is a quarterly radical art zine based in Central Virginia, focused on featuring and supporting the art and writing of women-identifying, non-binary, and genderqueer artists and thinkers. This art zine is produced by the Feminist Union of C’ville Creatives (FUCC), a community of women-identifying, gender-queer, & non-binary artists in the Central Virginia area who seek to enhance their lives and artistic endeavors through creating opportunities for individuals to share their time, journeys, inspiration, support, and experience. FUCC is supported by a collaborative partnership with The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative (The Bridge PAI).
We believe that all art is inherently political and has the power to reshape society. We believe that in this time of separation, we have the opportunity to come together as never before. We believe that authentic creation is a radical act, even more so when it is shared with others. MALA LECHE is a testament to our inevitable future--one without fascism, capitalism, and white supremacy.
VISIT THE EXHIBITION
MALA LECHE: In Celebration of Community is no longer on display. The exhibition ran for the month of April 2021 from April 2 through May 2, 2021 at Studio IX (969 2nd St SE, Charlottesville, VA 22902). You can see images from the exhibition installation below.
FEATURED WORKS
Click on the photos of artworks featured in this exhibition for full images and to read about the artist. If you are interested in purchasing one of the artworks featured in this exhibition, please send an email to heyfucc@gmail.com. We’ll connect you with the individual artist to coordinate pricing / purchase.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Kate Boland (@mirakata.sasha.art)
Kate Boland (she/her) is a visual artist living in Chesterfield, VA. Her art is the physical embodiment of many emotions, experiences, and memories. Each piece is created to stimulate curiosity and creativity within the viewer.
Miranda Elliott-Rader (Newsletter signup)
Miranda Elliott-Rader (she/her) is a puppeteer, a mathemagician, and a Quaker mystic. She is committed to building now the life we will have when all that oppresses us is torn down.
Meesha Goldberg (www.meeshagoldberg.com | @meeshagoldberg)
Meesha Goldberg (she/her) is an artist, poet, and farmer living in a secluded valley in Virginia. Her primary medium is oil paint, which she uses to render realistic, mystical landscapes that speak to humanity’s belonging and responsibility to the earth. Meesha is the guest editor for MALA LECHE #2: Fever Dreams of Mother Earth.
Sam Gray (www.samgray.rocks | @samgrayart)
Sam Gray (she/her) is an artist and illustrator painting and drawing in her home studio as well as printmaking at Studio Two Three in Richmond, Virginia. Gray's work examines themes of alchemy, spirituality, human relationship with nature, and the subconscious through symbol and surrealism.
Makaela Johansen (www.makaelajohansen.wixsite.com/mysite | @makaelajohansen & @thingsimak)
Makaela Johansen (she/her) is a student and artist attending the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Through her work she explores personal struggles with identity, self-image, and current social and environmental conditions.
Kendall King (@kndl_king)
Kendall King (she/her) makes prints about relationships- between humans or otherwise, often her family and sometimes roadkill. When Kendall makes prints, she's thinking about death, intimacy, and memory.
Sri Kodakalla (www.srikodakalla.com | @dystopian_conditionals)
Sri Kodakalla (she/they) is a mixed-media artist, writer, engineer, and arts organizer based in Charlottesville, VA. She runs F.U.C.C. and MALA LECHE along with Ramona Martinez. Sri expresses a reverence and abundant curiosity for the interconnection of human beings and the natural world, seeking to evoke a sense of mysticism in the seemingly mundane.
Ramona Martinez (www.ramonamartinez.net | @by_ramona_martinez)
Ramona Martinez (she/her) is a visual artist and writer whose work seeks to reclaim Christianity for misfits, radicals, anarchists, feminists, and outcasts of all types. She is also an arts organizer, and runs F.U.C.C. and MALA LECHE with Sri Kodakalla.
Kori Price (www.koriprice.me | @koripricephotography)
Kori Price (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and engineer based in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is passionate about telling the stories of her community and seeks to maintain a balance between her technical and creative interests with her work.
Allison Profeta (@alliroad)
Allison Profeta (she/her) is primarily a writer, but also embroiders to deal with anxiety and writer's block. She likes to say things with embroidery that, traditionally, women “weren't allowed or expected to say.”
Guleer Shahab (www.ghoneythings.com | @gshahabxo + @ghoneythings)
Guleer Shahab (she/her) is a Kurdish-born designer, poet, writer, and the founder of @ghoneythings. Her work is driven by the collision of the east and the west, a place most familiar to her. She finds inspiration in her experiences living in the diaspora, identity, rebellion, and warm memories of the motherland.
Barbara Shenefield (www.shenefielddesign.com | @shenefielddesign)
Barbara Shenefield (she/her) has long been fighting the feminist fight and sends love and respect to the brilliant younger generations of sisters in feminism. Barbara makes political art in the form of posters.
Laura Josephine Snyder (www.laurajosephinesnyder.com | @laurajosephinesnyder)
Laura Josephine Snyder (she/her) is a visual artist living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. In her work she explores memory, time and cognition through abstraction and an embodied practice.
Rochelle Sumner (www.thebonnetmaker.com | @rochellesumnerart & @thebonnetmaker)
Rochelle Sumner (she/her) is a visual storyteller, installation artist, performance artist, and conceptual artist living and working in Charlottesville, VA. Sumner’s current project, The Bonnet Maker, created with photographer Will Kerner, examines identity, shame, self-protection and essence retrieval.
Jess (JD) Walters (@chronicallyjess_89)
Jess (JD) Walters (she/they) is a Deaf, Disabled & chronically ill disability rights advocate, mixed-media artist, and nerdy neurodivergent scholar with special interests in all things human. They want you to caption your social media content so we can be friends.
Dana Wheeles (@deerhawkartstudio)
Dana Wheeles (she/her) is a life coach, artist, and forest witch living in the wilds of western Albemarle County. Her work invites us to see the sacred in nature, often pairing birds and other creatures with elaborate mandalas.
Abigail Wilson (www.theabigailwilson.com | @the_abigailwilson)
Abigail Wilson (she/her) is an avid creator and symmathecist, driven to illuminate and nurture evolving connections. Her work seeks to build a bridge between the fragmented parts of ourselves, as individuals and as a society. She seeks to awaken within the viewer a quiet awareness of interdependence and simplicity.