TMWYGH: Text Me When You Get Home

Pondering urban environments as loci of human mobility, the corporeal aspects of gender and movement become prominent. The intersections of design, sartorial expression, violence, identity, gender, and space—whether public or private— demand urgent attention. These thoughts led to the creation of Text Me When You Get Home (TMWYGH), an exhibition exploring the seeking of safety and belonging within designed structures. TMWYGH asserts embodied truths in a world rich with matriarchal histories and emphasizes community care. The exhibition speaks to the warmth and relief found in shared understanding, often involving material and archival processes, and the exchange of language and information.

Chanti Mañon-Ferguson’s work demonstrates the inseparability of ancestral knowledge, cultural craft, and matriarchal visual labor. The ongoing femicide in Mexico and Native U.S. territories must be addressed in the fight against anti-Native rhetoric, a theme Mañon-Ferguson explores through Indigenous futurism and contemporary Native representation. Working with oil paint, Mañon- Ferguson combines ethnic studies with her lived experience as a Mazahua, Nahua, and Osage woman. Cihuapotli features two Native women in traditional Mexican clothing, highlighted by earthy pigments (Rust, Evergreen, etc.). The hand-beaded earrings created by her sister, Ameyalli, and affixed to the canvas push the work into three dimensions. By integrating beading—often dismissed by Western colonial perspectives—the sisters assert its cultural and political importance, honoring its communal history.

Ameyalli Mañon-Ferguson, raised with her sister in Oregon’s Indigenous communities, merges traditional techniques with contemporary styles aligned with Indigenous futurism. For TMWYGH, she created Mecayotl, a beaded work rich in symbolic meaning. In Nahua culture, hummingbirds carry messages of love from the afterlife, and in centering the afterlife, Mañon-Ferguson transports the viewer beyond the linear human realm. Her piece emphasizes resistance to Western traditions through non-figuration, the non- human, and transformation. The work is dedicated to her aunt, Catalina Mañon Muñoz.

Bruna Araújo Pereira’s mixed-media practice explores representations of women and people of color in Brazil in Seen. Pereira highlights how women and female-presenting individuals are often burdened with extreme visibility—whether through invasive gazes or surveillance-driven, queer-phobic political states. In Le Cri à La Roça, Pereira references 19th-century photographer Victor Frond’s work documenting the alienation of enslaved people in Brazil. This appropriation challenges photography’s role in colonial exploitation, creating a contemporary work that reflects intersectional struggles.

Weam Elsheikh’s calligraphy work, D’ahr—a transliteration of the Arabic word meaning “backbone”—depicts three women slightly overlapping in a single frame. The visual suggests the relationship between women and how they are treated across varying spaces. Elsheikh designs a composition that makes the women appear powerful and untouchable, honoring the strength of community and solidarity among women. In Jilbab, Elsheikh depicts a woman wearing a jilbab, a garment worn by some Muslim women. Printed on the textile are the questions often asked during public harassment: “But what was she wearing?” and “What was her dress like?” This work highlights the harassment faced by jilbab-wearing individuals while defending the right of women to choose their attire.

Gabrielle Vazquez’s re-situated challenges the destabilizing anxiety that keeps people ungrounded through a ritualistic composition of woven ceramic objects arranged in a circle, referencing the cosmological relationship between indigeneity and land. The weight of the ceramic elements prompts viewers to reflect on historical burdens and painful memories embedded in the material, while simultaneously representing the power of preserving cultural memory and spirituality. The contrast between embodied textures and the heavy ceramic objects reflects the duality of these forces. In the accompanying textile, women wearing various styles are printed on thin cotton, paired with fashion objects composed of heavy textiles and ceramics, challenging perceptions that dress itself is a visual indicator of what may invite violence against women.

Isabella de Souza Teixeira explores identity and poetic moments through her work. In Entrelaçar, Teixeira engages with the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals and women in public spaces, focusing on public transportation and the disconnect between the metaphor of movement and actual feelings of safety. The vulnerability of publicizing affection disrupts heteronormative and patriarchal norms, highlighting the tension between personal truth and the societal need to remain vigilant of others’ gazes. Teixeira’s Tecendo weaves a subway map adorned with colorful thread reminiscent of the LGBTQIA+ flag, illustrating how defined networks of movement connect people across geographies and mirror collective action toward safe spaces.

Isadora Cardoso’s representations of gender and mobility in urban landscapes catalyzed the collective visual conversation that became TMWYGH. Share Your Location (SYL) explores the act of sharing location settings, reflecting on the digital communication systems that define space. Using beads to represent the metro lines of São Paulo, Cardoso creates an intricate tribute to women who have become stars in the aftermath of femicide. Another work, para todas as marias, is a hand-sewn map of Latin America, crafted from fabric scraps stitched by Cardoso and her grandmother. The name “Maria” symbolizes women across the region and serves as a stand-in for the anonymous “Jane Doe” in Anglophone cultures. Para todas as marias honors the Ni Una Menos movement, transforming a common name into a collective marker of resistance.

In collaboration with Ameyalli Mañon-Ferguson, Cardoso also produced Echoes, an audio piece composed of voice recordings from elderly women in various languages. This work further emphasizes the importance of honoring ancestral knowledge, as these women’s voices become part of the collective memory that sustains future generations.

TMWYGH, as an exhibition, threads the work of women artists from across the world, rooted in the search for safety, the illustration of its absence, and the reclamation of power through art as a political tool. Through material objects, TMWYGH creates a narrative that merges intersectional solidarity and the pursuit of safety, weaving a map that reflects shared ideas, experiences, and sentiments. The exhibition functions as a powerful political device, presenting the pluralistic, the fluid, the complex, the tragic, and the heartwarming in relation to global understandings of womanhood and resilience.

Open Call Exhibition
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