Support-based and service-oriented labor is gendered as feminine. As such, it is often dismissed or taken for granted by our white-supremacist, heteropatriarchal reality.
EC is driven by the impulse to dispel these misogynistic assumptions by centering caregiving, network building, and stress-alleviation across all aspects of its operation.
EC believes that struggle does not breed creativity, and works to debunk that harmful notion, which is a result of patriarchal conditioning.
History
Founded in New York in 2020, EC is a labor of love and an accumulation of the lessons learned and unlearned throughout its founder’s ten-year curatorial career, about the kind of care artists need more of, and what pre-existing structures of support are currently lacking.
EC launched in Summer 2021 with Brooklyn-based performance artist, and current EC board member, Keioui Keijaun Thomas’s first solo exhibition.
The result of a two-year collaboration between Thomas and Awad, Hands Up, Ass Out showcased a body of work spanning the last six years of the artist’s career.
The exhibition and accompanying programming were hosted at/with Participant Inc, one of New York City’s longest-standing 501(c)(3) nonprofit alternative art organizations, and EC’s fiscal sponsor.
Press
Founded by
Founding Director Isis Awad (she/her) is a curator, writer, poet, and DJ from Cairo, Egypt based in the U.S. between Tucson, Arizona, and New York City. For over a decade, Awad has dedicated her career to supporting artists both within and outside of institutional frameworks.
Awad’s global art-world experience directly informs EC’s programming, as does her active involvement in underground queer nightlife.
Board
Lynn Maliszewski
Lia Gangitano
Keioui Keijaun Thomas
Fiscally Sponsored by
Participant, Inc, New York