Thick Solidarity, Montalvo center for the Arts, Saratoga, CA, 2022

Thick Solidarity is a project in Related Tactics’s (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, Nate Watson) ongoing Who Else But Americans series that explores the liberatory potential of relationships between communities of color as we navigate the extractive and violent systems of nation-building, power, and American exceptionalism. 

Thick Solidarity is a residency project organized by Related Tactics inviting two cohorts of multidisciplinary artists to join together in building community, resting, and carving out space for each artist to conduct research. The ongoing work as a collective focused on racial justice and solidarity is an exploration of creating connections and dialogue between artists & cultural organizers of color who are also committed to exploring these issues in their work and life within their communities.

This project was inspired by the conceptual framework of “thick solidarity” that Roseann Liu and Savanna Shange describe as the process of deep community building and mobilization that comes from nurturing shared empathy without conflating racialized experiences between communities of color. This thematic framework is offered to allow space for conversation and reflection with the hope of planting seeds for the future. Using the approach of an insert in a magazine, Related Tactics brought these artists together at the Lucas Artist Residency Program at Montalvo Center for the Arts as part of CoLab funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and also created and installed banners into the landscape of the residency with prompts to give form to the relational intervention into the pre-existing residency space.

Participating artists: Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, Nate Watson), Erina Alejo, Holly Bass, Alexa Burrell, Sonia Guiñansaca, Gisela Insuaste, Nicole Marroquin, Qianjin Montoya, Mia Nakano, Terisa Siagatonu, Raissa Simpson, Astria Suparak, Helen Tseng, and Charisse Pearlina Weston.