Manuel Vicente Lalande | The Crow’s Nest
By Manuel Vicente Lalande
“No Human is Illegal,” an activist pop-up gallery featuring local and national artists and backed by the St. Petersburg Women’s Collective, opened last week at the VENUS gallery.
Co-curated by Evan Neidich, a frequent contributor to the Women’s Collective, and Candace Wiant, a first-time curator, the event was hosted by the art gallery’s curator, Emily Stone.
While the crowd around VENUS wasn’t particularly large at its opening, the visitors were all diverse in age and background. From elderly couples and young local art students on a field trip, to small toddlers creating their own art on the spot, all the spectators were keen to be involved.
The art show featured mostly local artists but included creators from Miami, Bradenton and California. The artists only had a few months to complete and submit their pieces to be shown at the advocacy gallery.
Tables outside the venue, manned by family and friends of the curators, along with other immigrant advocacy groups, sold art prints, stickers and jewelry to raise money for immigrants in need and provided local awareness of current immigration laws.
Wiant, the newest co-curator, said that one of the most important goals of the movement was to end the abuse of individuals in immigration detention centers — or as she called them, “immigration concentration camps.”
Created in 2003 under former president George W. Bush, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was founded under the Department of Homeland Security, with a focus on immigration enforcement and transnational crime.
This art gallery, along with thousands of similar movements across the United States, aims to bring awareness to “the current plight facing immigrant and refugee families crossing the United States border.”
According to the Facebook event, 50 percent of each sale from the show will go to a nonprofit organization called Refugee & Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
The VENUS opened this past March and is affiliated with the St. Pete Women’s collective, commonly showing art galleries advocating for feminism and self-expression.
The exhibit being presented at the same time as “No Human is Illegal” was “Denim,” in which all of the art was either made of — or about — the experience of this global textile.
One of the pieces featured at “Denim” was a suit of armor made of denim – “jarmor,” if you will – by artist Ashley Aldous Pangborn. The piece is a statement on “denim day,” which is dedicated to advocating for sexual assault awareness. The day was dedicated after a young Italian woman was sexually assaulted, but her attacker was acquitted of all charges because the victim’s jeans were too tight, implying she had assisted her attacker by giving “consent.”
This event and future ones will be supported by “Bring Hope Home,” a nonprofit community collective initiative based on providing learning services and other resources to immigrants in need. For more information on future events at VENUS or the St. Petersburg Women’s Collective, visit https://www.stpetewomenscollective.com/.
