I promise to stay in touch
March 11 - February 18, 2023
“In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
- Toni Morrison
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Whiteness is multidimensional, complex, and systemic. Whiteness is socially and politically constructed, and therefore a learned behavior. It does not simply refer to skin color, but to its ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color. Whiteness is relational. “White” only exists in relation/opposition to other categories/locations in the racial hierarchy produced by whiteness. In defining “others,” whiteness defines itself. It is a state of unconsciousness: whiteness is often invisible to white people, and this perpetuates a lack of knowledge or understanding of difference which is a root cause of oppression. Whiteness is distinct but not separate from ideologies and material manifestations of ideologies of class, nation, gender, sexuality, and ability.
- Adapted from STAND Framing and Learning Anti-Racism. Understanding Whiteness, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center
Exhibition Statement
This is an evolving text. The following may be challenging to read and contains mentions of white supremacy and violence.
There are a few truths I’d like to acknowledge. First and foremost, most of us, as citizens and inhabitants of the United States, occupy Indigenous Lands. Most Boston and Massachusetts residents occupy Naumkeag, Massachusett, Pokanoket, Patuxet, Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), Nauset, Mohican, Nonotuck, Agawam, and Nipmuc lands. Second, the foundation of wealth and economic prosperity in this nation was largely built on the backs of the enslaved and in forced immigrant labor. Third, I am white, and a cis woman. This has shaped my privilege and positionality within the spaces I occupy, such as the workplace, academia, arts and my locality and experience at large. Fourth, my ancestors have occupied this land for centuries. They were colonizers. They were confederates. They were enslavers. I sit with this history. I recognize the violence it holds.
I am implicated by the ways in which whiteness and white racial identity has touched every aspect of the world and our intimate lives through media, policymaking, the built environment, and legacies of colonialism and enslavement. Through research, conversation, weaving, writing, painting, and sculpting, I interrogate what it means to be white and American, and to inherit a history of violence.
I am interested in the ways proximity to whiteness shapes love. I am interested in the ways this proximity shapes love, relationships, families, expectations, sex, touch and care. I am interested in the ways proximity to whiteness shapes one’s ability to love, and love well.
I am curious as to whether our collective ability to love and love well, particularly those of us in close proximity to whiteness, shapes our world, our government, our media, our cities and towns, our policies, our rules, our jobs, our neighborhoods, our homes.
I have struggled for weeks to write a statement for this body of work. I believe that may be because I hesitate to name this body of work as a statement. I am curious about this work as a point of entry.
I am convinced that this project, this interrogation, this confrontation, this research, this inquiry, will last my entire life. As such, I view this body of work as one point on a grid of many.
In lieu of the statement I have wrestled with and against, I offer this: a wandering of thoughts, a gathering of theories, of questions, observations and curiosities. My hope is that you too might wander, drawing arrows and annotations for yourself between material, color, theories, histories and questions.
I will continue to interrogate what it means to live in, and under, whiteness.
I will continue to confront what it means to live and love within whiteness.
I will continue to learn how to love well.
Press
2023
Galleries: A Map Based on Touch and Care, Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe
“Cote uses touch as a metaphor. The tactility of hand-weaving conveys the comfort and discomfort brought on by forthright communication. Her works, made with cotton or acrylic yarn in radiant tones unlike any skin color, sing out for stroking. “KNEE 2 KNEE” at first looks like a bowtie, but the title reorients us: We’re looking down at two thighs contacting at the knee, one violet and the other lavender. Touching, they turn a bright red that could signal hurt, warmth, or passion.”
Marissa Cote’s “I promise to stay in touch” Asks How We Exercise Love, Maya Rubio, Boston Art Review
“Cote presses charged topics with a subtle, nuanced touch. She reminds us of questions that are important to continuously ask: What are these exterior forces that enter our most intimate relationships? That hook into our flesh? What is keeping us apart? Perhaps most essentially, Cote returns us to the viscera, an awareness of body, feeling, and environment.”