Sequin/ce | ˈsēkwəns, ˈsēˌkwens:
unified events, movements, and things that refract light in an iridescent effect
sequin:
a small, shiny disk sewn as one of many onto clothing for decoration
sequence:
a particular order in which related events, movements, or things follow each other

In May 2023, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen signed LB 574, a bill that limits medically necessary care for transgender minors in Nebraskans, into law. The bill also included extreme abortion restrictions and took immediate effect. We, like a lot of queer people living across the patchwork of Midwestern flyover states, navigate the layered complexities of living in a place where queer histories, queer expression, and queer identity are the subjectivities to be litigated. We talked a lot about feeling the precarity and instability of the times we’re living in. We recognized that generations of queer and trans people before us faced intense discrimination and yet a queer presence endures because queer and trans people are integral to this landscape. We belong here.

Both members of Amplify's Alternate Currents cohort, we had been feeling pulled toward making work with other people that builds a sense of common purpose and togetherness. Our conversations shifted to questioning how we locate links between the past and present and celebrate the joys of our shared history, sparking the initial idea for Sequin/ce. As a point of departure, we thought about sequence and sequins as closely related terms – homonyms that together conjure the shimmering joy of Nebraska’s queer communities over time. We thought about the photograph as a medium and container for unsettled histories. After talking with friends, colleagues, and our cohort came up with a plan to collect photographs that express queer joy across generations and assemble them into a large-scale collage that stands as a visual manifesto of collective power, enduring presence, and joyful resistance.

Taking the project from its inception to completion helped us deepen our respective creative practices and our relationships with each other and our collaborators. It’s also a process that we invite others to copy freely and use as a blueprint for making similar work in different social and geographic contexts.

Our first step involved mapping the assets specific to our community and this place. We knew we wanted to invite broad participation by hosting an open call for photos. We knew our fellow cohort members were there to lean on for feedback and project support. We were hopeful our friends and organizations like Out Nebraska, the ACLU of Nebraska, BFF Omaha, and the Union for Contemporary Art would help get the word out by promoting the open call. We reached out early on to the Queer Omaha Archives housed at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and requested access to historical photographs that could create a sense of continuity over time when shown alongside contemporary photographs we gathered through the open call. We had a $1,500 budget to work with and access to an exhibition space for two months through our participation in Alternate Currents. Mapping our assets helped move us quickly along to a place where we felt confident and prepared to open a call for photographs that would reach people we wouldn’t have been able to connect with on our own.

For the sake of accessibility and ease of use, we built a Google form to gather submissions that Amplify linked on their website. Our collaborators shared the call on their various communications channels as well. We drafted language and provided them with promotional images so they had everything they needed. We were sensitive to the fact that making queerness more legible in places like Nebraska comes with real concerns around privacy and safety. For those reasons, we welcomed anonymous submissions and encouraged people to submit photographs that expressed queer joy either with or without the presence of faces or bodies. Click on the image below to see our template.

The call was open for just over six weeks and we collected over one hundred photos from forty people. While the call was open, we also visited the Queer Omaha Archives and worked with its steward, Amy Schindler, to gather digital copies of historical photos from the archive that we could easily reprint. When the open call closed, we organized the photographs people submitted, along with photographs from the archive, and began thinking through the practicalities of collaging a high volume of images. We considered pulling the images into Photoshop and collaging them digitally, which would have allowed us to make large format banner-sized prints. The price of printing on that scale sparked discussions about other options. Ultimately, we decided to make individual drugstore prints of each image and build the collage as a site-specific installation in the gallery space. After some experimentation, we landed on a salon-style configuration that wrapped the gallery walls. Photographs were consistently spaced at about four inches and we intentionally integrated the images that came through the open call alongside archival images to highlight the shared colors, textures, and gestures that weave through them all to tell a story of enduring presence across decades, a sequencing of time.

We communicated regularly with people who submitted images and who opted for email updates. They were first on the invite list for the opening and a performance night we organized to celebrate the show’s closing and disseminate resources with information about how to track legislation, contact your representatives, and know your rights. Printed QR codes scattered throughout the space and taped to the windows directed visitors to those resources which we’ve also linked below.

Throughout the show’s run, we promoted it on our personal social media accounts, Amplify promoted through their channels, and our community partners did the same. With their help, we managed to broaden our audience and are grateful that over three hundred people saw Sequin/ce. To bring the show full circle, we donated the photo submissions we gathered and installation images of the exhibition to the Queer Omaha Archives, where they live happily now. We hope they will become part of other people’s histories.

While organizing Sequin/ce we were fortunate to have support for this project in the form of funding, space, and connections. We know that people working in similar ways will have access to different resources and face different challenges. We believe that no matter what your situation, the blueprint we’re offering can be adapted to fit your particular circumstance. If you don’t have a publicly accessible queer archive where you live, talk with your queer elders. Ask them to share their memories and work together to understand how to document those histories. If you don’t have access to a traditional exhibition space, think about using unconventional spaces like your garage, apartment, or a friend’s house. If you don’t have access to funding that covers printing costs, consider making an exhibition online. Springboard for the Arts’ Handbook for Artists Working in Community, linked below, is another incredible resource and guide for anyone working to understand what it means to make community co-created work.

For us, the experience of organizing Sequin/ce brought up important questions around ownership and authorship. Rather than showing work we’d made specifically for exhibition, we used the exhibition platform to create a scenario that invited participation. Sequin/ce is constitutive of our work – our intellectual, emotional, and physical labor – but it also represents the memories, the resistance, and the joy of our community. Making it necessitated creating conditions that allowed us to find renewed meaning in our creative practices by building relationships. Those relationships helped us undertake this project with an elevated sense of responsibility and care. They also provided a steady scaffolding while working to understand what it means to work toward more just futures within the arts.

We hope Sequin/ce has many more lives and finds new names, new shapes, and new ways of bringing people together in joyful resistance. If you’re interested in using Sequin/ce as a blueprint for community co-created work where you live, get in touch! Email us at sequince712@gmail.com anytime. We’d love to hear about your experience and we wholeheartedly share our support, our insights, and our JOY!

Joy Cotton is a mixed media artist living in Omaha. Joy uses a combination of pencil, acrylic, oil to create paintings and murals. She creates pieces that hold a great significance to personal emotions, like happiness, sadness, anger, and depression. The characters she makes depict different forms of fantasy and realistic figure drawings. These works contain multiple layers of textures and different types of painting applications. A graduate of University of Nebraska at Omaha Joy often works with other artists and organizations within the Omaha arts community. For the past few years, she has worked on projects with the Omaha Summer Arts Festival (OSAF), Benson First Fridays (BFF), the Midtown Crossing Sunny Chair project, ACLUNE, and Amplify Arts working Cohort 2023-2024. Interacting, building relationships and collaborating with innovative individuals has shown her the interconnectedness of the art community. Through these interactions, observations, and personal projects she has continued to define and develop her artistry.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1996, Aspen Monet Laboy is an interdisciplinary artist who is Black, Puerto Rican, and Gender Nonconforming. Working in poetry, glass, and installation, they explore concepts of environmentalism and identity with a heavy influence of consciousness and various philosophies. Aspen has published three books; Spirit (2017), The Quiet Lion (2018), and I MATTER (2022). In the summer of 2022, they implemented and co-hosted Corner’s Space at KANEKO, a public program exploring poetry through creative experimentation and collaboration. Several of their selected poems were aired on Friday Live with Nebraska Public Media through NPR in 2023. Their writing has also been featured in local zines and performed in various galleries. Currently, Aspen is part of the 2023 - 2024 Alternate Currents Cohort and Community Advisory Group through Amplify Arts. This year, they were awarded a scholarship from Penland School of Craft for a Summer Session in glass with Ché Rhodes. Additionally, they were accepted into the 2024 Pilchuck Glass School Auction.

Joy Cotton & Aspen Monet Laboy | Sequin/ce

950 S 10th Street #15, Omaha, NE 68108