On Wednesday, May 29th from 5-7 PM at la Esquina Gallery (1000 W 25th Street, KCMO), please join Charlotte Street Foundation for a free public program before the opening of Melt on Friday, May 31st! This will be one of the last public programs to exist in la Esquina Gallery before it closes so you will not want to miss out on this opportunity.

“Lost has indeed made a tenuous we of us all—not just because we have all experienced losses, but because in some significant way, we all are loss.” — Judith Butler

There is something “never again” about the selves we once were; that ideal, that portrait, that symbol of what our predecessors decided we’d be, but because we’ve decided differently we find ourselves lost in a self we’ve been unwilling to let go of. We didn’t know who we were when we were born, then we spent most of our lives trying to figure it out only to learn that self we were searching after is not who we are, it is not who we are now; and now we are left with the dead weight of an identity we didn’t choose to carry — An Effigy To Myself is a burial of that identity.

This is an invitation from artist B Bečvář to come and participate in this transformative ceremony. Guests are invited to share writings, eulogies, testimonials and or burnable effigies they’ve created in memory of their past self, a self they no longer are. This dedicated time for mourning will also be a celebration and an embrace of transformation. Guests who wish to share will step up to an open mic and read their prepared statement, and once finished will be encouraged to let go and burn their object in a small fire pit. This is a chance for us to properly say goodbye to the person we use to be, and begin to heal from the trauma that comes along with having a self we no longer recognize.

Please join us on Wednesday, May 29th from 5-7pm at La Esquina Gallery as we let go of what we use to be and begin to welcome what we are now.

ARTIST BIO:

Installation/ lens based artist, B Včela Bečvář, is a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute.  B’s work is a halidom of light, an intuitive study of colors lured from an inability for words to be enough. Due to the highly theoretical and existential undertones in their practice, B’s work becomes cyclical and often a paradox between the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown. The resulting work is transmissive and often alluring due to it’s quiet and surrealist atmosphere. As they investigate etymologies and the continuum of a queer identity, their practice becomes concerned with the trans-; transportation, transformation, transition, transcendent, translucent, translation; and their newest body of work is titled accordingly. Saturated in yellow, trans- becomes a physical embodiment of change and the discovery of a new self.