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Date: 3/7/2023
NORTHAMPTON — A local artist is pursuing ways to cultivate a community-led care network that inspires healing, autonomy and self-discovery for trans and queer survivors who have experienced sexual and relationship violence.
Lachlan Thompson, a self-taught multimedia creatrix and intuitive healing arts practitioner, is spearheading a survivor art exhibition called the Dreamweavers’ Tales, which shares the stories of trans and queer survivors of relationship violence through a personalized collection of tarot cards created in collaboration with the artists themselves.
The goal is to share these stories through mixed media collage art throughout the month of June at The Bloomery Art Gallery and Meeting Place at 17 New South St. in downtown Northampton. The exhibit will also correlate with LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and is expected to begin on June 9.
In an interview with Reminder Publishing, Thompson said this project initially stemmed from a need to find their own personal healing journey as well as continue the work they already do with Survivor Arts Collective and their healing arts project, Astral Cherry Art.
Survivor Arts Collective is based in Easthampton and is a peer-led collective of queer and trans survivors who do peer support groups and provide transformative justice education work. They also have a grassroots mutual aid fund to help survivors escape violence and get the help they need.
Through working with them, Thompson found inspiration in starting their own healing arts project called Astral Cherry Art. Within this project, Thompson is working on building community-led care networks while helping marginalized people have more fulfilling and authentic relationships with themselves and their communities.
Thompson, who is also a survivor of relationship violence, said that the Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that — since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — the LGBTQIA+ population is twice as likely to have experienced intimate partner violence as their cis, straight peers.
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine found that these same cases increased 25 to 35 percent globally as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite these alarming statistics, Thompson said a lot of queer and trans survivor stories are often overshadowed or ignored and the support is typically not there, as a result.
To combat these issues, The Dreamweavers’ Tales aims to share the stories of survivors-many of whom are from Western Mass.-and invite the greater community to deepen systems of care by using storytelling as a source of connection.
“Through the peer support work that I do, I just heard so much from people how art has been such a massive container for people’s healing,” said Thompson. “It helps people feel seen and reflected, and as an artist myself, I realized I have this unique gift to transform artwork and these unique skills I developed through peer support work into supporting other people’s healing.”
Thompson said they wanted to use tarot cards to use these stories since they have a history of self-reflection through multiple different story archetypes, like the “Fool’s Journey,” which encapsulates the beginning of someone’s journey through life, or through another archetype involving isolation.
“I felt like tarot cards are an easy point of entry for both survivors to tell their story and for people who don’t have that lived experience,” said Thompson. “People recognize the patterns of an archetype and can go, ‘OK, I may not know what it means to go through what you’ve gone through, but I can resonate with a time that I’ve been isolated.”
According to Thompson, the process of telling these stories was extremely collaborative, as they and the involved survivors generated interview questions together, which formed the basis for telling the stories.
Questions ranged from something as simple as “what’s your favorite color?” to “what does it mean to feel empowered?”
“Some conversations were just an hour, while some have been upwards of six hours,” said Thompson, referring to their conversations with survivors. “It was really important to me that the questions I was asking the survivors in this process were led by them and were about what they really wanted to share.”
Once the stories were compiled, Thompson took the images and themes and placed them within the context of tarot cards and then sent them to the participating survivors to make sure the cards represent what they want to say. Once the imagery is created, a detailed guide is written encompassing the stories.
“The guides are really where you’ll get the in-depth information about how these survivors see themselves,” said Thompson.
By exhibiting these stories with the survivors, Thompson said that they hope everyone who engages with the art realizes they all carry something in themselves that can help enrich the goal of ending violence in all communities.
“For some people that can be art, for some people it can be their volunteer work or a conversation they had with their neighbor,” Thompson said, referring to mechanisms for ending the violence. “I don’t want people to walk away thinking that survivor support work and violence prevention has to be crisis response. That can be part of it, but I want people to be inspired and have the tools right now to make an impact.”
For Thompson, this project represents a path to healing and self-affirmation rather than just simply revisiting a harrowing trauma. “This isn’t about retelling exactly what we endured, because I don’t think that’s relevant to us to have to relive those experiences,” said Thompson. “There’s healing in autonomy. The process [for this project] is oriented around what feels significant to you, where do you want to take this, what you do you want me to hear, and how do you want me to represent you.”
By approaching this project in that way, the idea of choice is returned to a survivor who has had choice revoked in many ways.
“Even if it’s not the details of your trauma, it’s radical and healing to say, ‘I’m going to make space and take this space living in a broader culture that hasn’t quite met us there yet,’” added Thompson. “It’s also more powerful coming together and say, ‘I’m not the only one sharing this.’ We want to talk about what’s healing to us, what we wish people understood, and how we view ending this cycle of violence.”
Thompson said they invite whoever wants to tell their story by contacting them through their Astral Cherry Art website: https://www.astralcherryart.com/. So far, 10 stories have been shared, but Thompson welcomes more.
Additionally, Thompson told Reminder Publishing that they hope to expand this work and visit other communities outside of Western Mass. and give those communities an opportunity to create a space and direct the conversation around survivor support. Thompson has also put togetehr a GoFundME to help with some aspects of the project: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dreamweavers-tales-fundraiser?.
“The questions we talked about in this process might not be as important in other communities, and I think there is going to be power in bringing that out to other perspectives,” said Thompson. “I’m trying to empower and uplift survivors in the creating of the arts, so to travel and allow more people to receive that care of attention would be a lifelong dream come to fruition.”