Ellie Navidson

ellie navidson, born from small town punx and, having come up in another generation’s punk scene, has been living into resistance for most of xir life. Xe cut xir teeth in a wide gamut of activist movements and radical work. navidson draws energy and rage from lived experiences: xe is a trauma survivor many times over, an unabashed queer subversive, a radical nurse, a zinester, a queer mom, and a metal momma. navidson started painting years ago to deal with the turbulent emotions that came with kicking dope and xir current work has grown from that protean process. Xir work seeks to bridge the gap between personal and political in hopes of both connecting on a vulnerable, human level and using that humanity to foster community and resistance in a deeply inhumane world.

These are trying times–perhaps an understatement, but also an irrefutable truth. The rise of a new wave of global fascism is simultaneously horrifying and also the only logical extension of global capitalism, a system that relies on regimental, division, co- optation, coercion, and violence. My work is an attempt to understand the incomprehensible, to reveal the contours of living genocide. As a trans feminine, genderqueer creature, this world has only ever been hostile–as is the case for so many marginalized people. I try to weave threads from a fractured sense of self, stemming from past and ongoing traumas, into the weft of the “pre traumatic” urgency of a doomsday soothsayer. That being said, I maintain a sense of hope, even if it is often small. People can, and do fight back. My work often draws explicitly on past movements of resistant art–particularly the anti-fascist modernity of the Bauhaus and the critique of capitalism necessitating alienation so often present in post-modernism. I hope that my work can humanize the stark, vastly machinized opossum that many, if not most of us experience daily. I hope it demonstrates the nature of the existential threat that permeates our time and contributes, in some small way, to inspiring people to fight for history to take a new road this time around. Despite all that lay before us, I hope…