Healing Together
Perla Mabel
Campaign Goals
Healing Together is a 16-week, multi-lingual MBTA campaign designed to inspire intergenerational conversations about the importance of mental health and wellbeing. Through a creative partnership of community members and community-based artists, Healing Together promotes social connection and conversation to reduce stigma and help people find the support they need to take care of their minds and bodies.
Key Partnerships
Artists
Ekua Holmes
Ekua Holmes’ work is collage based and her subjects, made from cut and torn papers, investigate family histories, relationship dynamics, childhood impressions, the power of hope, faith, and self-determination. Recalling a quote from American Artist, Romare Bearden, "I do not need to go looking for 'happenings,' the absurd or the surreal, because I have seen things that neither Dalí, Beckett, Ionesco nor any of the others could have thought possible; and to see these things I did not need to do more than look out of my studio window," Holmes has looked out of her window for the subjects of her collages too. Remembering a Roxbury childhood of wonder and delight she considers herself a part of a long line of Roxbury imagemakers. In this spirit, she supports those who have a calling in the arts as well as keeping her own studio practice ignited. She has created and led workshops, been a visiting artist and lecturer, and held artist residencies in public and private institutions throughout New England.
Perla Mabel (They/Them/Theirs)
Perla Mabel is an Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist. They were born in Boston, MA, and grew up both there and in the Dominican Republic. They deeply identify with their Dominican heritage, channeling themes of survival and recalling historical events and figures from their culture. Their practice reclaims their Blackness by incorporating satin fabrics used in rituals practiced in Santeria; they honor the people they paint by using the fabric as their canvas. Along with other fabrics, beads and objects in their paintings and installations in order to incorporate practices passed down from generations before them and throughout the African Diaspora. From reclaiming spaces of vulnerability and trauma to highlighting joy and resilience, Mabel’s portraits expand the possibilities of Blackness in art as a healing and empowering act. Now they are expanding their work into armor and public art challenging the ways in which their art can be accessed. Their Rhinoceros Armor project encompasses all the layers that make their paintings, but now taking the form of garments to act as the armor. They want their muses to embody that radical self-love that is liberating to the soul. This project is inspired by Assata Shakur’s, Rhinoceros Woman poem in her autobiography. Mabel is motivated and inspired by the many witnesses that came before them. Documenting and caring for the narratives of light through the act of creating and holding space for all layers of their identities.
Community Advisory Board
Evelyn Monteiro
Khima Bibbins
Dale Patterson
Denise Simmons
Gilbert White
Marilynne Quarcoo
Israel Acosta Medina
Fabiola Ramirez
Lolita Villa Ozorco
Gardy Docteur