WE KEEP US SAFE is a reminder that we are larger than ourselves. We are the spaces we build for each other, with our words and our offerings, to keep us safe. WE KEEP US SAFE is one of many sentiments expressed online, on paper, in person, and across the world in solidarity with the movements to defend our land and protect our communities from state repression. WE KEEP US SAFE is an ever-growing archive of community offerings, serving as a meditative space to grieve, rage, resist, and rest. Here, it manifests into a collective representation of our grief, holding its weight through the documentation of our actions, feelings, moments, and offerings of love and care. Here, our movements extend beyond the land we are fighting for, into every space we create, with love.

Curatorial Statement

“We are the spaces we build for each other, with our words and our offerings, to keep us safe.” -Tatiana Bell

Tatiana Bell’s WE KEEP US SAFE is an ever-evolving installation that serves as a meditative space and altar honoring movements of resistance that protect the land that sustains us, namely Atlanta’s precious Welaunee Forest—one of our city’s four “lungs.”

Like the discarded leather in Piel Con Piel, the materials that build WE KEEP US SAFE have had multiple lives. Tatiana repurposes architectural objects of the home (such as windows), discarded wood, and leftover leaflets to make of the Chute Space a home dedicated to mourning as resistance. By weaving an archive of sentiments of solidarity expressed locally and worldwide and through a video projection that threads together Atlanta’s movements of resistance, WE KEEP US SAFE gives us room to build space for each other, honor our grief and rage, and heal.

WE KEEP US SAFE is shaped by collaborative grief processing through communal offerings. When visiting the space, you are welcome to bring offerings to add to the altar—notes, fabric, or any objects that connect to your grief are welcome.

- Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez