[Content warning: sexual violence]
Dearest Community,
The following is a statement regarding harm caused by previous Swarm Apiary Artist Program (SAAP) participant Bea Cordelia, whose work we publicly uplifted and resourced in 2017. Though this harm — specifically, sexual violence — was perpetrated by Bea outside of Swarm residency time, we are grateful to our broader community for pushing us to consider how we hold artists who have participated in Swarm accountable for their actions in and outside our residencies. We humbly invite our community to witness the Swarm Hive as we recommit to how we show up for artists who are survivors of harm within and outside of Swarm Artist Residency time.
See below for Swarm’s full statement. As an act of solidarity with the survivor in this situation, we are sharing Sol’s fundraising campaign, as well as her and her collaborator Chaski’s art practice (get connected on Instagram @solychaski). Please consider giving to support her healing and liberation.
***
Thank you to those who have called our attention to our relationship to Bea Cordelia (Swarm Apiary Artist Program, 2017) and for pushing us to consider how we hold artists who have participated in Swarm accountable for their actions in and outside our residencies. Visit our Instagram to read a statement from Sol, a survivor of sexual violence perpetrated by Bea. We share this survivor’s story in solidarity with her healing process and ask for community accountability. We have worked to approach this issue with due care and will continue to do so. We understand that Swarm is a part of the community that must hold Bea accountable.
We recognize that time has passed between this post and our response. We are sorry for the harm and violence that came with our silence. We are sorry to the many survivors who have resided at Swarm for any pain our silence has caused.
Swarm Artist Residency does not condone any forms of sexual assault, rape, violence. It is Swarm’s priority to hold our community of artists with care and justice values.
That said, we did uplift, resource, and celebrate Bea Cordelia and her work, and her photo and bio appeared on Swarm’s public platforms until recently. We accept that responsibility.
In response to this call from our community: We removed Bea from our social media and website in an effort to withdraw the public platform that we provided her work. We refined and articulated our values related to sexual violence and other harm at Swarm. We also worked to specify the actions our Hive will take to hold perpetrators of harm accountable in our safety plan, a document that guides all Swarm community gatherings, which you can now see on our website.
We believe responses to sexual violence should be survivor-led and therefore will not engage in public dialogue or action on this issue beyond this post unless asked to do so by the survivor or by people the survivor has asked to speak on her behalf. That said, we will continue to do the internal work of putting processes and practices into place that support the physical and psychological safety of our residents. We believe that this is deep and long work, and hold a value of moving as mindfully, thoughtfully, and thoroughly as we can. Though we are an all-volunteer collective, we recommit to working hard to dismantle the violence of white supremacy and patriarchy in our leadership and community. We are learning more each day about how to create the world we want to live in.
We respect the decisions of those who choose to leave or engage differently with the Swarm community and our social media platforms because of the time it has taken us to respond publicly.
With love and care,
The Swarm Hive
