(We Will) Open With You: General Sisters

The Pittsburgh-based art collective General Sisters initiates an exchange of perspectives and nourishment at WCMA with this celebratory community workshop and conversation. Rather than host a conventional opening event tied to a specific exhibition, General Sisters will invite the museum to open itself—over and over and over again.

(We Will) Open With You is a collaboration with General Sisters, students in the Contemporary Curatorial Workshop of the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art, and Assistant Professor of Art Pallavi Sen. This project extends General Sisters’ neighborhood practice of opening a General Store in North Braddock, Pennsylvania to the Williams College Museum of Art.

How does one enter? How do you enter?

How do we become?

A public institution exists because the you exists. And both the institution and the you public take turns holding space for each other. Does the institution reflect or refract the you public, pushing and pulling. What happens when we the public step inside and become audience? Are we transformed or does the space become something else? Our bodies can’t help but transform spaces. We assert our willingness to enter. I will meet you in the space in between. We do not have to abandon ourselves to enter. We will learn each other there. Right here. Welcome. What are you bringing in? What have you left behind? Were you welcomed before or did the invitation get lost in the mail? Pushing and pulling / Holding / Each other / In the open / To open.

An opening is neither the beginning or the end.

We open the art. The art opens us. The artist does not work in isolation as we were once told. The artist works of the world. Becoming from the word.  

We are already looking at the art. And the art is always looking back.

The art does not come with rules. But we do, each of the you. Your own rules on top of the posted rules, with the open hours. When the doors open. In the open.

Some doors are nailed shut, but we have learned to use both sides of the hammer.

In the open.

Do we live here?

Do we work here?

Do we visit?

Do we die here?

Do we enter where?

You open us.

Text by General Sisters

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