COLLABORATIONS > because you're [mine.]

2026

because you're [mine.]

This title is inspired by the Nina Simone song, "I Put a Spell on You." We are embracing the concept of magic as resistance but also thinking about possession as self-possessed and a sense of ownership and dedication to one's self. The mobiles being little spells cast with intention, the magic is hiding in plain sight for those who do not know..."because you're [mine.]" reflects the idea that no one else has possession over the meaning or meaning-making or the object itself.

storäe michele (they/them) is a black queer, shape-shifting, non-binary femme, afro-futurist
performer + storäe-teller. their creative practice builds a present + embodied archive of black femme futures + aliveness.

their first film, [the listening heart], was officially selected for film festivals internationally +
domestically. storäe is a Lambda Literary Fellow (Playwriting Cohort, 2021) and their
choreopoem, mama [rose], was nominated for the 2022 LGBTQ Drama Lammy Award. their
upcoming performance piece [claustrophobia], is supported by a grant from Columbia
University’s Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics & Social Justice.

learn more at www.storaemichele.com. follow on IG: @storae.michele.

Courtney Kessel (she/her) is a mother, artist, academic, and arts administrator living and working in Athens, Ohio. Kessel exhibits and lectures on her work nationally and internationally including at the China Art Museum, Shanghai, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago Chile, the University of Alberta, Canada, Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Florence, Italy, and Exit Art, New York.

Through sculpture, photography, performance, video, and sound, Courtney Kessel’s work strives to make visible the quiet, understated, and often unseen love and labor of motherhood. In the annual performance piece, In Balance With (2010-present), Kessel presents a version of the maternal which investigates collaboration with her (now 19-year-old) daughter as a visible, changeable aspect of mothering. Other projects which reflect over a decade of research into the subjective maternal include: Mother Lode , Symphony of the Domestic, Cut From the Same, Fabric of Life and the video Sharing Space.

She is currently the Director for Experiential Curriculum Integration at Ohio University and a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Arts. She earned her MFA in Sculpture & Expanded Practices from Ohio University, and holds a BFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art.