Visit the Central Library to view “Transmissions Quilts: A Multimedia Exhibit of Objects, Stories, and Trans Care,” curated by Berkeley-based artist and educator Cordy Joan, from Monday, June 2nd to Saturday, June 28th. The exhibit takes place across the Central Library, with art displayed on the 1st, 2nd, and 5th floors.
Transmissions is an ongoing, multidisciplinary art and community-building project that makes quilts for trans people, primarily based in the Bay Area but with project hubs expanding across the United States. Coinciding with Pride Month 2025, Berkeley Public Library is honored to have the opportunity to display selected quilts, audio, and ephemera, and host a number of related events, such as an opening reception, workshops, and more, throughout the Central Library. Critically, this exhibit centers the affirmative beauty and creative vitality of trans and queer community, in Berkeley and beyond. Joan is the recipient of a FY25 City of Berkeley Civic Arts Individual Artist Project Grant for the Transmissions project, and “Transmissions Quilts” is the culminating exhibition for this project period.
CURATOR STATEMENT
Quilts have been given as gifts to mark life transition across time and cultures. They help us see ourselves on longer time scales, which is something that many trans people can’t access. The Transmissions Quilt Project started with the simple impulse to make affirming gifts for friends and lovers—or “arrival objects,” as Joan calls the quilts, “the thing that sees and welcomes them.” The process for the creation of the Transmissions quilts has many phases and includes multiple disciplines. Quilt recipients, both adults and teens, are nominated by anyone in their community. Once they accept their nomination, they are interviewed by a dear friend of their choosing, with the audio recorded and edited. The recipient then chooses three trans artists in any medium, who make a piece inspired by the audio recordings. Finally, a quilter uses those three art pieces to design a quilt, which is completed at a community quilting bee, before the recipient ultimately receives the quilt, audio files, and pieces of art. As the project has grown to involve nearly a dozen collaborators and multiple locations, the impulses remain steadfast: welcome trans people to themselves, shower them with gifts, and offer the reminder that the web of life holds them fiercely. “Transmissions Quilts: Objects, Stories, and Trans Care” showcases a number of the quilts, pieces of art, and audio components created as part of the broader Transmissions project (with permission from the recipients).
CURATOR/TRANSMISSIONS PROJECT CO-DIRECTOR BIOS
Curator and Transmissions Project Co-director, Cordy Joan is a quilter, dyer and oral historian living in the East Bay. They often teach and learn with young people, particularly queer and trans teens. They are drawn to the crossover between quilts and poetry, and they love to swim. Cordy is interested in the time scales that quilts live within. When we lay under them, we are connected to the hands and intentions of generations ago. When we make them ourselves, we think of how far down the line they will travel. Quilts are considered to be "antique" when they are older than 100 years old. Some say they receive this label when they outlive one human lifespan. How is our art-making influenced when we make it with this time scale in mind? How do our knots change when we expect that level of durability? How do we encase secrets, messages, power into a piece when we anticipate our grandchildren sleeping under it? Cordy is interested in the poetry of the objects themselves. When words escape us, can quilts accomplish something similar?
Transmissions Project Co-director, Cam McCuskey is an artist who is inspired by the stories that are woven into a city. Moved by public spaces such as libraries and gardens, they are interested in how regenerative design can build community power. Cam is a co-owner of Root Volume, a small landscaping cooperative based in Oakland. They have a B.A. in Studio Art from Oberlin College where they studied sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. Their art can be seen here.
Transmissions Project Co-director, nino claveria is a cook, poet, and mental health worker who spends a lot of time thinking about play, ritual, and embodiment. When they gather people to eat they like to imagine themselves straddling the threshold that separates Ritual from ritual. Dinner party as ancient act. nino hosts a dinner series called portals that gathers people for long slow moving meals coinciding with astronomical events and the changing seasons. nino grew up in Orange County, CA––what some might consider the ground zero of plastic surgery and body mods. They think this may have made them trans. Their chapbook Transmissions: Late Night Calls with Terrible Angels (2023) explores this (and more) and is available through Clones Go Home.
PARTNERSHIPS
This exhibition is supported by and indebted to a number of partners and sponsors: Berkeley Civic Arts, Pacific Center for Human Growth, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and Euphoria Quilt Project.
