Avery Temple

Bio: Avery uses they/she/he pronouns with no preference. They are a queer, genderfluid southerner of Indigenous and settler descent based in Bvlbancha (New Orleans, LA). She is the Co-Founder at The Healing Underground and is the Lead Editor & Curator of Mangrove Magazine, a quarterly publication amplifying QTBIPOC abolitionist artists and organizers across Turtle Island. He strives to bring warmth and curiosity to every space he stewards. When Avery is not making, you can find them with their hands in the soil, nerding out about sci-fi, wrestling with their sewing machine and making food with loved ones.

Artist Statement: Avery is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily with words, events, linocut, clay and fabric. Avery holds many identities: Latine; Native; southern; queer; gender nonconforming; abolitionist; care worker. Using these mediums, they aspire to connect to those who are walking the thin line between life and death as people of multiplicity in the belly of the beast. Through exploration of her craft and infused passion for resistance movements, she allows herself to be wholly consumed by both grief and gratitude. While studying and living within these topics, he confronts the apathy that is persistent among his generation and chooses to celebrate life in full force as an act of rebellion. This juxtaposition creates poetic spaces that are nonlinear, raw, and tap into often suppressed emotions like rage, loneliness, awe and radical love.

use the body as a rolling pin smooth out someone’s edges notice the softness on the front breakable like vegan leather

lay onto the bed like
palms up, belly out, hands clenched, eyes squeezed, mouth foreign, smells off

let the lobby hear the loneliness
the walls too thin to contain anything specters will follow, up the elevator into a heavy door that shadows rebuttals kept quiet

take a hard look and realize
the beard is no longer cut
nails no longer trimmed
moved past formalities like hygiene

spun around, turn and be bent two drinks can lessen
a blow, a pulled muscle,
a bruised ego

think of the stains as charity
a reminder worth at least this much go home to count and notice —
it is always short,

it can never be enough

we mummify parts that resist
we release build up in the cleanse we protect our dignity in propolis

Title/pricing:

“hilton on 6th”, fabric clothing and wood chair, NFS