how to read this page
“The Solidarity Project / Projekt Solidarność is a virtual artist + cross-cultural exchange project that brings together emerging Polish and American artists to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis from 2020-2021 to investigate the critical need for togetherness and unity in an age when physical proximity is eliminated, isolation is mandatory, and life as we know it is drastically changing at a rapid, alarming rate.”
My name is Debbie Holloway, I live on the unceded land of the Lenape and Canarsee people now called Brooklyn New York, and I’m an artist participating in the Solidarity Project.
this website is a collection of my own documentation and reflection (photos, texts, memes, screenshots) from the day my office closed due to COVID-19 on March 12 2020, to the day I got my second Pfeizer vaccination on April 23rd 2021.
it was a year of death, loss, sorrow, disappointment, confusion, fear, and trauma. it was also a year of new adventures, deepening strong bonds, and a time when light broke through the clouds to show me what family and community truly looks like. because no matter who shares your blood, your true family emerges when the chips are down.
COVID-19 is still here. the pandemic isn’t over. but that year was a remarkable one in many ways. I have done my best to document, reflect, and arrange on this page a little bit of how it felt. what it was like to be a communal creature, in a time of splintered community. what it was like to be an artist, when your bones and the earth are crying out for and against so many things, that you can’t think straight enough to form a coherent sentence.
i’m a writer. but this year my art wasn’t in the writing. it was in the listening, preserving, and finding ways to cultivate life when death was all around.
thank you.
