ABOUT
Simone Cottrell (Northwest Arkansas) is a multi-hyphenate creative and owner of Rachhana Creative Consulting, LLC. Her durational protest performance art Where is Justice? enters its third year of exploration in 2024. Simone’s contracted projects have included the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Jonathan Gonzalez’s Perejil, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Creating Connections. Other 2024 projects include One Nation, One Project - Phillips County, and Theatre Squared’s Cambodian Rock Band. She is a board member of NWA Girl Gang and the National Cambodian Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial. Simone is the recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Fellowship Award - Community Engagement, Sipp Culture’s Rural Artists Award, Artists 3 60 Grant, Interchange Grant, and Innovation Grant.
WORK SAMPLES
WHERE IS JUSTICE? (2021 - PRESENT)
Simone Cottrell ©
"Where is Justice?" has been described in many ways - installation, durational art, meditation, protest, joyful gathering, and silence as a subjective practice.
I think of it as a public "thought jam".
Where is Justice? is a silent visual disruption that pauses the viewer, jamming their current thoughts to give space for an honest and curious response.
At its performance core, I publically meditate on a 3-foot ladder while blindfolded holding a sign that states "Where is Justice?" for 1 - 3 hours.
“Where is Justice?” is primarily performed in different public spaces, in various weather conditions, and to draw attention to key oppressive issues. It is performed with typically less than 24 hours notice. Each performance. has a different community engagement activity to provide a gathering space for dialogue.
Where is Justice? | August 2022 | Fayetteville Public Library | Example of Variation One
Where is Justice? The People’s Rug
Variation Four*
Debuts January 2025
18' x 20'
Donated Clothes & Fabrics from Community
Hand braided and handsewn. Detachable to create new patterns.
Each large rug can fit two individuals.
*Visual Draft
Where is Justice? The Peoples Rope - Meditation Walk | March 2023
1-mile long rope held by 12 individuals for 7 walks around Fayetteville Public Library in response to AR legislation regarding banned books and anti-trans bills.
When Broken Glass Floats | Variation Two
Durational Performance Art (120 mins) & Art Installation
Glass & Mixed Media
Inverse Performance Festival | November 2022
The Momentary, Bentonville, AR
Video by Jared Sorrells - Nova Studios
Now think about numbers (7 generations, 14 Questions, 28 stakes) (2023)
kalyn fay x simone cottrell
Poetry, mixed media & textiles
Referencing Minnesota Chippewa scholar Gerald Vizenor's article, which focuses on numbers, patterns, and poetry, Now Think About Numbers (7 Generations, 14 Questions, 28 Stakes) is a work inspired by the art of protest.
Referencing an article on numbers, patterns, and poetry written by Minnesota Chippewa scholar, Gerald Vizenor, Now Think About Numbers (7 generations, 14 Questions, 28 stakes) is a work inspired by the art of protest.
With 28 stakes in the ground and calling back to the exhibition’s title, Soft Power, the artists conclude with the reinforcing of the necessary work with which we each must grapple: Are you excavating the depths of your own heart?
Now Think About Numbers (7 Generations, 14 Questions, 28 Stakes)
Kalyn Fay x Simone Cottrell
How would you proceed if failure were seen as an opportunity?
Have you addressed your inherited legacy?
What comforts do you enjoy in exchange for complicity?
Which intersectional privileges do you carry?
Why is your discomfort mistaken for a lack of safety?
Do you foster fallacies of neutrality in your spaces?
Do you disguise expectations of quantifiable return as generosity?
How long does it take to move from ambiguous to authentic diversity?
Where is Justice?
Can you see that advocacy is a means of our collective survival?
How can well-being intersect community needs?
When will you learn how to love Community deeply?
Do you believe Past, Present, and Future are simultaneously relevant?
Are you excavating the depths of your own Heart?
Example of Cherokee basket textile as the center image anchoring one of 14 questions. 7 different Cherokee basket images were used.
Example of Khmer sapot textile as the center image anchoring one of 14 questions. 7 different Khmer sapot textile images were used.
Due to rain conditions, Kalyn Fay x Simone Cottrell recreated NOW THINK OF NUMBERS into this second variation, which included Cottrell’s Where is Justice? The People’s Rope.
It would later be used as staging for an open mic for local creatives to express their experiences with arts & and culture institutions.
May - August 2023
even in depression, i dream in color (2022 - 2023)
Simone Cottrell ©
5' x 3' on recycled canvas & frame
acrylics, chalk, and pencil
I come from a matriarchal lineage of premonition dreamers and river women. One particular dream foretold that my grave would be a riverbed. I was unaware I was buried in this dream because it felt more like a warm sleep in chocolate-brown darkness. Slowly, specks of gold sunshine and crystal waters broke the darkness and my Mak and my two Ohms revived me. They washed the mud from my body and gave me my breath back. We all wore traditional Khmer river sarongs as if we were back in their collective memory of the country they left. They told me secrets about death and grief.
After this dream, my partner died, the nonprofit I worked for failed, COVID-19 began, and another career loss. My bed was my comfort and the women elders in my family could not save me. I imagined what it must have looked like to them in my dream to have found my body in the river, and this led to my first large-scale painting after many first attempts.
“even in depression, i dream in color” represents the intersection between my physical life’s crucible and my spiritual life’s sacred initiation rites.
Lure (2023)
Simone Cottrell ©
8'x8'x8'x8
upcycled fabrics, lamps, Pipe & Drape, & Lino cut stamps
LURE was a commissioned work for the first-ever Arkansas Country Blues & Stringband Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas (November 2023).
Organizers Rachel Reynolds and Orson Weems requested an arts experience that would speak to the racial history of Country Blues music.
Cottrell re-created Ozarks and Mississippi Delta landscapes through lino-cut stamps inspired by Angkor Wat bas reliefs. As a biracial Khmer creative who has lived in both geographic areas, it was important for Cottrell to represent Asian communities living and creating in the South.
Using the Fayetteville skyline as the fourth representation, individuals could watch Lure conversing with sunsets by standing inside or outside the installation.
Lure’s durational light performance provided different experiences for three days and every 20 - 30 minutes.
Lure’s interior provided enough room for two people to be in intimate space with each other.
Demonstration of how 1 - 2 individuals could engage with Lure.
CONNECT
SIMONE COTTRELL
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RACHHANA CREATIVE CONSULTING
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