Can We Just Cuddle?
(2019)
Cot frame, prayer shawl, yarn box with yarn, and a candle lighter with bell snuffer applied with turmeric (used here for its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties)
30”x45”x44”
Can we take a moment, to rest, to feel the weight of one another, the ones we hold, the ones who hold us. To feel the skin, to smell the fragrance, to breathe in their air. To remember a time that has never existed, to encounter a blip of eternity, where brilliant graces swaddle. To close our eyes, as the night is at its darkest, to feel the warmth, the light, and the breathing of the creatures we hold, and the creatures that hold us. We hold one another, a reciprocity of cherishing this moment of respite, to regulate our hearts, so that we may be transformed. So here am I, a voice crying out in the wilderness: can we just cuddle?
Through sculpture, performance, collaboration, social practice, and video, Connor invites or provokes the audience to converse with the work, themselves, and their neighbor.
Raised with a twin brother in a conservative Christian suburb of Dallas, Connor Walden explores the performative role of individuals and communities in spiritual formation and gender expression. Connor longs for deep intimacy and connection with all constantly, and it is the ambivalence that results from the perceived disconnection from body, other people, and Creation that conjures the vibrational questioning and artistic practice as formation.
Connor Walden
is a conceptual artist, twin, and Texpat who currently lives in Seattle. He is a graduate from the University of Washington with a MFA in Three-dimensional Forum (3d4m) in 2019 and also received undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin in Studio Art and Marketing. Connor has participated in group shows in Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, and most recently featured in Extra, a pop-up group exhibition by The Vestibule.
In 2019, Connor founded the seattle residency project with Tiffany Danielle Elliott, an introductory 6-month project to experiment with ideas of the creative community to inform a future residency/think tank based out of Seattle, WA. Find out more about the Seattle residency project at.
Connor hosted a socially distanced participatory ritual outside the gallery which was documented by artist Laura Knetzger as a visual story.
