In this episode, I sit down with the tender and tenacious Shaurie Bidot as they invite us along a pilgrimage of ancestral wisdom, remembrance and blessings from their Latin heritage originating from the Indigenous Taíno tribe of Puerto Rico to their roots in the American South. From the context of growing up in the South as a queer Afro-Latinx Sephardi Jew, Shaurie offers their formative perspectives on death as a grounding practice and spiritual guide in how they approach personal relationships and liberatory politics. Informed by their multi-racial, multi-cultural and ethnically diverse landscapes, Shaurie explores grief practices as a way of life through their organizing, advocacy and art. Through performance and visual art mediums, they bring us along in their vision of immortalizing the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) language and Sepharic traditions. Fusing the personal with the political, they trouble white supremacist views of Jewishness and the insidious ways Sephardic culture and heritages have been systemically disrespected and disregarded by dominant Ashkenazi Jewry. Ultimately, they remind us of the power of art as a sacred way to communicate with ancestral realms in the hopes of transporting us towards more tender futures.

Shaurie Bidot is a queer Afro-Latinx Jewish activist and interdisciplinary artist who has been in movement building for 10 years. They are currently the Executive Director of Vancouver Women’s Collective, a non-profit organisation helping all who self-identify as women, non-binary and gender non conforming, foster health, wellness and equity through feminist approaches to advocacy, shared knowledge and low-barrier programs and services. Shaurie is also a co-founder of a local anti-Zionist grassroots activist organization that fights against imperialism and white supremacy locally and internationally. Their passion and calling in life is to push for equity and justice within their surrounding communities and serve those who are currently being affected by modern day colonialism.

Shaurie is a contemporary painter and interdisciplinary artist whose mediums delve into performance art, film, sculpture and ink illustration. With an academic background in Latin American art history and decolonial theory, Shaurie’s praxis is guided by their commitment to deconstructing western and heteropatriarchal notions of fine art and art theory. Their work focuses on depicting and materialising the unique recesses of human emotion and abstract feeling. For Shaurie, art and the practice of creating is a spiritual one that allows them to externalise feelings and emotions outside of corporeal or tangible limitations. For them, art is an act of world-building, community activism, unity and love.

Follow Shaurie’s work @shaurie.bidot and www.shauriebidot.com

Shaurie’s Rec:

Jasper Avery, Number One Earth

Episode Sources:

Ashkenormativity is a Threat to All Jewish Communities, By Hey Alma

Conceptions of Death in Judaism, By Jewitches

What is Ladino? By My Jewish Learning

The Sephardic Way in Death and Mourning, By Rabbi Yamin Levy