Living Lesbian Archive (LLA) is about creating community in the Black lesbianspace. We host a monthly zine night where everyone contributes to our monthly issue.
Each month’s issue features a variety of works by Black lesbians in NYC and ATL based on a monthly theme. Living Lesbian Archive was founded by Elysia Colon (23) and Tajh Martin (21) in November 2024. The works mostly include collaging and writing. The founders were inspired to create this social club in response to desires for a stronger/larger Black lesbian community. Elysia and Tajh decided to incorporate their own love for arts and crafts with the creation of a space dedicated to Black lesbians out-side of the club/party scene. Seeing how underrepresented Black lesbians are in society, it was further decided that this arts and crafts project should contribute to some form of documentation of Black lesbian lives and highlighting the beauty of said identity
Cowrie Shell Archives is an oral history documentation effort dedicated to documenting Black stories and experiences. Through this documentation work, Cowrie Shell Archives holds a reservoir of knowledge shared through storytelling that aims to share the complexities of the Black cultural and historical experience in the United States and abroad through a collection of photographs and interviews. Cowrie Shell Archives allows our participants to show up fully as themselves, sharing their full truth in hopes of representing the reality of what it means to be Black across the diaspora. Created in 2024, Cowrie Shell Archives has completed over 60 interviews between 4 states with plans to continue traveling to expand the archive.
The project ‘Sapphics in the South’ was born from the overlap between Cowrie Shell Archives and Living Lesbian Archive as Tajh and Kennedi focused on capturing the experiences of Black Sapphics in Atlanta, Georgia. A collection of 4 interviews and 4 collages, ‘Sapphics in the South’ combines the physical expression of zines and the storytelling component of interviews to uplift the voices of Black Sapphics in Atlanta. Through this project, we hope Black Southern Sapphics are able to feel seen and relate with their own experiences.
