2019: The Year According to Come Tees's Sonya Sombreuil

To commemorate the year that was, we invited an array of artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and performers to share a list of the most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects they encountered in 2019.

Sonya Sombreuil was born in 1986 in Santa Cruz, California. Alongside her painting practice she founded the fashion label COME TEES in 2009. Strongly rooted in music and subculture, as well as the streetwear scene of Los Angeles, the brand consists of limited-edition pieces notable for their signature style of screen printing: hand-drawn images containing song lyrics, and a jagged, gestural hand as well as COME TEES’ community-driven distribution and messaging. In 2019 she opened Classic Hits, a shop that stocks items from her circle of designer and musician friends, including Election Reform, Cactus Plant Flea Market, Sci Fi Fantasy, and GHE20 G0TH1K. Her paintings have been shown at Big Love Tokyo, V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, and, most recently, Bridget Donahue Gallery in New York.

1.

SARAH SCHULMAN’S CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE

In Conflict is Not Abuse, Sarah Schulman describes our society as intolerant of difference and discomfort, one in which conflicted parties become trapped in a dynamic of “overstating harm” and escalation which creates even greater atrocity. Often times the nature of victimhood is confused as privileged parties receive punitive assistance from the state and punish their opponents and avoid accountability. Schulman observes conflict on every scale, from intimate relationships to AIDS criminalization, the occupation of Gaza, and police violence. She describes how supremacy and trauma can produce the same results—internal fragility and a loss of self-criticism that can result in shunning, vilification, and cruelty justified within the community. I liked the idea of normative conflict and the warnings against hyperbolized language and accusation. Schulman describes her writing as literally “undisciplined”; this book was intellectually exciting and nutritious, for me even medicinal. Her writing is in some worlds controversial or even reviled, but I like that she talks about things in a way that is unpopular even within an intersectional and feminist community. 

2.
MARTINE ROSE FALL 2019 MENSWEAR

One most rarified and special experiences for me is fandom; I consider myself to be so deeply disenfranchised that I can fan on nothing. But I am a true-blue, through-my-whole-heart fan of Martine Rose. One of the most staggering statements I can think of is that at first her clothes were too complex and nuanced for me. A menswear designer, her clothes are formal, refined, and aware of menswear’s convention. They are also weird and outrageous, but never loud, always totally beautiful. On a personal level, I love deeply that she is a mother and really relate to my sense that she is informed by many counter-cultures and especially music cultures. Her clothes riff many genres, yet belong nowhere. This particular collection made me realize something else: I think Martine Rose’s designs reference a certain period of thrift-shopping, most notably the late ’90s or the early 2000s, the time period in which I was most assiduously thrifting. Her clothes are full of the kinds of shapes and things you would would find in a thrift store in my teens: studded leather belts, square loafers, track suit separates, big blazers, mock necks. Martine Rose’s Fall 2019 Menswear collection was presented as a lookbook, without a runway show. She described this moment as being quiet, noting that it felt to her like “the most radical” thing she could do. In a world in which content for content’s sake is the MO, Martine Rose’s pace and output feels alternative, humane and enduring.

3.
DANA H. AT KIRK DOUGLAS THEATER

One of the coolest parts of my year has been my induction into the realm of theater viewing via my brilliant friend, the artist Amanda Horowitz. On her referral we saw the one-actor-play Dana H. Edited from actual interviews with playwright Lucas Hnath‘s mother, the play consists of a single set and a single actor, Deirdre O’Connell, lip-syncing to the actual recording of Hnath’s mother. In 1997, Dana Hnath worked as a chaplain in a prison psych ward. There, she encountered a white nationalist and high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood, who, upon his release from jail, violently kidnapped her and held her hostage for months in a series of hotel rooms. The is most obviously about Trauma and its recollection, but it manages to be manifold and not at all instructive. To me, its essence is about something more nuanced than surviving trauma. It has to do with transport into invisible worlds, both the criminal underground but also the spiritual world, both of which exist in plain sight of the “uninitiated.” The experience of this other world wrenched a tear between her and and “normal” life that she could never suture, but which contains great gifts. The play was harrowing, but for me, spiritually uplifting. 

4.

LIGIA LEWIS’S WATER WILL (IN MELODY)

A chilling telling of the Grimms fairy tale “The Willful Child” and a soundtrack of dripping water and crickets is a prelude to this weird, beautiful, and cacophonous performance that is part Southern Gothic, part linguistic deconstruction, and part bionic. As a new purveyor of dance and theater, Water Will totally expanded my definition of dance and blurred the lines between dance, speech, and contortion. The performers—Titilayo Adebayo, Dani Brown, Susanne Sachsse and Lewis herself—were both virtuostic and seemed to glitch out and fail. At some point the stage was a kind of wall of sound, a really dark and willful psychic screech. The performance has dates in 2020, including a stop at the Walker January 23 through 25. Go catch.

5.

CHRISTEENE AT TOM OF FINLAND HOUSE

Christeene, accompanied by Frank Haines of Heinzfeller Nileisist, initiated her performance at Tom of Finland house (as part of a survey of the work of icon Genesis Breyer P-Orridge) by releasing a butt plug carried away by balloons into the starry sky. The character of Christeene is fierce, antagonistic, and totally heart warming. She’s a rock star and charismatic, but I related to her as a frustrated, no, enraged teenage girl. Like all great performers, Christeene called me to a forgotten self. 

6.

LAFAWNDAH AT GOLD DIGGERS

Having come from a former lifetime of mostly basement shows, I pique for a small venue. Seeing Lafawndah perform a few months ago at a little bar in east Hollywood is one of my warmest and most sensuous memories from this year. Lafawndah’s voice and her style feel otherworldly, even anachronistic. I feel like this word is overused, but it felt a truly intimate experience. Her whole vibe had some kind of relationship to Vedic or Carnatic music. I was entranced, like actually in an altered state… It felt kind of taboo to clap like I might dispel some of the energy she’s siphoned into the room.