Roots/You Belong Here

“I wanted to thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never had known I had a right to be me.” Leslie Feinberg

With the arrival of the fall equinox, we celebrate another season of Big Chair commissions with two new works by C.S. Corbin and Heather Anderson. Despite their distinctive style, these two paintings share a deep bond with the same core message—you matter and you belong here.

Taking inspiration from the words of renowned transactivist Leslie Feinberg, Roots presents a whimsical garden scene with bold flourishes of color and movement for Congressional’s Pride Month programming of the Big Chair. C.S. Corbin, a multidisciplinary artist based in Washington DC, looks to native plants to coalesce the garden into a gathering. These pollinators harken to community connectedness where the right to be echoes through the every organism in the lush ecosystem of Corbin’s design. As the artist describes, community connectedness forms a kind of expansive symbiotic root system of people growing and lifting each other up.

Figures are found mid-motion, arms up and dancing or caught in embrace. Corbin describes these figures as a “chosen family” representing Queer and Trans experiences, connected through “a beautiful, unspoken ancestral bond”. Each is endowed with a duplicate set of eyes, a beguiling repeated motif that represents two ways of being. Corbin describes them as the smaller set representing connection and care, and the larger set for protection and survival. Beyond the whimsical nature of this verdant garden scene, Corbin’s work is an affirmation and call to witness the power of community where all are welcome exactly as they are.

Each September, we remember those we’ve lost to suicide, and come together with messages of hope for Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In 2023, when the first Big Chair painting commissions were organized, artist Heather Anderson was one of the first to design and dedicate her work to suicide prevention. Now in her fourth year, she returns to share personal messages of hope:

Each year, this chair has allowed me to turn grief into something tangible—to remember Justin and Aiden while creating messages that might reach someone who needs them. From the lighthouse shining out of the darkness (2023), to Emotional Support (2024) honoring Justin and Aiden through their love of cats, to Hope You Stay (2025) and now You Belong Here (2026) the chair represents my evolving journey through loss and my commitment to suicide prevention.

Grief is not a wound that heals. You learn to live with it. You learn to carry it. You learn to change the Band-Aid less often.

Anderson generously shares a powerful transmutation of grief with her messages of survival, evident in each brush stroke. In You Belong Here, color and imagery become transportive in their meaning. The palette of purple, the color of suicide prevention, and bold orange phoenix, Aiden’s favorite color, layer the painting with meaning both personal and collective. “The phoenix represents rising from unimaginable darkness, transformation, and continuing forward while carrying those we have lost with us. It does not mean that everything gets better. The years since Justin and Aiden died have not gotten better. They have simply gotten different.”

Historic Congressional Cemetery is grateful to C.S. Corbin and Heather Anderson for their work with the Big Chair. Each season, Congressional aims to work with local artists to uplift community voices. These meditative and evocative works welcome our community to the cemetery and offers a meeting point to gather. The Big Chair program will continue in 2027 with two new commissions by local artists, follow us for future updates about the project.