Close to Home…
During her time as the Creative Strategist for
The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Patrisse Cullors worked alongside the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative and filmmaker Whitney Skauge to bring to life Close to Home…, a short film documentary which illuminates the voices of young people navigating homelessness, advocacy, and chosen family.
Through intimate storytelling, the film confronts stereotypes about houselessness while uplifting the resilience, brilliance, and power of queer and systems impacted youth. The film focuses on the lives of four youth leaders at the LA Emissary, an organization founded in 2021 to inform funding, policy, and systems change within LA County to prevent and end youth homelessness through solutions driven and envisioned by young people with lived experience of homelessness.
The LA Emissary funds and supports a coalition of young people and invests in innovation toward the goal of transforming youth-serving systems to better meet their needs. Learn more at laemissary.org.
Close to Home is the Winner of Best Documentary at the 2025 LGBTQ+ Toronto & Los Angeles Film Festival, a Semi-Finalist at the 2025 Seattle Film Festival and received the Honorable Mention at the 2026 Chinatown International Film Festival.
“This film is a love letter to my younger queer self. Being a young queer houseless youth was painful, but I also was taken care of by chosen family. This film shares the struggle of young people, but also shares their passion for advocacy as they navigate the vulnerability of systems.
At a moment of growing crisis around youth homelessness and LGBTQ+ visibility, Close to Home provides a vital platform for young advocates and storytellers. The film invites audiences to look beyond failed systems and see the humanity and power of youth resilience.
—Patrisse Cullors
Abolitionist
Entertainment
Abolitionist Entertainment is where cinematic imagination meets collective liberation.
We are a studio of storytellers, cultural visionaries, and narrative disruptors crafting emotional, genre-bending stories that carry the heartbeat of resistance and the spirit of the future. Through emotionally resonant, visually arresting narratives, we unearth the truths of the past, illuminate the fight of the present, and conjure new worlds into being.
Abolitionist Entertainment sits at the nexus of independent cinema, cultural strategy, and liberation storytelling. We exist to disrupt the limits of mainstream narratives. Our work blends the spiritual with the political, the intimate with the epic, crafting stories that challenge power, honor community, and imagine worlds beyond the confines of the present.
Between The Warp and Weft: Weaving Shields of Strength and Spirituality, Charlie James Gallery, Photo by Yubo Dong; ofstudio
Between the Warp and Weft:
Weaving Shields of Strength and Spirituality
JUNE 15 - JULY 20, 2024
Charlie James Gallery
969 Chung King Rd
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Between The Warp and Weft: Weaving Shields of Strength and Spirituality, Charlie James Gallery, Photo by Yubo Dong; ofstudio
Between the Warp and the Weft is a deep and resonant exploration of Yoruba culture and the Ifá religion of which Cullors is a practitioner.
Fusing Malian mud cloth textiles, cowrie shells and metalwork to create what Cullors refers to as “a sanctuary of reflection and empowerment,” the core of the exhibition revolves around the sword of Oya, a spiritual emblem of power, protection and divine justice. Throughout Between the Warp and Weft, Oya's sword transcends its historical significance to address the pressing narrative of our times — the need for protection and reverence for Black women.
Cullors’ artistic practice, which is in part inspired by Los Angeles’ Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, invites the use of artworks as spiritual guardians, creating a legacy of creative offerings that exist beyond the visual plane and become both urgent cultural commentary and spiritual armor. To this end, Cullors has dedicated each piece in Between the Warp and Weft to a different Black woman in her life to whom she wants to extend protection.
“A lot of the work that I’ve done has been around the trauma of being Black in America, and also our resilience. We don't have the cultural right to protect ourselves … but what if we create spiritual objects of protection?”
—Patrisse Cullors
On the heels of her inclusion at the Fowler Museum of UCLA’s major exhibition exploring Yoruba sacred arts from Africa and beyond, Between the Warp and Weft is an invitation for viewers to traverse the paths of history and spirituality, to witness the interplay of power, divinity and artistry through the lens of Yoruba and African heritage.
The exhibition will be Cullors’ second showing at Charlie James Gallery. In 2023, she participated in a duo show with longtime collaborator noé olivas called Freedom Portals, in which she created tapestries of 12 of the 16 Odús, which are “books” — or signs and symbols — used for divination in Ifá. As part of her continuing artistic practice, Cullors intends to eventually make all 256 signs using vintage Malian mud cloth, metal, cowrie shells and etchings.
Artist2Artist
EMEL
Artist 2 Artist explores the power of artistic expression to create and empower change.
A2A serves as a unifying voice to the many influences that create the modern artist. On the first and third Tuesday each month, A2A welcomes best-selling authors, international journalists and renowned visual artists to celebrate the core of why they create, their impact on the world and the social inequities that their art often reflects.
SONGS FROM THE HOLE
LUMI TAN
JOJO ABOT
SHAHRZAD CHANGALVAEE
SHAHLA DORRIZ & ALEXANDRE ALI REZA DORRIZ
TRICIA ELAM WALKER
Abolition Is…
Abolition Is…, Vashon Center for the Arts, Photo by Lissett Lazo
An 8-week educational journey dedicated to creating thriving relationships, communities and societies.
It's Dangerous Times, We Have to be Connected, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Photo by Giovanni Solis
“As a Black woman who’s an artist, entrepreneur, author, writer, it’s always been an expectation that I shrink, that I only do one thing…so part of what I have wanted to live out loud is that I’m a full human being that is very interested in the fullness of our humanity and the ways that we can access freedom.”
Don't Disappear Us/Keep us Leaping/Low Riders and Bonnets that Heal, The Broad, Photo by Giovanni Solis
It's Dangerous Times, We Have to be Connected, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Photo by Giovanni Solis
“I believe that the way we access freedom is by practicing freedom — and the way I practice freedom is by doing all the things that move me to create.”
Malcolm Revisited, Crenshaw Dairy Mart, Still/video by Satta
North Star Project: Healing Generations, Crenshaw Dairy Mart, Photo by alexandre ali-reza dorriz
North Star Project: Healing Generations, Crenshaw Dairy Mart, Photo by alexandre ali-reza dorriz
“I see my works as spiritual objects that I’m offering to the public, almost like going back to the objects of our people. They were sacred objects that were, and still are, helping us with the alchemy of our time.”
Knots, FORM Festival, Still/video by Allan De Leon
“Patrisse Cullors creates an online MFA program to develop new artist-activists” / Los Angeles Times / Makeda Easter
abolitionist pod (prototype), The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Photo by Giovanni Solis
Good Trouble, 2019
They Are With Us, Executive Producer
Film for the Fowler Museum, The House Was Too Small exhibition
2023
Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground, Executive Producer
Documentary
2021
Malcolm Revisited, Executive Producer
Film commissioned by REDCAT
2020
Good Trouble, Executive Producer
TV Series
Light on a Path, Follow, Executive Producer
Short Film
Outdooring, Executive Producer
Short Film
2019
Resist, Executive Producer
YouTube Originals TV Series Documentary