Zorine Truly, 37, launched her HoochieCon gallery the weekend of June 16. Truly’s group exhibit is described as one “that features mixed media art, vendors, and music highlighting and honoring hoochie feminism.” The successful event helped Black women to reconnect with their sexuality in a free and unjudged way.
Truly expressed on HoochieCon 23’s ticket website, “HoochieCon celebrates the sexual liberation of Black women through their undeniable influence in music, beauty, art, fashion, and culture. HoochieCon highlights artwork that explores the nuanced foundational cultural impact of the hoochie archetype.”
According to the LA Times, Truly, a Tennessee native with a degree in Fine Arts and African-American Studies, decorated a popular community space, Junior High’s gallery, as an exhibit with artistic photos, art pieces, and portraits embodying the “hoochie mama” image. Each exhibit part was utilized to celebrate Black women as an integral part of developing the culture. The three-day-long, activity-filled festival featured different exercises and vendors to allow attendees to reconnect with their most confident and authentic selves. Truly identified music and dance as two significant components that she wanted to highlight during the weekend. “There’s something powerful about dancing despite everything that’s going on outside and despite what’s in the news or maybe what’s happening when you go back to your house,” Truly said. “There’s freedom in getting together in community and seeing Black faces celebrate, regardless of what circumstance they face every day. There’s power, there’s freedom, and there’s happiness in it for me.”
For everyone who attended HoochieCon, Truly only had one hope for them. She hoped “they take away from HoochieCon the importance of being yourself, no matter what people might judge you by,” says Truly, releasing a deep exhale, eyes watering as she processed the idea of HoochieCon reaching people generations into the future. “It’s important to be happy with how you look, how you feel, how you dress, and the choices that you make, and that is the most important thing. I want people, especially Black women, to take away that they can be fully themselves no matter what that looks like and still be worthy of all the good things.”
According to Earyn McGee, 28, an attendee who talked about her experience at HoochieCon, she achieved her goal. She said, “I am the oldest daughter in a Black family and definitely felt like I had to perform a certain way of being and show up physically a certain way. Even with my outfit for today, I was a little bit nervous, but I was just like, ‘I’m trying to be in theme. This was an idea that I had, and I’m just going to go with it.’ I’m trying to do all the things that would’ve made kid-me happy.”