The Crying Room

"The Crying Room," is a healing space created and facilitated by Oakland-based artist Mariah Rankine-Landers. The Crying Room, a womb-like enclosure intended for safe processing of feelings of overwhelm for Black femme bodies. The soundscape of The Crying Room is created and performed (pre-recorded and live) by Renee Benson.

The Crying Room has been installed previously at :

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 2018 Oakland Museum of California 2019 Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans 2022 De Young Museum (Kehinde Wiley Exhibit) 2023 Black Woman is God Motherhood Series 2023

“As a creative, I am constantly reflecting on the sounds I hear and feel compelled to reproduce. This is what music is to me, an interpretation of how one internalizes the external. What compels me right now rests between the wonderful wail of liberation (external) and the soft breath within the black body for quiet, for safety, for contemplation (internal). My question in producing music for The Crying Room, “What is the sound of safety and care as I simultaneously learn to grieve/explore complex emotions?” Renee Benson

"Contemporary society has a complex relationship with grief. We withhold, stifle, hide, stuff, and minimize our sorrows at worst. At best, we process, allow, feel, and transform through grief. Finding solace in the arts, we can experience theopening of portals that allow us to know and tap into unexamined spaces in our personal and collective psyche. The Crying Room is a location dedicated to the process of grieving. It is a desire for a site-specific public area to aid the emotional responses that our beingness can experience when we soak in and allow art to commune with us at the highest level."  ~ Mariah Rankine-Landers