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'Start the conversation': 'HOT: The Exhibit' is a month-long artistic exploration of perimenopause
By Michael Lee
April 27, 2025 at 3:00 AM CDT
This May, HOT: The Exhibit will set up shop at Ground Floor Theatre and basically take over the venue for a month. The wide-ranging project, which will include art, discussions, health panels, and a play, is all centered around a topic that its co-curators – Melissa Knight and Andee Kinzy – think isn’t discussed openly enough: perimenopause.
HOT was born during one of Knight and Kinzys’ regular lunches. “We were bemoaning the fact that we didn't understand what was happening to our bodies,” Kinzy says. “Our bodies were changing, our brains were changing, our emotions… all these changes were happening and we knew somewhat like, you know, this is perimenopause happening and what was going on with our bodies made no sense. So we were wondering why more people weren't talking about it. We did find things on the internet — that there are a lot of influencers who are mentioning stuff about and talking about perimenopause, but we didn't have anything locally. So we said, who better to start the conversation than the artists?”
The two started brainstorming immediately, Knight says. “We decided we'd have a gallery exhibit, and we'd have some workshops and we'd reach out to some health professionals and see if we could have some panels.”
By the end of that lunch, Knight says, “we'd basically planned the whole event, but we didn't have a location yet. So that's where Ground Floor Theatre comes in and they agreed to be our host.”
“[At] Ground Floor, we produce works that are focused on underrepresented communities and telling underrepresented stories and what better underrepresented story than the story of perimenopause,” says Patti Neff-Tiven, Ground Floor’s associate artistic director. “We don't talk about it, it's considered taboo and it's just now, sort of, that these stories are starting to come out. So it seemed like the perfect fit. I've known both of these ladies for years as well, in their own as artists in their own right, and they came to me with this project and I said, ‘Of course, Ground Floor Theatre would love to co-produce on this. They had already ideas about what this was gonna be, but then it became this multimedia, multi discipline artistic project and I was like, that is absolutely a whole month's worth of programming and Ground Floor Theatre would love to be involved.”
Ground Floor had a play on the books for May already, but Neff-Tiven says that, as luck would have it, it was a perfect fit for the HOT programming. “We have 3 weeks in May that we are running a new show by Jenny Connell Davis called I Want to Be a ****ing Princess… so it was perfect to put these two things together for the month of May, which is also Mother's Day. [The play is about] a group of five women, childhood friends, all the way through their 70s. So you see these women from six to 70, so you see all these different changes in their life. So it just really meshed together really well with the exhibit.”
Knight says that she and Kinzy have managed to arrange everything on that list that made at lunch. “We have some artists, some amazing artists, including Valerie Fowler, Dawn Okoro, Jieun Beth, and so many more amazing artists, about 20 artists in the show. And we have some workshops that are more intimate setting, with, Shannon Stott and Jack Kaulfus and Niku Arbabi. And the panels led by UT Women's Health, and we have a Spanish language health panel with Austin Public Health. And we also have a workshop for the trans and non-binary experience through menopause, and we'll also have a workshop for BIPOC women. Too many to list it right now, but we are really excited about the wealth of different voices that we have coming to the table to discuss perimenopause.”
“It's not about people who go through menopause becoming not able to do as much stuff as they were able to do,” Kinzy says. “It's more just finding the community, saying ‘What you're going through is normal.’ Many of the changes are very, very different and unique to each individual, but there are some similar patterns and if you learn, oh, this is something that could happen, it makes it less scary and less terrifying when you go through it.”
“We really want this to be not only for women and people who are going through perimenopause, but also for the people around them, the people that love them – their partners, their families, and people in the workplace – to gain more understanding and more empathy for what someone is going through during this time.”
'HOT: The Exhibit' takes place throughout May at Ground Floor Theatre.
HOT was born during one of Knight and Kinzys’ regular lunches. “We were bemoaning the fact that we didn't understand what was happening to our bodies,” Kinzy says. “Our bodies were changing, our brains were changing, our emotions… all these changes were happening and we knew somewhat like, you know, this is perimenopause happening and what was going on with our bodies made no sense. So we were wondering why more people weren't talking about it. We did find things on the internet — that there are a lot of influencers who are mentioning stuff about and talking about perimenopause, but we didn't have anything locally. So we said, who better to start the conversation than the artists?”
The two started brainstorming immediately, Knight says. “We decided we'd have a gallery exhibit, and we'd have some workshops and we'd reach out to some health professionals and see if we could have some panels.”
By the end of that lunch, Knight says, “we'd basically planned the whole event, but we didn't have a location yet. So that's where Ground Floor Theatre comes in and they agreed to be our host.”
“[At] Ground Floor, we produce works that are focused on underrepresented communities and telling underrepresented stories and what better underrepresented story than the story of perimenopause,” says Patti Neff-Tiven, Ground Floor’s associate artistic director. “We don't talk about it, it's considered taboo and it's just now, sort of, that these stories are starting to come out. So it seemed like the perfect fit. I've known both of these ladies for years as well, in their own as artists in their own right, and they came to me with this project and I said, ‘Of course, Ground Floor Theatre would love to co-produce on this. They had already ideas about what this was gonna be, but then it became this multimedia, multi discipline artistic project and I was like, that is absolutely a whole month's worth of programming and Ground Floor Theatre would love to be involved.”
Ground Floor had a play on the books for May already, but Neff-Tiven says that, as luck would have it, it was a perfect fit for the HOT programming. “We have 3 weeks in May that we are running a new show by Jenny Connell Davis called I Want to Be a ****ing Princess… so it was perfect to put these two things together for the month of May, which is also Mother's Day. [The play is about] a group of five women, childhood friends, all the way through their 70s. So you see these women from six to 70, so you see all these different changes in their life. So it just really meshed together really well with the exhibit.”
Knight says that she and Kinzy have managed to arrange everything on that list that made at lunch. “We have some artists, some amazing artists, including Valerie Fowler, Dawn Okoro, Jieun Beth, and so many more amazing artists, about 20 artists in the show. And we have some workshops that are more intimate setting, with, Shannon Stott and Jack Kaulfus and Niku Arbabi. And the panels led by UT Women's Health, and we have a Spanish language health panel with Austin Public Health. And we also have a workshop for the trans and non-binary experience through menopause, and we'll also have a workshop for BIPOC women. Too many to list it right now, but we are really excited about the wealth of different voices that we have coming to the table to discuss perimenopause.”
“It's not about people who go through menopause becoming not able to do as much stuff as they were able to do,” Kinzy says. “It's more just finding the community, saying ‘What you're going through is normal.’ Many of the changes are very, very different and unique to each individual, but there are some similar patterns and if you learn, oh, this is something that could happen, it makes it less scary and less terrifying when you go through it.”
“We really want this to be not only for women and people who are going through perimenopause, but also for the people around them, the people that love them – their partners, their families, and people in the workplace – to gain more understanding and more empathy for what someone is going through during this time.”
'HOT: The Exhibit' takes place throughout May at Ground Floor Theatre.