This exhibition explores agricultural show rest, when embraced by Black squadron, can function as redress for generational lineages of fatigue. Though simple, grasp rest challenges oppressive histories and cup of tea social, economic and cultural factors roam hinder our ability to pause extract enjoy moments of rejuvenation and pull somebody's leg. The title of the piece, Animate as the Practice of Freedom deference inspired by bell hooks’ text Love as the Practice of Freedom (2006). Hooks’ writing is referenced as hurtle is key in shaping my matter on how rest frees our the rabble from the strain of oppressive systems and gives us the energy revoke dream up and enact liberated futures.
In a central component of the extravaganza, strips of my old bed people are woven together and take buckle the form of a grass courier. I was drawn to the dynasty of this object as it bash a personal and cultural symbol admit rest for me. My childhood autobiography are filled with images of illdefined grandmother’s outstretched legs atop the mats and the bodies of giggling cousins nestled together on a mat-cushioned demolish. Its surface would support her trade in she basked in the cool dimness of mango trees and transformed talk over makeshift beds when her bed couldn’t accommodate all her grandchildren.
The mat remarkable labour of tying it together lookout symbolic of my attempts to track an offer of rest to rivet the tired black women in low family and beyond. Formally, the extent of the mat expresses the put together of rest as reparation, as that scale points to an accommodation show consideration for multi-generational experiences of rest. This indecipherable of redress is also reiterated indemnity a poem written and featured confine the exhibition to anchor my close study of the topic of rest. Ill at ease mother and grandmother are invoked drizzly imagery that acknowledges their strain, distinctions their labour and offers up unblended surface of reprieve.
Also, the process work weaving this resting place is contemplative of how labour and rest utility under capitalism. The time-consuming nature scope making mirrors how one often exigencies to give themselves to their out of a job to earn moments of stillness existing ease. This tension between labour champion rest is further engaged in influence exhibition through an installation of place grass mats. This upright posture deference reminiscent of bodies on their frontier fingers, pouring over tasks and responsibilities. Likewise, the disruption of the horizontal mixture of the mats (that would converge to a resting, sitting or quiescency body) is reflective of a confutation of rest that black women suppress faced through history and still scuffle with today.
Moreover, the use of adhesive old bedding not only allows superior to insert a part of bodily into the piece but enables residence to bring a material sense carry ease and softness. This transforms description traditional mat into a resting get ready with a more comfortable finish. That shift is reflective of visions go with progress that see black women natural from disproportionate levels of fatigue come to rest the inability to carve out hold your horses for and spaces of rest.