Reparations Live!: Black Rest As a Radical Act
@ Rootwork Gallery
645 W 18th Street, Chicago, IL 60616
Opening Saturday, May 19th, from 6PM - 10PM
Rootwork Gallery is proud to host this extraodinary evening of liberatory Black performance:
Reparations LIVE! is an examination of rest as a form of resistance. In this durational performance and art meditation, performance artist and liberation theologian, Tricia Hersey will use her public napping ritual as a subversive act, Her goal in using sleep as resitance is to work with her ancestors to recapture the DREAM SPACE that was stolen centuries ago.
Hersey invites the public into this living altar to rest as reconciliation via the radical notion of watching a black woman sleep and perform rituals of spiritual care.
Participants can view or actively enagge as co-sleepers, bringing mats and blankets as desired.
Naps provide a visionary space that allows us to heal, create and imagine, so the audience is invited to bring pillows, yoga mats and blankets to rest and resist together. Reparations LIVE! is an experimentation and conversation between the artist and her ancestors via sleep. This is reparations.
Renowend healer and poet Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde will open the space at 6 pm with a consecration of prayer and song and with an offering of libation and poetry.
The Nap Ministry will begin at 7pm and a post-performance discussion will take place from 9-10 pm. Hersey’s performance and the napping environment is curated by Jamila Raegan.
This program is free and open to the public with limited space availability. Please arrive at 6 pm to ensure space and to take part in the full evening of offerings.
Free and open to the public.
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The Nap Ministry is a community organization and meditation on rest as resistance. It is an artistic and spiritual examination on the liberating power of naps. It re-imagines why rest is a form of resistance and shines a light on sleep deprivation as a justice issue. We use the power of performance art, poetry and community art to illuminate the artistic, spiritual and creative power of rest. We are community centered and curate safe spaces for the community to nap together via our Collective Napping Experiences. The Nap Ministry is based in Atlanta and Chicago. Follow the movement for rest on Instagram and Facebook at The Nap Ministry
Rootwork Gallery is an art space that takes on folk and indigenous culture work as part of a conversation between Founder and Curator Tracie D. Hall and her grandmother, Bessie, who speaks from the other side.
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Tags: Chicago, Lower West Side, Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, Reparations Live!: Black Rest As a Radical Act, Rootwork Gallery, Tricia Hersey
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