The Nap Ministry. Photo by Charlie Watts.
An Uprising of Dreams - Nap Ministry
In collaboration with Arts House.
An immersive art intervention of sound healing, projection art, guided meditation, and collective rest led by Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey.
‘The body is a site of liberation’ is the second tenet of the Rest is Resistance framework, and the inspiration for An Uprising of Dreams. Immersed in sound, moving image, and guided meditation, Tricia Hersey invites us into the ‘Dream Space’ stolen by grind culture’s constant need for labour. The experience proves that rest is not a luxury, but a human right and a deliberate rebuking of the oppressive structures that are snatching our humanity.
The Nap Ministry is founded on justice, a politics of refusal, and deprogramming from the hustle that capitalism and white supremacy demands. An Uprising of Dreams is resistance in action, a chance to connect with the wisdom of our bodies in a place of slowness and care.
"Our art praxis and “An Uprising of Dreams” are calling us to move far beyond mainstream concepts of wellness. It asks us to study the ways in which our divinity, higher purpose, and ability to resist violent and oppressive systems are intertwined with how we access our rest, imagination, and DreamSpace. Tricia’s work is a pathway to the rest practices needed to collectively build and imagine new worlds as we simultaneously dismantle and deprogram ourselves from the systems that prop up and perpetuate the racial, social, and environmental harm done by white supremacy and extractive capitalism. This work was created collaboratively as our healing and liberation will not happen alone. Our collective rest and commitment to community care will save us." - The Nap Ministry
In addition to this installation, Tricia will also be delivering a Rest is Resistance – A Keynote on Saturday 26 August.
This Project is a collboartion with Arts House and is part of Now or Never festival
Sunday 20 August, 11am – 4pm
Monday 21 – Thursday 24 August, 10am – 4.30pm
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne
Documentation
Lead Artist
The Nap Ministry
Founded by artist and theologian Tricia Hersey in 2016, The Nap Ministry are the originators of the ‘rest as resistance’ and ‘rest as reparations.’ We engage with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops, and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing. We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue. Our work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and liberation theology, and is a guide for how to collectively deprogram, decolonize, and unravel ourselves from the wreckage of capitalism and white supremacy. We believe our bodies are portals. They are sites of liberation, knowledge, and invention that are waiting to be reclaimed and awakened by the beautiful interruptions of brutal systems that sleep and dreaming provide.
Collaborators
The Nap Ministry and Tricia Hersey work is presented with support from collaborations from Helen Hale, Priya Namana and Victoria Pham. More info here
Team
Curatorial Advisior: Priya Namana
Centre for Projection Art Team
Arts House Team