#7 Transmuting the fear of gender-based violence into a force for art >>
The ANT Project
ANTI FEAR ASSEMBLY:
Transmuting the fear of gender-based violence into a force for art
December 14, 2020 > 11am ET on Zoom (RSVP > heklerke@gmail.com)
We warmly welcome you into a collective poetic experience aiming to build a circle of empowerment and to produce beauty and courage from the experience of fear.
This workshop is organized in collaboration with The ANT Project as a part of HEKLER ANTI FEAR Assembly, an evolving collective practice aiming in this time of crisis and change for a space decidedly between cultural/theoretical dialogue and therapeutic discourse. It is envisioned as a space in which we bring privately held fears into community with others' fears to embrace vulnerability and open collective experiments in community-building, trust, and reimagining the commons.
It is said that in the darkest extreme the potential for luminosity appears in exactly the same measure. The purest black in nature contains the entire spectrum of colors, so it is simply a matter of revealing them. What seems to be only a dark area is, in reality, raw material filled with the potential to totally shine out and brighten our way.
Artists Mary Paz Cervera, Nadine Faraj and Sneha Krishnan will present their works sparked by the reality of gender-based violence and their individual ruminations on the meaning of corporal freedom, femininity, sisterhood, ritual and the collective experience of solidarity and empowerment.
Sneha Krishnan, Earthen Vessels, 2020
Sneha’s works are an expression of a space where internal conflict and the external world integrate. Through this interaction, she hopes to unravel the different layers of human consciousness with a focus on the female lived experience.
Mary Paz Cervera, Hábitos Circunscritos (Circumscribed Robes)
Gender violence is one of the most prevailing human rights violation worldwide. This installation proposes a deep awareness at an individual and collective level about this issue, through the symbolic representation of personal spaces with a sacred connotation. This circumstance allows us to recognize ourselves as sisterhood, generating spaces of solidarity for protection.
Nadine Faraj, Ages Ago Every Cell In Your Soul Capsized Forever Into This Infinite Golden Sea
Since the dawn of the Abrahamic religions women have been pushed to the back of the temple, literally and figuratively. What mystic practices they wanted, they have had to cultivate and maintain themselves. Faraj has been painting mystic erotic imagery for years, however, with this project, she now reveals her link to the ancient Babylonian sisterhood teachings. “Our secret cave was painted by women, for women’s education and ceremonies. My great-aunt Violette as well as my aunts Valentine and Grace were all initiates in this pre-Abrahamic tradition.”
ABOUT HOST
The ANT Project was born from the need to create a horizontal structure of interaction among artists, curators, writers, and performers. It facilitates interconnection between seemingly disparate individual practices, nurturing the creative process of the community as a whole.
Its mission is inspired by the interaction of ants in an ant colony where individuals, performing their own role, interact with the larger whole in order to feed the colony. The achievements realized collectively would be impossible for a single member on its own.
ABOUT HEKLER ASSEMBLY
HEKLER ASSEMBLY is a transnational space for art and cultural workers to share, discuss and collectively imagine new ways of instituting based on the principles of self-organizing, community care, critical thinking, political education, distribution of resources, and healing. With alternating hosts, we share practical, historical, and theoretical knowledge about collaborative, pedagogical, and governing models established in response to shifting regimes, colonial and neoliberal violence. We question and learn about radical hospitality and conviviality, eco-centered community organizing, instituting, and art practices that showcase the symptoms we need to transform. Most importantly we continue asking what can be the role of arts now and in the future. Assembly is envisioned as an open collaborative process that includes reading groups, conversations with practitioners, and the ANTI FEAR series.
ANTI FEAR series are initiated in collaboration with New York-based artist and neurologist Sonja Blum. It is an evolving collective practice aiming in this time of crisis and change for a space decidedly between cultural/theoretical dialogue and therapeutic discourse. It is envisioned as a space in which we bring privately held fears into community with others' fears to embrace vulnerability and open collective experiments in community-building, trust, reciprocal care, and reimagining the commons. This work is explored through poetry, movement/body work, breathing exercises and meditations, readings, lectures and other practices that untie repressive knots and make us feel empowered, imaginative and hopeful.