The Rest Room ~ virtual experience
A virtual environment created in Mozilla Hubs for a week-long, group virtual art festival made on behalf of quarrantine restrictions at the time, which had put a heavy impact on the ability to show art in public spaces. Since I had spent the past 10 months evolving in the cell of my brooklyn bedroom, not different from many, I felt it merely an appropriate topic of conversation to display what was most intimate and personal to me here (not only of my physical environment but the psychological one as well). At the time of the show, I was in the beginnings of a deep investment in mind-body healing after recovering from a debilitating chronic illness, alongside, of course, all of the psychophysiologial ramifications of the coronavirus. The shock of those new beginnings, unforseen transformations, and ultimately a radically different lens in which to view the world, shifted my core creative desire from speculation and critique to an urgent desperation to foster unity. That longing left me with anything but answers and conceptual frameworks in how to perform as an individual in this time — except to reveal the personal, the quest, the unanswered, the unfinished yet striving persona that is/was operating like a fish plunging in and out of water.
The hour-long performance that took place was titled 'How to give yourself a back massage', and it held these same qualities. No literal instructions on back massages were given, instead, the showing consisted of ongoing experimentations with preparing a space for such activities, under the guidance of a budding masseuse, and her pet shell, 'Shelly'.
