Self Care Mantra was written by Hana Pera Aoake and Jordana Bragg in response to Salient publication’s ‘page as a site’ for Art Issue, 2016. The visual response was made in collaboration with Sean Burn from Jpeg2000.space collective, which you can view in high resolution here.
1. What is your most memorable experience of art?
Hana: I started crying when I saw Shannon te ao’s Follow the party of the whale at the blue oyster a few years ago during Puaka Matariki. It’s so beautiful and meditative. I cannot stress how powerful and important that work was in being shown in Ōtepoti, because of the denial and erasure of our traumatic colonial history in that community.
Jordana: In 2011 at the age of seventeen visiting an Art Gallery (City Gallery Wellington), for the first time on a Dannevirke High School field trip. Everyone teasing me for crying on the bus home over Erika Van Zon’s Untitled (2009), a neon text work stating “Don’t Make your Heart a Lion’s Den”. As part of the group exhibition Tender is the Night, curated by Heather Galbraith.
2. What is your favourite interpretation or misinterpretation of your work?
Hana: A reviewer said that I my work was ‘confessional’. I guess he felt that me speaking to my experiences of gendered emotional and domestic labour in the service and fine arts industries is just gossipy right?
Jordana: Still Life With Flowers (Narcissus), my first video based performance piece in my final year of fine arts school (2015), In the work I am reclining naked, veiled in silk drapery, gripping a bouquet, sustaining a Manet’s Olympia pose, (which eventually made me convulse). The tutors speculated I was receiving cunniligus out of frame.
3. How did you come to call yourself an artist, and are you comfortable calling yourself an artist?
Hana: I would prefer to be called a mogul. Lol. No idk I’m a writer more than an artist.
Jordana: I didn’t, everyone else did and yes.
4. What ideas or theme or issues do you focus on with your work?
Hana: I feel like all the work I’ve been making recently centres around how many tabs I have open on my computer and a lot of my texts are more like extended subtweets. ATM I’m interested in the intersections between capitalism and colonisation through text, technology and performance. I’m really interested in intimacy too, like critical intimacy.
Jordana: Digital documentation of the self as an act of selfdefense and preservation against the erasure of women’s lived experiences and histories.
5. What is your favourite medium?
Hana: Google docs, tote bags, seminars and clothing.
Jordana: Photography, video and performance.
6. What do you want the viewer to feel when they look at your page?
Hana: warmth, empathy.
Jordana: Like I’m in love with them.
7. Tell a story about your page
Hana: I hope that you feel okay.
Jordana: This should feel like looking into the sun.
Self Care Mantra
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Have you drunk water today?
Have you eaten enough today?
Have you gone outside today?
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Name three people who love and support you
_______________
_______________
_______________
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Never devote too much mental capital to anyone
Take a break from looking at your screen
Don’t punish yourself
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Self care is warfare
Learn to say no
Learn how to assert boundaries
Learn the value of softness and how having empathy for others is so valuable.
Self care as warfare
Self care as warfare
Self care as warfare
Some days the act of leaving the house can feel like a radical action.
If you’re struggling and u can’t do it today just remember that tomorrow is not today.
Be kind to yourself as much as you can.
Self care as warfare
Self care as warfare
Self care as warfare
Never forget the value of intimacy whether this is online or in person.
Sometimes saying how you are feeling online can be a relief
Sometimes saying something online can cause a lot of mental distress and emotional labour.
Always remember you can disengage at any time.
Self care is not selfish
Self care is not selfish
Self care is not selfish
Slow down your breathing or at least remember you are
Draw attention to yourself if you have to
Stretch
Self care is not selfish
Self care is not selfish
Write down three colours you can see
_________________
_________________
_________________
Write down three sounds you can hear
_______________________
_______________________
_______________________
Self care is not selfish
You are going to do things outside of what is in your best interest
You are going to do things outside of what others expect of you
You do not have to know what to do or how to feel
This is a relief and a surprise
To you and I both
Self care can be selfless
Self care can be selfless
Self care can be selfless
Touch the nearest object to you, inspect it for one minute, for it’s colour, weight, shape and texture, I’m sorry I can’t be there with you to see it too
Self care can be selfless
Self care can be selfless
Self care can be selfless
Self Care Mantra visual response was made in collaboration with Salient Publication and Sean Burn from Jpeg2000.space collective, which you can view in high definition here.
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