The exhibition Through an Embodied Practice of Stillness is a new series of sculptural installations, soundscapes and film work by Stanley Picker Fellow Davinia-Ann Robinson, which explores encounters with stillness (Sharpe, 2023:241) through the body’s engagement with somatic practices and raw and reclaimed clay.
Through an Embodied Practice of Stillness explores how racial trauma is held within Black and Brown bodies through ancestral, intergenerational and present-day encounters with ‘white-body supremacy’ and how embodied engagements between the body and clay can be conduits for undoing and dismantling racial trauma. Healer and psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem states, “[…] white-body supremacy doesn’t live in our thinking brains, it lives and breathes in our bodies. […] The body is where we fear, hope, and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee, or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies” (2017; 5).
Framed by Black Feminist Thinking as ‘presencing’ (De Finney, 2014:30), (Lewis, 2017), and ‘fugitivity’ (Spillers, 2003), (Gumbs, 2016), the works in the exhibition are a catalyst for ‘blackened knowledge’, accessed through embodied practices with clay that enable encounters exploring ancestral decolonial knowledge-based systems held within Black and Brown bodies, and accessed as pre-colonial and Creole spiritual practices, that become intimate practices of grief-work, spiritual activism and practices of care.
A programme of FREE associated events will run throughout the exhibition. Details to be announced soon.
Davinia-Ann Robinson | Fellowship
Davinia-Ann Robinson | Artist Website
Biography
Davinia-Ann Robinson (b Wolverhampton, lives and works in London, UK) is an artist of Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean ancestry. Her art practice and research are explored through sculpture, sound, writing and performance, examining how tactility, presencing and fugitivity, form an undoing of ancestral, intergenerational and present-day racial trauma. Davinia-Ann was appointed a Stanley Picker Fellow in 2023.
Encountered through corporeal engagements between her body, natural materials, the interactions formed through colonial violence and embodied pre-colonial, Creo and somatic healing practices, her research in tactility examines an engagement of a reciprocal practice and politicised accountability grounded in the ethics of mutual care and responsibility, relating to the care of nature, care of human and non-human beings, ancestral care of those who have passed, and those who are to come. Through these engagements, her work conjures embodied practices of refusal, creating communities of refuge and care, connecting to the land and connecting to physical and spiritual bodies.
Davinia-Ann is a yoga practitioner, trained with Iya-kin, a BIPOC-led program focused on rest for Black and Brown people and a Yoga Nidra guide, trained with Ashe Yoga Collective, which elevates BIPOC and queer voices.
References
De Finney. Sandrina (2014) Under the Shadow of Empire Indigenous Girls’ Presencing as Decolonizing Force. Girlhood Studies, 7(1), pp. 19-37.
Gumbs, Alexis Pauline, 2016. Spill scenes of black feminist fugitivity. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Lewis, Gail (2017) Questions of Presence. Feminist Review 117 (1), pp. 1-19.
Menakem, Resmaa. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press.
Sharpe, Christina. (2016). In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Sharpe, Christina. (2023). Ordinary Notes. London: Daunt Books Originals.
Spillers, Hortense J. (2003). Black White and in Colour. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
