When I was Growing up, the adults who raised me demonstrated that the right to rest was explicitly reserved for the dead. As I got older, I realized that it wasn’t just the way my extremely hard-working parents ran their household, but also a rigid mindset for many of us. in the black community.
That’s why entering a space that intentionally encouraged me to seek physical and emotional rest felt like a hug. When I visited the “Rest is power » exhibition currently on display at New York University, I was invited to reimagine what rest looks like for Black people — and to consider making more room for it in my own life.
The visuals dug into memories of lying on the floor in my great-grandmother’s bedroom as a child, experiencing the type of serenity and security that rarely surface for me as an adult. These thoughts that arose also made me wonder if I could somehow access this type of peace today. I asked myself if the deprivation I am experiencing is entirely due to a failing system – or am I actually contributing to it?
The exhibition, which features photographs, paintings and new media from artists such as Kennedi Carter And Chris Friday, is part of an evolving movement made popular a few years ago by a theologian and activist Tricia Hersey, who founded the aptly named Nap Ministry. His published manifesto “Rest Is Resistance” is a critical literary work that reframes Black people’s relationship with rest as an act of political resistance.
Photo credit: Terrence Jennings
“When you think about the idea that black people in the diaspora were brought here solely for the purpose of work, radical rest is about resting because their ancestors didn’t have the opportunity,” says Joan Morgan, Ph.D., who is an author, journalist and program director of NYU’s Center For Black Visual Culture, which hosts the exhibition.
Perhaps we have a duty to ourselves – and to our ancestors – to recalibrate our routines to include moments of restoration.
Hersey’s book “Rest Is Resistance” and all other elements of this movement led by Black women are essential in explaining how health disparities exist across racial demographics. Recent studies Black people have the highest rates of short sleep due to social factors such as noise pollution. This lack of sleep is often associated with a range of negative health consequences that prove once again that the way racism manifests in our society can be both insidious and persistent.
Morgan highlights other disparities that stem from the transatlantic slave trade. Black people, she explains, were forced to adopt a value system based on their work.
“We are no longer slaves, but we are all slaves to capitalism in one way or another, and our racial history complicates things even more,” Morgan said. “And for Black women in particular, our work has always taken care of everyone.”
I agree that we owe ourselves the devotion we show to our loved ones every day – and also that no one can successfully pour a glass from an empty vessel.
Courtesy of the Gordon Parks Foundation
However, our resistance to rest does not only come from external damage; aversion to it is also due to generational trauma – and it manifests itself in both stereotypes and fears.
The racist trope that black people are lazy, as I observe, has resulted in perpetual anxiety that makes us feel like we don’t deserve to relax. When I was growing up, even the people I saw working the hardest had very little time to rest. And when they did, those times were often cut short by a long list of things they couldn’t access during the 40-hour work week.
Black millennials know the sounds and smells of Saturday and Sunday mornings. We collectively joke online about our parents’ playlist, whether it’s gospel or hip-hop memorabilia, paired with the pungent smell of cleaning products meant to signal to everyone in the house that no one is will relax for the foreseeable future. As an adult, I still struggle with this curious fear of rest, worrying that if I take too much of it, the world will think I don’t deserve respect or opportunity.
“Rest Is Power” is the beautiful hammer that shatters this fear. Entering the space immediately provokes a sense of calm, as opposed to the self-consciousness that often drowns people of color in elite art spaces.
Taylor Mitchell, Riverside Scene, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Images such as the duo taking a peaceful nap in Kalila Ain’s “My Mother Named Me Beloved” are imbued with the kind of peace that comes from feeling loved and completely protected by a family member. And Tyler Mitchell’s “Riverside Scene,” a landscape image of black people enjoying some downtime by the water, evokes emotions about what it means to be black and happily unproductive.
The collection creates an air of comfort, devoid of the shameful feelings that arise when one of us takes a simple moment to do nothing.
We are worth more than the work we do. We deserve full, multifaceted lives, immersed in moments that allow us to dream and build a future free from exploitation and racism.
“The most rewarding thing for me is when people say they went into space and just exhaled,” Morgan tells me.
The collection of works avoids depictions of struggle, a common theme in artistic depictions of the black experience, in favor of facile visuals. In itself, this is revolutionary. You don’t have to be rich or exceptional to relax. You just need to believe that you deserve it.
