Healing the Black Body Community Ritual 2021

Sign up for our FREE Community Ritual from Jan 29th - Jan 31st (Part 1). Our Community Ritual is an annual offering of performance rituals, workshops, artist talks, and overall queer magic. This is for Black queer and trans people! All events are free and ASL Interpreted. Healing the Black Body is an offering to create, build, and practice healing and liberation in Black queer and trans communities through performance, movement, and Black Feminism. The Community Ritual is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council. The Community Ritual is also funded through Third Wave Fund.

[healingtheblackbody]

NYALLAH they/she @n.yallah

I am pure.

I am powerful. I am valued. I am valuable. I am soft and strong at the same time. I am wise. I am intentional. I am present. I burn like fire. I move like air. I ground like earth. I flow like water. I am gifted, and appreciative fo these gifts. I am doing my absolute best, and that is enough.

Even when others do not see, I am putting my best foot forward. I am honest, with myself and others.

I am the best version of myself to date. I am thankful for how far I’ve come.

And I give thanks to where I’m going.

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: NYALLAH

NYALLAH is a bi-coastal, multifaceted and community-centric musical artist with a passion for social change through multiple artistic mediums. They are a vocalist, songwriter, producer and instrumentalist who boasts a degree from the USC Thornton School of Music Popular Music Program. As a contributing voice to the ever-changing culture, NYALLAH totes a long list of cross-country venues and performances played over the last 6 years of their career. Both mainstream and niche media publications have taken notice; from notable players such as Teen Vogue, TOAN Magazine and radio interviews with the likes of NTS Radio, Dash Radio and 1AM Radio. Their 2019 debut EP, Reflections, is a personal testament to their journey of understanding their true identity through a retroactive lens of restoration of one’s self, rather than negative adjudication and dissatisfaction.

[healingtheblackbody]

Today is the last day of our #BlackHealingMonth project of digital spells. Thank y’all for witnessing this Black queer and trans enchantment. Black healing is all year long, and we hope this magic is something you return to from time to time, at the right time. 

alx moon

they/love/we 

@riverritual

Black as Resistance/ Trans as Transcendent: a love letter to my sibs, lovers, & kin

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: alx moon

Alx Moon is queer agender nonbinary trans Black/Haitian/Arawak/ French third culture kid; freak, lover, dreamer, warrior and mystic. By means of mutli-media storytelling/ being, music, film, oral history, written text, afro- surrealism/futurism/speculative reality&fiction - Alx explores Black, Indigenous & Other Queer love, technologies, narratives, and resistance. They are interested themes of love, becoming, be/longing, home, transition, decolonization, pleasure, pain, nuance, transformation, and resistance as a way to reckon with what it means to be both a collective and personal body of many.

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

TJ 

they/them

@yungclairvoyant

a message. 

channeled from my ears, to my heart, to you all.

Transcript:

been giving away myself too easily 

forgetting how much that i mean to me 

the power inside equals divinity 

journeying to higher frequencies 

mastering solitude 

thats what im spose to do 

silence my attitude 

ancestors told me to 

ego getting small

boundaries getting tall

been giving away myself too easily 

forgetting how much that i mean to me 

the power inside equals divinity 

journeying to higher frequencies

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: TJ

TJ is a mover, lover and mystic . A Brooklyn native who doesn’t stop fighting, ever. They hope to create art that exposes the harsh realities of American society as well as changing the narratives that white cis hetero washed media has spun in American society. Their art is fueled by the need for healing and learning spaces within the Black and POC community; as well as unpacking the same for themself.

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

jah elyse sayers

they/them

@thesunthemself / @jah.makes

having received the imperative to supply theories, answers, explanations, “quiet” comes from a place of refusal, from the inward turn that decimates and dissolves the self and willfully spirals into the mass/ the black hole/ the nothing that will become of us all. 

--

everything feels forced

          and nothing’s been fluid

lots of stuck           little rest

too much         space                between breaths

so much        space                between words

don’t even wanna be heard

quiet 

          like got                no           answers

quiet

          like back of the hearse

quiet

          like low whistle

                    of the wind at your back

quiet

          like coal black

                    knowin that coal can be crystal

everything feels forced

and I want it to be easeful

so i quiet

          down

can’t move me out of peaceful

quiet

          like I can hear myself

          like my soul reinforced

          like not gonna drown

                    and not gonna produce

                              i’m gon’ find my own blissful

                              and share it with you

we can hold quiet

          like prayer

strip all the sound bare

quiet

          like defiance

          like we treasure our air

elements in alliance

there will be no compliance

not even giving a          No

quiet

          like gaining mass 

          and the density                 grow

that’s quiet

          like black hole

                    and nothing escapes it

                    and there is no control

that’s quiet

          like chaos

                    and the                nothing                that shapes it

everything feels forced

til you be quiet

          and be coal

          and be chaos

          and be stone

          and defiance

everything feels forced

til you be quiet

                              force that guide it

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: jah elyse sayers

jah elyse sayers (they/them) is moved by desire, defiance, refusal, and transformation. through a blend of artistic, academic, and somatic practices, they seek to lay bare carceral geographies across scales and contexts and draw out temporalities and relations that undo them.

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

Shanel Edwards 

They/them/we/us

@shaneledwardsart

shanel edwards is a Philadelphia rooted, first-generation Jamaican, Black, Queer, Non- binary, artist, and world-builder. They utilize movement, filmmaking, hairstyling, poetry, and photography as channels. Their creations are birthed through their Black queer and trans existence, tenderness, water, intimacy, and collective dreaming. shanel is a 2020 Mural Arts fellow and was a 2019 Artist in Residence with Urban Movement Arts (Philadelphia). They have choreographed for productions at The University of the Arts (2019), and Princeton University (2020). shanel works closely with spirit and their ancestors through herbal knowledge, divination, and channeling through movement to envoke and envision a world where Black trans women are liberated.

how to build a home pt. 1

a black queer femme, wearing an orange shirt in their salmon pink room with their locs and cowrie shells in their hair. images moving of them are moving.The background is a nebula sky.

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: Shanel Edwards

shanel edwards is a Philadelphia rooted, first-generation Jamaican, Black, Queer, Non- binary, artist, and world-builder. They utilize movement, filmmaking, hairstyling, poetry, and photography as channels. Their creations are birthed through their Black queer and trans existence, tenderness, water, intimacy, and collective dreaming. shanel is a 2020 Mural Arts fellow and was a 2019 Artist in Residence with Urban Movement Arts (Philadelphia). They have choreographed for productions at The University of the Arts (2019), and Princeton University (2020). shanel works closely with spirit and their ancestors through herbal knowledge, divination, and channeling through movement to envoke and envision a world where Black trans women are liberated

[healingtheblackbody]

Donnay Edmund 

she/her

@plantmama.radical

 She trusts that the power of art can help us envision a future where all our complex love-centered imaginations can flourish. She winds through writing, poetry, theatre of the oppressed, and movement and integrates herbalism in her work.

This medicine is for reminding the chorus of messages that feed off your shame and self doubt you are on purpose and worthy

For returning to self for all the healing we ever dreamed of.

What you will need:

4 oz mason jar

Apple cider vinegar 

Honey - (raw honey suggested) 

Lemonbalm 

Thyme 

Calendula

Spoon

Black sharpie for labeling 

 1.Fill 1/4 jar with herbs

2.Fill 3/4 with Equal parts apple cider and honey 

3.Leave space at the top of the jar

4.Set an intention 

5.Close and shake 

Special gratitude to nana and sacred vibes apprenticeship

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: Donnay Edmund

Dreamer. Daughter. Dancer. Lover. Movement fairy. Earth adoring. Liberation believing.  Herbal apprentice. Donnay, is a Brooklyn born Black Queer Femme with Caribbean and southern U.S ancestry from a working class background in Brooklyn.

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

River Spencer 

she/ her, they/them (optional) 

@theybygirl

Intimacy: A Spell for Truth

‘Intimacy’ is a spell for really getting to know oneself and being very comfortable in one’s own skin. It’s a spell for the practice of loving, caring for, knowing, and being one’s true self, privately or publicly. Being alone gives one time and space to practice being and understanding who they are when there’s no one else around, and ‘Intimacy’ is a spell to take that practice, that level of comfort and authenticity out of the dark and flex it in the light, like a muscle. ‘Intimacy’ is a spell for expressing one’s personal truth. 

Words: 

I feel like it’s important to be alone sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, human relation is super important we’re social animals, and we need each other to survive 

but I don’t think we can really benefit from relating, or genuinely connecting with others, or even have a real authentic presence with them without first having some kind understanding of who we are. And I mean who we are when we’re alone and no one is watching us, expecting us to be something you’re not.

I feel like we change skins.

Waiting for someone to tell us we’re wearing our mask well.

But I don’t really see what we gain from being something we’re not for the comfort of others.

I don’t really see what we get from living our lives as someone else.”

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: River Spencer

River Spencer is a Black Caribbean-American nonbinary trans femme born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She is an attentive and loving witch, healer, and mystic who heals through her presence, her words, and her works. River focuses on centering intentions of inner healing, personal change, and self actualization in her work. She is a ritual performer and practitioner, a movement worker, visual artist, writer, spiritual advisor, community healer, intuitive diviner, world weaver, and all around creative. River is currently a Healing the Black Body collective leadership fellow and her focuses now are: Moving and conjuring with the spirit of her authentic self, establishing a stronger healing connection between her inner child and her ancestors, and connecting deeper to nature and the divinity of her humanity. In this world but not of it, you can find River in her room, on a stage, with someone she loves, doing something she loves, casting spells, dancing, and/or sitting in a tree she just made friends with.  She says to you: “Just be. Get free.”

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

Jerome AB

he/they

@Jerome_ab

This piece comes from a body of work in an ongoing performative video series featuring an expressionless humanoid character of unverified African origins, portrayed by Jerome and extensions thereof, all dubbed Masculine Ken. In this series, Masculine Ken observes and confronts various psychological defense mechanisms and breaks down fabricated realities through movement and visual audio manipulation. In light of an exhaustive period, Masculine Ken breaks out of the digital simulation overload, taking a moment to breath and reminding his current form, through the care of his ancestors, that we can create space to 'let us chill, for a while'

01101001 01 just for a while

[healingtheblackbody]

Spell Artist: Jerome AB

Jerome AB is a Kenyan-born architectural designer, movement artist and producer living and working between New York City and Los Angeles.

[healingtheblackbody]

Happy #BlackHealingMonth! All month long, we will be sharing digital spells for healing and liberation, made by Black queer and trans artists! We invite you to feel, embody, live, breathe, internalize, witness, question, and heal with these spells! 

NIC Kay

okaynickay

@okaynickay

thought in motion

a body bent. 

lent and leaning. suspended and anchored. 

head, shoulders, torso dangling  - held up and back by some invisible furniture. 

arms hands holding - reaching

tethered to something and someplace infinite 

i remember now the choreography to grief 

video description; a black person in a white t-shirt, black shorts, and Yankee cap moves against the background of a blue sky. The video is mostly quiet and at a time only the torso of this person is visible. the person moves slowly with much effort. It is unclear if the movement is satisfying or painful.