Mending Shop
Pilates/bodywork
herbalism
public assistants
bodywork anti-school
Harvest Moon Festival
Queer Azn Lunar New Year
zines
Care work makes social movements possible.
Care work, to me, means living in and forwarding a love ethic that can render the systems that oppress us obsolete. “Love ethic,” per bell hooks, means to “utilize all dimensions of love--care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect and knowledge--in our everyday lives."
To me, this means being a fountain in a mutual aid network so skilled at loving that we can re-pattern what happiness, wellness, and love can look and feel like, and who it can be accessible to, by putting this reaching (for life under a love ethic), in front of people in every form imaginable. Love requires space, slowness, vulnerability, and honesty in a way that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (etc.) profits off disallowing.
Thus with the especially embodied urgency as an immigrant, femme, queer, "colored," and injured human animal, all my energy not spent on survival is spent on creating avenues for love-making in ever-expanding ripples around me. In addition to bodywork (Pilates and massage), herbalism, mending, community medic-ing, gardening, and hosting, I offer and create my art as a medicine.
For myself, it’s a way to process, brainstorm, articulate, demonstrate, and heal, as well as a proposal on how to relate, understand, and show up for others, while also providing avenues of cathartic research and expression for the maker and viewer.
If mutual aid and education are wood (things we need to build with) and art as medicine is water (things we, me and wood, née tree, need to live).