Self care is covering yourself in leaves and then running off to join the goblins and the tree people

Our micro and macro connections, our ontological stories, and our phenomenological environment are how we make sense of the world around us. This aesthetic dimension of relationships is the network of communication that stretches into and between us and other. However, it seems as if even as much as love, connection, and community are deeply needed in living a human life, these are also consistently the spots where roots of trauma problematize the very things we seek. For some time I considered titling this paper “Who is Afraid of Falling In Love” for the very reason that all of my questions seemed to meander back to love and how it shows up or is withheld from us. If I started with questions of Ecology or Queerness or Colonialism, they eventually came back to the question of Self and Other, and navigating the in-between.

What do I propose? a Queer theory of Rest.

I call this theory Queer because it is based upon the foundation of research and understandings worked into me by those who have based their work on Queer understandings. They sometimes, though not always, compete with each other for vocabulary, but all act upon their embodied knowledge. I call this theory Queer because it comes from the phenomenological object of my queer mind, housed in my embodied queer brain. Not queer as in a homogenized image of the LGBT community that serves the interests of the powerful by obscuring the needs of the most marginalized, but Queer as in the specific phenomena and consequences of positionality must be reckoned with. Questions of ancestry, land relationships and health stemming from the process of making objects has led me to search for a Queer Rest envisioned through understanding the objects as place-holders and catalysts. “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination” said bell hooks in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. In order to build a Queer Theory of Rest I need to disrupt the oppression/domination narrative that haunts discussions of queer aesthetic. Art, the great communicator, can undermine social narratives that serve only aristocratic tendencies, and reimagine our landscape. This emphasis on pairing personal transformation with histories of liberation is especially important because in the context of my positionality, where I must reckon with the domination of the Settler-Colonial mindset. The roots of my investigation into Queerness and Rest come from my own art practice’s cyclical nature of making in response to emotional processing via multiple modes of research. My paintings push me to my own edge of understanding and my thesis explores Queer Rest as a phenomena outside myself in an object oriented ontological paradigm. One that occurs in reaction to transformative understandings the way gravity warps spacetime. I intend to further articulate the somatic responses to objects that pull this trick. The written thesis will name energies held by objects and how that affects the viewer, exploring the visual work as an object- entrance to a type of rest and healing that inhabits and eludes queer realities. Self-positioning from the work of Timothy Morton, Donna Haraway, José; Esteban Muñoz, Demian DinéYazhi’, Alok Van-Menon, Bessel Van Der Kolk, and others, I will explore art practice as a teleological tool towards deep healing in regards to trauma held in somatic, cultural, and ecological bodies.