Lineages of Wellbeing

Liberated Arts Collective | HOW TO SURVIVE A QUARANTINE: Getting Un-Stuck When You’re Stuck Inside

During the first few months of the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, Veronique d’Entremont and other Liberated Arts Collective members produced a series of healing arts and writing workshops and an emotional wellness activity book titled “HOW TO SURVIVE A QUARANTINE: Getting Un-Stuck When You’re Stuck Inside.” Liberated Arts Collective would like to develop a new series of workshops and digital edition of our workbook, in addition to making our previous content available to a wider public through We Rise.

Liberated Arts Collective began in 2016, through the collective vision of multi-disciplinary artist Veronique d’Entremont and formerly-incarcerated artists Manuel Barrios, Dennis Durbin, Paul Macias, Walter Wilson. From 2016-2019 Veronique d’Entremont organized and facilitated Liberated Arts healing art workshops for individuals in the Misdemeanor Incompetent to Stand Trial (MIST) alternative sentencing program at multiple transitional houses funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Through emerging collaborations, Liberated Arts Collective continues to co-create healing spaces with and for individuals whose lives have been impacted by incarceration and institutionalization, and to de-stigmatize and facilitate accessible conversations around mental health and trauma.

EVENT INFO

Event Title: Getting Un-Stuck When You’re Stuck Inside: Creativity Workshops
Date/Time: May 8, May 15, May 16, May 22, May 23, May 29, all at 1pm to 2pm

Event Description: A collection of workshops that will guide you from isolation to creativity. Each workshop will journey down its own different creative study, with a guide. You can listen to poetry, and learn about how to write or improve your own. You can make a mood tracker and find the joy of reading it back to yourself. You can draw yourself a portal to another place, learn how to gather for yourself an herbal tea, or more!

Join via Zoom - sign up at the link below

Meztli Projects | All I Wanted Was A Pepsi (printmaking workshop)

Meztli Projects will work with Native/Indigenous artists to develop art centering ancestral healing and engage systems-impacted youth and monolingual Spanish-speaking elders to provide free workshops, virtual storytelling, swag (stickers, posters, etc.) by bringing together Elders and youth to share intergenerational experiences of resilience, thrivance, and center the many forms of Indigenous-based traditions and practices that have helped us walk towards wellbeing and collective wellness.

event info

Title: All I Wanted Was A Pepsi (printmaking workshop)
Date/Time: May 29 at 11 am

Event Description: Take part in WE RISE as Meztli Projects will host a virtual workshop with Joel Garcia, a printmaker and activist from East LA. Garcia will guide a printmaking session to reflect on Ancestral forms of healing and wellbeing through music and Indigenous perspectives to develop prints that can help imagine ways of building personal and communal wellness. This workshop is designed to be intergenerational and is open to residents of Unincorporated East Los Angeles. All materials will be provided free of charge.

Participate by signing up at the link below.

Erick Iñiguez | Finding Balance: mental health during COVID-19 (book)

Finding Balance: mental health during COVID-19 will be a portrait and interview series of 19 community members. The majority of community members are from the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas. The emphasis of the interviews is to learn from our community members on how they worked on finding balance during the 2020 pandemic and the ways they are thriving now. Words and portraits will be presented in book form that will be offered to Institutions and other community members who work in the Arts and/or Mental Health sector. Additionally, The books will also be gifted to our participants for their time and support. We hope these stories will shed light on the varied experiences in our communities so that others may gain some inspiration to find their own balance.

Event info

Title: Finding Balance: mental health during COVID-19 (book launch)
Date/Time: Saturday, May 29th at 2 pm PST

Event Description: The book launch for "Finding Balance: mental health during COVID-19" is an opportunity to meet project director and photographer Erick Iñiguez and hear directly from him and some of the folks featured in the book who will talk about their efforts in finding and maintaining mental health during this ongoing pandemic.

Join via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81498069457 | Meeting ID: 814 9806 9457

Tanya Melendez | Celestial Light: Unveiling the Cosmic Mirror to Find Our Way Home

Celestial Light: Unveiling the Cosmic Mirror to Find Our Way Home (site-specific installation) uncovers the unseen and deep-rooted connection between Egbe our celestial family and cosmic home, a Yoruba concept that every human has a celestial twin. How mental illness is a spiritual illness, and how the two are directly tied to the need for restoring one’s relationship to their Egbe in order to heal and recover one's whole authentic self.

About the project: Science and Indigenous technologies teach that every one of our bodies is connected to and even made out of stars. In the Yoruba spiritual tradition of Ifa, this celestial connection is called Egbe, a Yoruba word meaning society; Egbe is said to be our astral mates or cosmic family where our other self resides. We can think of this as Earth’s divine mirror in the cosmos. Egbe is sometimes said to be light-like beings or sparks of light who exist in the stars and can dwell here on earth in bodies of water or in banana trees.

But what does it mean for our mental health when we cannot even see our connection to the cosmos? If we cannot feel it? If we are actively dissuaded by distractions and overstimulation, bombarded with hectic schedules, and surviving the effects of colonialism and displacement and human-created pollution that separates us from that connection? When we are not in balance with our Egbe, issues within our human families and other relationships can arise here on earth.

Egbe has been known to call a person on Earth back to their star home and this can result in feelings of not belonging on earth, not relating to others, feeling lost, aimless, not rooted, and even suicidal. Egbe imbalance and disconnection can cause many different forms of mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, loss of sense of self, loss of place or home.

If we realized our essential connection to the universe wouldn’t that mean greater connection and respect for oneself, one's neighbor, and especially our planet? For one’s heart, mind, and body to be well, one’s spirit must be whole. Wholeness requires an intimate reckoning with our connection to the stars. In Yoruba Ifa belief, the Dogon, the Hopi, Mexica, and Kemet, our ancestral home lies within the stars. The pathway to becoming whole leads each person back to one’s true home by recovering our connection to the stars. It is each person’s star pathway that leads to our forgotten, invisible, lost selves and true homes. As humans, we truly are microcosms of the cosmos. We become whole by honoring ourselves by honoring our Egbe through traditional rituals of song and dance, prayer and offerings for our star comrades. Because without the unseen there is, no seen. The unseen directs the seen and without Egbe there is no earthly life. It is by recovering the lost connection between soul binaries that spiritual wholeness is achieved.

What is home? Is it earth? Is it stars? Or both? Is it wherever we are? Or only where we can find acceptance and belonging? What does it mean for one's mental health if we cannot find home? In Ifa Yoruba tradition, Earth is the marketplace and Heaven is home.

Event Info

Title: Celestial Light: Unveiling the Cosmic Mirror to Find Our Way Home (Instagram Live)
Date/Time: May 20 at 1pm

Event Description: Dialogue featuring artist Tanya Melendez - This installation "Celestial Light" draws on Yoruba worldviews and conceptions of wellness. It explores the idea that Egbe or one’s spirit family is central to all aspects of life. A close relationship with one's Egbe in Yoruba tradition can support one’s mental health and wellness. Through a multimedia approach, this installation will aid in deepening our understanding of the multidimensional reality we live in, and how that reality when engaged, can support our collective healing.

Join via Instagram on May 20 at 1 pm

Carol Zou | The Every Body Spa spaembassy.org

The Every Body Spa by Spa Embassy (Carol Zou and Carrie Marie Schneider) and Leo Alas centers trans and BIPOC individuals in the co-creation of new rituals for grief, care, and healing through distributing at-home spa kits to QTBIPOC individuals and hosting an online design your dream genderqueer spa raffle extravaganza.  

1. Online focus group with queer-identified individuals to discuss healing rituals, healing methods, and to solicit input for care packages.

2. Locally sourced care packages distributed to queer and trans BIPOC individuals across LA County as selected through coordination with community partners.

3. Online workshop with queer-identified individuals to collectively build a vision of a genderqueer spa/healing space by using the digital platform gather.town. Participants will be entered into a raffle to win a deluxe spa kit.

EVENT INFO

Title: Design Your Dream Genderqueer Spa Extravaganza
Date/Time: May 29, 2pm PT

Event Description: What does a genderqueer spa look like, that welcomes and cares for all bodies while at the same time respecting the safety needs of every body? This workshop uses the gather.town platform to discuss, build and imagine a community gathering space grounded in queer modalities of care. Participants who register for this workshop can choose to enter into a raffle to receive one of TWO deluxe spa kits featuring either a towel warmer OR portable steam sauna, and goodies from Da Remedy, Sweet Treats by Amanda, LA Healer, Mountain Moon Botanicals, and Botanica Brava.