ARTIST STATEMENT
This work is digital creations part of a series I am developing called “a tribute to Home”. I hope that this series will become an Oracle deck, at some point! This work has been inspired by my ancestral healing practices (astrology, tarot, reiki, hypnosis) and my artistic practice as a photographer & visual artist. This work is also inspired by Octavia’s fictional work that reclaimed Black people’s belonging to the stars (“The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars”).
As a Black trans-non-binary person, the subject of home & belonging has always been painful. The subject of displacement & body subjugation to ideals that were forced onto my lineage (race, gender) is central in my work & my healing. Feeling home is a privilege, whether it is geographically in one’s environment, in one’s communities, or in one’s body (because of fatphobia rooted in anti-blackness, gender dysphoria, ableism…) What works better for me is to stop reframing my pain as a problem to fix that needs a solution. This cheap equation is rooted in western thought. What I have been practicing is to keep reconciling with my pain through the ceremony. This digital series is part of this healing process. Creating digital art & reconciling past & future has been healing for me. There is this thought in the West that the past is opposite to the future, that the future equals advancement, that time is linear. Those thoughts are rooted in the colonial belief that (Black & Brown) ancestors were part of the less evolved culture and that the (white) future is better.
My practice aims to gather the “past” (ancestry, lineage) to the “future” (the space) and blend them as one. I believe that time is circular, that our ancestors are the future. That afro-futurism is our collective memory that seeks to revive and beautify our shared humanity (among Black & Brown folks all over the world). Ancestry & Futurity are one.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I am an African/French Black trans nonbinary femme living in France. I’m am a critical thinker, creative healer & artist who works with divination forms such as astrology, tarot, Reiki, and hypnosis to contribute to the well-being of my communities. All the work that I do is trauma-informed and focuses on the realities of the ones pushed to the margins. I work with individuals to help them bring to the forefront the uniqueness of their most precious gifts so that they can better care for their greatest challenges, reclaim & sit in their own power. I specifically help QTIBIPOC connect to their inner resources, build self-reliance and trust so that they can better show up to their emotional landscapes and create a home within.
Before working as a holistic practitioner, I was working as a freelance visual artist & photographer. However, the different pandemics my communities and I have been going through have put me out of work & urged me to focus on what I’ve always been drawn to divinatory, ritualistic, embodied prayers & practices for communal care & healing. Recently, I have been able to join my multiple practices and combine ancestral healing with my artistic practice. I started Reiki as a way to heal my selves and others in 2020 when the world and its social realities were sometimes too much for me to bear.
My long-lasting fight against depression had often made me pit my mind against my mind, which never worked. Instead, I decided to focus on Energy, Spirit, and particularly the one of my body. After Reiki, everything came (back) naturally: I learned more about Tarot, reunited with Astrology, and took classes for the first time. I have also made peace with my mind workings by using my imagination through my training as a hypnotist.
My work is deeply influenced by writers, activists, and humans like Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, adrienne maree brown, Dr Keysha Fykes, Mikki Kendall, Sonya Renee Taylor and plenty of other Black & Brown scholars, activists, artists. All my work centers on the difficult topic of home, the need for a home through which one can find safety, nurture, care, faith, but can also imagine, dream and create. As Rumi said, “We all walk each other home”, and so I hope that with the work that we create together, we get to bring each other closer to what feels home to us.
© Elia Diane Fushi Bekene