‘Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies‘
-Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
Hazy, dark, dangerous, reflective, panic filled, passion and life-changing seismic shift, that concoction of emotions is how I will always think of the first half of 2021. I had spent time almost dying from covid and being hospitalised in intensive care in Jan – Feb 2021. I was in a whirlwind of creative frustration during and after my time in hospital in recovery mode. I wanted to birth brilliance, but I felt hyper with ideas fizzing away in my head but I did not know what to do with them? Or where to start?
I had been given the opportunity to be an artist in residence at City Arts in Nottingham April – October 2021. So had the residency to focus my will on whilst recovering and exploring what materials I was drawn to. I was tasked with creating an exhibition called ‘BLACK TODAY’, it was going to feature me and another artist but they had to cancel their residency.
“…the current anti-fat bias in the United States and in much of the West was not born in the medical field. Racial scientific literature since at least the eighteenth century has claimed that fatness was ‘savage’ and ‘black.”
― Dr Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
I wanted to create work that enabled me and my big black woman-ness to take up as much room as possible. Growing up as a big woman in a society often in deep denial of how fatphobic, misogynoir is structurally implemented and manufactured in different forms across western society, can make navigating and slaying life really hard. It often means that big black women and femmes are still rendered invisible and hyper visible through racist, sizeist and heteronormative politics, which means opportunity can be debilitated and the everyday wellbeing of it’s non-white, non-slim, non-male citizens is often silenced. Big black women and femmes turn to other cultural sources for ‘soul’ survival, self-care and celebratory representation in history and contemporary times.
‘Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation. I generally define Afrofuturism as a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens’
– Ingrid LaFleur (Art Curator and Afrofuturist)
I turned to music and songwriting and obviously creating art, as a way to self-soothe. I gravitated towards spray paint and broad strokes of acrylic, emulsion and discarded giant roller blinds as a canvas. I painted, sometimes into the night, blared out some playlists and films, youtube videos and sunk into a creative flow. There’s something about 1-3am, and you start to lose self-awareness and trust yourself more. I was fixated on how I could visualise how it might feel to come out of the other side and not just exist in survival mode but strive for something bigger, rapturous, reckless and sensuous.
So, I created giant self-portraiture, exaggerated versions of me on largescale red and purple roller blinds vandalised by a frenzied attack of abstract spray-painted, multicoloured, metallic landscapes. Those intense sessions resulted in 7-10 giant pieces of work that I am proud of and an exhibition called Black Today which featured my body of work titled ‘Shrines’ by Honey Williams at New Art Exchange – 6:30pm, 12 March 2022 (part of Saziso Phiri’s CATALYST programme). A Big THANK YOU! City Arts and to all who made this exhibition happen and to all who came! Special Thanks to Alison Denholm (City Arts) and Saziso Phiri (Anti Gallery).
‘Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill…For the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change’
— Audre Lorde, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Links:
Blog: CASE STUDY: Honey Williams “I felt that what I had to say was valued.” By Joe Pick, City Arts
YouTube Vid: Sabrina Strings Explains How ‘Fatphobia’ is Rooted in Racism
YouTube Vid: Dismantle Your Fat Phobia Right Thee F%&# Now! (Inner Hoe Uprising S6 E25)
YouTube Vid: I’m Fat, Happy and Wear WTF I Want: Enam Asiama
Honey Williams 