Oluwatosin Daniju Photography

2020/2021

Forever, or so it seems, Black women have faced exclusion, assault and multiple griefs. We are obliged to be of service to others while bearing the burden of many, often intersecting points of oppression. Throughout it, we are expected to struggle on, hence the oft-imposed stereotype of the ‘strong Black woman’ and Zora Neale Hurston’s declaration of Black women as the "mule uh de world".


In such a world, actively choosing to care for oneself as a Black woman, to acknowledge the heaviness of these various burdens as being too much to constantly bear, can become a radical act.

In her essay, A Burst Of Light, Audre Lorde stated “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

With this piece, I have chosen rest as my own act of political warfare, a different defiance in the varied arsenal of resistance.

[CN: contains audio of various incidents of anti-Black violence that viewers may find distressing]

*Title comes from a Nayyirah Waheed poem.

A note for playing the video: the volume increases over the first 2 minutes of the video, so don't turn up the volume too much at the start - it's meant to be quiet.