Serenitude
by Fadzai Mwakutuya
In collaboration with Karen Kirkness, edited by Ewan Bush
Video, 9:05 mins
Scoraig Peninsula, Scottish Highlands .
This breathing project developed as a collaboration, to manage the fear and anxiety of losing a sense of control of ones breathing and to support recovery, intervening by having live breathing techniques on social media. It’s evolved and culminated in creating an art piece in response to recent events, a voice to emotions and advocating for change. Both Karen and I have mutual experience delivering our individual professional practice with a healing outlook. We have in the past worked creatively together, forging a rapport over conversations about womanhood, migration, business and most importantly motherhood. Confronted with panic of going to frontline essential jobs without adequate PPE, with no tests available and with the avid focus on black/ people of ethnic minorities, unexplained ‘susceptibility’ to covid, I identified a need to take control to support my breathing. The pressure of seeing the environment and political world collapse around me, the fear of restraint and suffocation heightened, with the unjust death of George Floyd and Briana Taylor bringing flashbacks of systematic brutality in Zimbabwe, baton sticks and teargas heightened this feeling. 2020 has been an anxious, emotive moment in contemporary times, carrying a lot of weight, particularly not exclusively, for black people. A sense of continued institutional prejudice, historic injustice and unconscious bias still visible in many aspects. Today we are at cross-roads where whilst developing the resilience of looking ‘in’ to the physiological core, collaborating in solidarity, we are developing ‘out’ towards the wellbeing of marginalised voices in this art piece for oosoom.
Personally, the power of the universe is as simple as a voice of solidarity and a return to ‘consciousness’, highlighting positive experiences, such as feeling safe, being respectful and receptive, accepting and reassuring, to negate the manifestations of negativity around us all.
https://fadzaimwakutuya.co.uk
Karen Kirkness, MFA + MSc
Residing in Longformacus, Lammermuir Hills, Scottish Borders
Karen’s work revolves around the phenomenology of having a body. She met Fadzai as part of the life drawing community in Edinburgh in 2016.
She studied Art Space Nature at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2005, then obtained a second master’s degree from Edinburgh University Biomedical Sciences in Human Anatomy in 2014. She has been practicing yoga since 1997 and founded Meadowlark Yoga in Edinburgh in 2010, a yoga studio that operates as a not for profit community.
Karen folds her passion for art and anatomy into ongoing research around the logos of biologic tissue in the context of patterns that abound in nature. Her current focus resides in the oscillatory behaviour of living things and how resonance links us all into the rhythms of life in a symphony of earthly constraints.
Breathing is the foundation of her continuing time-based work in personal practice and further collaboration with Fadzai.
Karenkirkness.com
Ewan Bush
Scoraig, Scottish Highlands
Film and sound production was contributed by Ewan Bush, a filmmaker and photographer. He has used his notable skills to capture imagery in a creative artistic format, culminating in creating a video piece giving a visual voice to these emotions and lobby for change. Included is this artwork is imagery from past sessions where Karen as artist illustrates on Fadzai as life model, anatomical concepts to illustrate her book and research. Thank you to Ewan for engaging as our technical conduit allowing us to archive and succinctly capturing our narration and breathing session and healing creative processes.
We hope you find peace whilst interacting with this artwork.
