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On Resting Not Knowing Things: Reclaiming Self

Published on 20 May 2024

I am slowly learning that I can live without having a problem to solve or a mountain to climb. I am slowly learning to positively disintegrate from my hyper achieving cells and just enjoying where I am, how far I have come. Maybe it is possible to just simply observe. Just simply watch and not partake, not make it better, not improvise,  not save. Just be there. The residency, in many ways is a meditative, spiritual journey, where I am (I think) unlearning more than I am learning. If we are close, you already know, in how many directions my brain is functioning in, and how many fires it puts out daily. So here I am, slowing down my mind through morning routine, making art, cooking for self, sitting in the sun, coming up with theories for art and feminist futures. After all, I am a theorist and our politics will only go as far as our rested minds do. To build a better semblance of the world, I must build a better semblance with rest, I knew.

 

It was also something abrubtly brought to my attention in a conversation here. I must stop assuming I know everything. I should let life surprise me. I should let someone else teach me. Very hard for my theorist and virgo brain to grasp the concept, but, here it was: I should let it unfold on its own.

As I took many walks to nowhere, carrying my coffee and a book in hand, following the birdsongs, I did also try my best to be thoughtless. To disengage from the mental worldly this-that and just watch the train take me safely into luscious pastures of this stunning country. To be thoughtless, meant to give up control over the residency, over my research project, over the outcomes my art had began to see. To relinquish control, was unnerving in the beginning, and then, a few deep breaths in and out, I began to make space for possibilities of not know anything further. I began to open up to not know what will happen next in this residency.

 

About Author

Isha Yadav is currently a doctoral student at Ambedkar University Delhi. Her research area lies in participatory feminist art practices. She's also the first Indian to receive the Linda Stein Upstander Artist Award, 2021, with which she created a Museum of Rape Threats and Sexism in 2022. There's a documentary film made about her pursuit. Isha writes for several publications and has previously taught at University of Delhi. She is interested in socially engaged art, excavating delicate narratives and culture praxis. 

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