a movement to reclaim + celebrate women's initiations
Welcome to the House of Belonging
Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision
1 House. 25 Rooms.
A House of Ancestral Healing, Resilience & Belonging
Celebrating the Lives of Women of Color
I’m speechless.
I took the journey you offered me. I cried and laughed and received so much.
I want to be there again and again, and for all my friends to experience this...
which is impossible to describe
Power. Love. Intention. Magic. Women.
Bravo.” - E. Gonzalez, auidence member
CLEAR SIGHT
Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision was a "living museum" honoring the lives & visionary futures
of Black, Indigenous & Immigrant Women of Color in America (BIWOC), set inside a historic former Women's Club in Western Massachusetts.
Throughout its 25 "Rooms of Cure", 20/20 Vision reclaimed BIWOC's experiences of initiation using ritual theatre & multimedia art shared over 10 live performances
from August 13-17, 2021.
20/20 Vision was created in collaboration with over 65 Women of Color artists ages 3 to 75, and was witnessed by 1000 audience members. Together we created a temporary living village of belonging, and embodied a more fertile, resilient & just future for all.
Together, We Are the Once & Future Vision of Our Ancestors.
The abundance, voluptuous spirit of healing, self-hood, sisterhood- so generous, healed + healing OUR FUTURE + OUR PAST + OUR PRESENT.
Thank you each deeply for your Love.”
I am grateful for the privilege of witnessing & participating in this ritual. For feeling both the pain of history and the balms of sisterhood & creativity. My heart is open My body flashes hot. Brava to you all. Us all. To life.”
I am honored to be reborn tonight.”
Taking in all the many rites in the house – I feel expanded + opened to so many other experiences + like the world is fuller + filled with breath, song, rhythm + color.”
All of these things are our rites; all of these things- we already know;
all of these hold power and allow us to flow effortlessly through the unknown.”
Being held by the rich soils of women of color.
May a life of honoring them be born.”
Each room in 20/20 Vision
embodies a rite of passage theme
in the lives of
Black, Indigenous + Immigrant
Women of Color
Yet ultimately, it is
a living, breathing invocation
for remembrance + healing justice
on behalf of all our lineages,
and all our many colors.
WE ARE
THE
ONCE
&
FUTURE
FUTURE
...that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is
that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”
– Audre Lorde
At a pivotal time in our human history, Rites of Passage; 20/20 Vision offered
Women of Color a unique invitation and to embody their wisdom + beauty,
and to form a temporary village of healing.
In this process we re-member and transform ourselves + our lineages,
and inspire others to do the same.
Join the Movement...
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LINEAGE. SEEDS. SOVEREIGNTY. FERTILITY. SUSTENANCE.
MEDICINE. WATER. WOMB. FLOWER. VICTORY.
DIASPORA. STORY. WEAVE. LEGACY.
SOIL. ANCESTRAL SOUL. HEALING JUSTICE. REMEMBRANCE.
"ROOMS of CURE" in 2021:
-
Migration/ Diaspora— honoring the immigrant experience
-
No Longer Silent— on #metoo and healing sexual trauma
-
Legacy— healing inter-generational trauma, reconnecting with the earth
-
The Grief Room— a memorial for diasporic lineages oppressed through colonization and displacement
-
Wombman Heal Thyself— on the healing of women's bodies and water bodies.
-
The Living Womb— re-visioning birth, and addressing the lack of adequate natal care for BIPOC
-
The Nothing— a walk-in-closet about abortion, miscarriage & stillbirth
-
Queer Origins— childhood and the queer experience
-
Re-membering My Father— about women’s complex relationships to our fathers, men and masculinity
-
Adolescence— cure-ated by a group of local youth from the R.O.P.E. program
-
Soul Kitchen — rediscovering inter-generational community & nourishment
- The Elder Room— honoring the wisdom of radically embodied elderhood
- Divorce— the end of partnership & marriage, and radical self-love
-
Dissolution— a room about spiritual breakdown, breakthrough and rebirth
-
Forgiveness— on forgiving ourselves, our ancestors, our oppressors
-
The Body Room— a bathroom celebrating female and femme bodies of all kinds
-
V is for Victory— an altar-room to fertility and creative sovereignty
-
Sustenance— on reclaiming women's relationships to Nature estranged through displacement + migration
-
The Sustenance Pantry— an heirloom seed bank + pantry of ancestral foods of sustenance
-
The Apothecary— an room of plantcestor medicine & reclamation of healing
-
The Library— an inter-sectional multicultural feminist library
-
Death: A Stairway to an Invisible Exit— honoring the mystery of death & dying
-
The Re-Birth Canal— a stairway celebrating the life-death-life cycle
20% of proceeds from the Rites of Passage 20/20 ticket donations will support
the revolutionary work of Women of Color around:
Local Youth Empowerment
Healthy Birth for Black Mothers
Water Protectors
Indigenous Seed Sovereignty
Immigration Justice at the Border
INTERDEPENDENCE
ROPE
RAICES
&
5 Black Land-Based Community Projects
Sistah Seeds
Kiblio
(Refuge)
Community
& Farm
Harmony Homestead
&
Wellness Center
Mumbet's Freedom
Farm
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.”
Arundhati Roy
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