Text by CLOT Magazine
Healing Pieces: Offerings of Art, Expression, and Nature is a collaborative multi-year arts and engagement initiative led by SMU Meadows School of the Arts’ Ignite/Arts Dallas. By stimulating conversations across race, culture, geography, criminal and environmental justice reform and urbanism, SMU Meadows School of the Arts’ Ignite/Arts Dallas seeks to explore how architecture, green space, urban planning and community development can lead to the transformation of the city of Dallas in the U.S. state of Texas.
The debut project is Black Power Naps Park/Parque Siestas Negras, an interactive multi-sensory outdoor installation that offers rest as a form of reparation. On view until December 10, 2020, in Sweet Pass Sculpture Park in West Dallas, Black Power Naps Park/Parque Siestas Negras invites visitors to lounge, reclaim idleness and consider the power and energy that has been exhausted from those who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC). It also looks at historical records documenting the deliberate fragmentation of restorative sleep patterns to subjugate enslaved people. Said Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa.
Black Power Naps Park / Parque Siestas Negras is curated by Ignite/Arts Dallas Director Clyde Valentín and SMU Pollock Gallery Director Sofia Bastidas Vivar. The installation features hammocks and mounds of grass in yonic shapes that welcome multiple resting bodies amid a serene soundscape of wind chimes and a soothing playlist.
The second project they are presenting is Project Witness. Curated by clemency reform advocate Jason Hernandez Project Witness is a free augmented reality experience created by the National Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth with Google and YouTube to build awareness of the conditions of childhood incarceration.
Black Power Naps Park / Parque Siestas Negras and Project Witness run until December 10, 2020.
