SOMATIC MOVEMENT WITH AYEBAINEMI ABIEYUWA ÉSE

Image of participants during the workshop

On 23 August 2024, Ayebainemi Abieyuwa ése’s (they/them) held a somatic workshop that explored how our identities can displace us from our local surroundings and communities and how we can create tools of resistance that help us transmute that loss and grief.

The workshop connected with QTBIPOC+ residents of Newham and other boroughs to share embodied explorations around gentrification.

Participants were invited is to build a relationship with grief through drawing, a sharing circle, and body-based exercises such as guided-breathwork and somatic experiencing. People were encouraged to bring personal images that relate to their ends on their phones for the print process.

The intersecting experiences of QTBIPOC+ individuals were explored, looking at the ways our identities further displace us from the homes we grew up in either through estrangement or leaving home to live more fully in our bodies and identities.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP, AYEBAINEMI SAID:

I thoroughly enjoyed facilitating the somatic art-making workshop and felt that the topics explored surrounding embodied art practice to explore the grief of gentrification was really needed amidst the shifting climate of Newham.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ayebainemi Abieyuwa ése (they/them) is a Nigerian, gender-expansive artist + writer born and raised in Plaistow, Newham. They facilitate trauma-conscious grief, movement, and rest portals for QTBIPOC+ communities. They work with somatic practices such as yoga, art-making and embodied movement to cultivate curiosity and awareness about the stories our bodies hold, honouring our innate ancestral wisdom. They cherish nature, playfulness, creativity, dancing, and experimentation.

The speculative art archive is led by artist and programme facilitator, Sandra Falase, part of a year-long engagement programme at Alice Billing House, supported by the Creative Land Trust and Heritage Lottery Fund.