Belly Breathing (Sleeping Dragon)

 

Assembling A Sleeping Dragon

Although I am over the moon that I pulled this off, I am going to call this take one because it created more ideas than it fulfilled. By the end, it was becoming an interesting dragon/cave entity- both at once. The string lights hang down as stalactites would; and I think that some sort of collection (bottles, memories, etc...) might play the part of stalagmites, engulfing the viewer like the huge dragon sounds do. 

The string lights took this from something that referenced fond memories of sensory therapy tools, to almost a “sensory utopia”. The space slows you down, and it slows the world down. Soft light and shadows don’t shout. 

I also encountered time and slowness while creating the scales one at a time. It became a way to sit with change, and focus on the movements becoming written (and rewritten) into my body.

I also encountered time and slowness while creating the scales one at a time. It became a way to sit with change, and focus on the movements being written into my body. Scales became a tiny way to reference scale, as in size, and think about little in the context of big (and vice versa). There is a comforting amount of engulfment going on, but I also (hopefully) created space to fully zero in on the tiniest sense detail, be it texture, light, sound… etc.

As I wrote in the tiny statement on the wall, it is not a belly for no reason. It is a belly because I am constantly reminding myself that bellies hold life (in more ways than one, even when said belly is broken more often than not), and that they have to be allowed to take up space in order to do that. I called this installation “Belly Breathing” in order to include the viewers in my thought process, and encourage them to be grateful for their bodies that sense things and hold things and remember things and create things and move and rest… Just as dragons hoard things and protect them viciously, our bodies keep hold of our lives and everything in it.