Akuzuru : The Healing chambers

A k u z u r u On Art and Healing: Permutations and Transmutations of Self-Healing in my Praxis

I have embarked on this wondrous journey in art envisioning toward realizing the vibrationally decisive advancement of the human consciousness. The awareness of the Supra-Mind lies on the foundation of self-healing, which intrinsically lies on the foundation of the awareness of the SELF. This epiphanic odyssey has come about from one’s own awareness of one’s consciousness in tandem with a deep connection with the Universe. Therefore, a much concentrated departure into the embracement of the natural world and the expanding of spatial possibilities, concretized a heightened awareness of the vibrations of the planet and the need for humanity to become deeply self- aware and in doing do recognize the very need to self-heal so that a natural symbiosis with the planet and the infinite cosmos is rhythmically achieved.

My TransDisciplinary work being expansively wide ranging is at once primarily performative with sculptural interpenetrations and viscerally explorative sound projections and Experimental Drawing Works.

Over the course of many years, I have developed an incubatory mechanism which I have coined the term Healing Chambers. The aim is for the engaging participant to explore anew one’s existence and what this existence means. To go beyond the self, beyond consciousness and to embrace the purity of existence itself.

 These are the primary tools which are applied in the conceptualizing of immersive works to emit and evoke a feeling of deep stillness on the activators i.e. my co-performers as well as the attendees who view the work.

It is my disposition that art must engage the potential of the mind and the depth of the soul. This must be the primary focus of the artist as this philosophical and ultimately spiritual approach which is then activated by the viewer must enrich and nourish the mind so that the far reaching effects of self- healing are attained. A deeply conscious human world will be one of self care – caring for others and ultimately caring for the planet. Spiritually, the cosmos will affect this metamorphosis in human consciousness toward a better aligned Universe. This surreal connection is very real, as real as historical traumas which have caused and sustained intergenerational hiatus in Supra-Mind development. The tumultuous history of humans through aeons and epochs is known to have definitively impacted monumentally on the collective psyche and most tellingly the Consciousness, which have ignited the necessity for atonement, awareness and ultimately attenuation through my creative praxis.

 These are the elucidations in my transformative processes which illuminate and expand on the subject:

Healing as / in Performance Healing as a Supernatural Materiality

 Healing through Ritual Healing Beyond Ritual

Healing Chambers Healing as Memory / in Memoriam Healing and the Mystical

 Healing and the Environment Healing the Body

Healing as Freedom Healing the Consciousness

Healing through the Maguayapas

Healing in/by/through Sound Healing through Silence

My primary focus in this discourse has mainly been through the engagement of women as my coperformers in my presentations or myself as a lone solo Aktionist. The regenerative energy force of the physiology of the female is an essential phenomenon intrinsic to the perpetuation of humanity. Becoming deeply self aware through healing is directly connected to the planet’s spiritual core. The Earth Planet is a womb metaphorically and literally, hence my engagement with vast landscapes through my performative interventions, which tap into this, expanded regenerative power, thus establishing a powerful vortex. Earthology, my magnum opus, for example – a continuing global project – is one of my primary trajectories, where healing is the modus operandi and, as an artist, one acknowledges that this is not immediate. The impactful potential of the work must amplify and make known to the viewer that healing is possible and should be open to its power. A Power that ultimately is self-reflecting and positively infectious and Magical.

© A k u z u r u 2022

A k u z u r u  is an Avant Garde artist who produces through a TransDisciplinary praxis straddling multiple approaches . Her thought provoking works invokes the unseen , where the material and the immaterial are as connectedly interspersed as the immanent and transcendent . Primarily environmental using vast spaces in the natural world and connected into the spatial appropriations of interiors of building spaces , her other- worldly forms in her installations or ‘spatial works ‘ and expansive Performative AkTivations inoculates into the viewer deeply indelible emotive experiences .

The artist has established a multi-faceted lexicon of performative works which include her Ak-tionisms, Spontaneous Art, Spatial Works, Gesture Works, Experiential Art, whether live or on film. With the natural world and metaphysics being central to her process, her immersive complex presentations are expansive , often multi-locational , involving a multitude of persons whom she calls her co-performers, as well as deeply engaging solo expressions.

Having lived, studied and practiced in Trinidad, the UK and Nigeria for many years, her Total Art experiences are conceptually and physically intense – integral – often interak-tive, multi-genre constructions,  emphasizing performance art’s radical axis as a dynamic and powerful art form.

This Environmental-Transdisciplinary artist has become known for her multi-genre works and her many performances including her iconic healing chambers and large sculptural-installations consistently presented worldwide at prestigious institutions and powerful natural environments including the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States.

A pioneer in the radical presence-ing of performance art in Trinidad and the Caribbean, her evolvement as an artist during a thirty year practice, has exhibited a steady embrace of performance art as her primary focus in her TransDisciplinary visions, a metaphysically dynamic intersection of the human and natural world; encapsulating the science of space, light, sound, silence , movement, gesture and nuance .

The artist has been the recipient of numerous International awards from the Prince Claus Fund- Netherlands , the City of Munich- Germany and the Commonwealth Foundation- UK .

Significant solo presentations at important institutions include the National Museum of Trinidad & Tobago 2001 , PAMM – Perez Art Museum Miami in the US 2014 and the Buchheim Museum – Germany 2017 .

A k u z u r u  was also Art Lecturer for experimental practice at the University of the West Indies -Trinidad & Tobago during fifteen years.

Her project -Earthology- is an epic ongoing global opus.