This year has truly felt like a test of our collective resilience and an uphill battle against systemic injustices, genocide, natural disasters, a global health crisis, and even losing a few heroes.

Through it all, there has been a shift toward positive solutions through action and resistance. From protesting and phone banking to volunteering and so on, many facets of resistance have been activated. One of particular importance is rest. Rest as resistance is especially for Black women, who continue to be at the forefront of movements inspiring change.

Resting is revolutionary for Black women. They’re rarely encouraged to rest and tend to their own physical and mental health, and instead are typically expected to perform the labor of dismantling oppressive systems for the oppressors. I wanted to chat about the importance of rest with Priscilla O. Agyeman, MPH, a public health professional and mental health advocate, as well as founder of Saddie Baddies, a digital platform designed for young women of color that educates and unpacks the layers of mental health.

“Rest is my resolution as a Black woman,” she told me. "We live in a society that sees a Black body as a commodity, it sees it as a machine, it sees it as a resource, which is problematic because a resource can’t be a human. 

I use rest as a way of self care but also as a form of resistance because grind culture tells us we can’t rest. Grind culture tells us that we can’t take a break, or sit down, or relax. I think there are so many Black women who do not know how to rest because we’ve never been taught to rest. We’ve been the breadwinners of our families, we’ve been the caretakers, the caregivers, we’ve been the pioneers for multiple social justice movements, political movements, human rights movements—we’re the blueprint for the culture.

But we deserve rest. We deserve time for ourselves, we deserve selfishness that isn’t seen as a problem. Men can be selfish, and it's seen as productive and powerful, but if a woman is selfish she is heartless. 

And I don’t subscribe to that belief whatsoever. I’m learning how to rest. Black women suffer from weathering—our bodies go through so much micro-damage from not resting and from the racism, sexism, and abuse that we deal with on a regular basis. It actually affects us physiologically, and over time it wears our body down. In order to circumvent that, we have to learn how to rest, and we have to choose rest even when it feels uncomfortable for us.”

As an artist creating photo-based work, I’m extremely sensitive to the lack of images of Black women resting and relaxing in comparison to our white counterparts. I enjoy making work that actively rounds out and fills in the gaps in the current visual language around carefree Black women in a fun and positive way.