Arts House hits the snooze button with the Nap Bishop

Arts House has invited Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, to its performance space on August 19 and 26 to share the notion that “rest is resistance”.

Ms Hersey is known globally as the Nap Bishop, for obvious reasons, for she has developed a fulfilling career on the liberating power of naps and how they can help one battle the daily grind.

As a venue that has built itself on presenting experimental and contemporary works, Arts House co-artistic director Nithya Nagarajan said the Arts House team was “keen for Tricia’s vision to be translated into an immersive installation experience that our audiences and neighbours can have a snooze in”.

“[Tricia Hersey and the Nap Ministry] are invested in deprogramming grind culture and are thinking critically about rest through the lens of justice movements,” she told North West City News.

Advising us to experiment with rest as power, the Nap Ministry’s work has wide influences: Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. They also offer a counternarrative to how ‘rest’ is commodified through the wellness industry.

For An Uprising of Dreams, on August 19, the Nap Ministry is collaborating with the independent Australian arts organisation Centre for Projection Art.

Described as the perfect local partner, the Centre for Projection Art will use projection as a tool for illuminating broader contexts and conversations, as the two-hour event follows the structure of a guided meditation and collective rest.

Audiences can expect “a gentle tantalising of the senses” with sound, projection, guided meditation, and music, while being encouraged to find a space to linger, close their eyes, and have a nap.

An installation-based work will also be accessible to the public for free on August 20, from 11am to 4pm, and August 21 to 24, from 10am to 5pm.

Ms Hersey will then wrap up her time at Arts House with Rest is Resistance: A Keynote on August 26, from 7.30pm to 8.30pm.

“We hope for audiences to take away the vitality of rest for their spirits - not so they can produce more output but because in the words of the Nap Ministry, ‘it is their divine and human right’,” Ms Nagarajan said.

“Leave your worries at the door and enter into a tranquil and family-friendly space to slow down and rest with purpose.”

Both works are also part of the Now or Never festival which takes place from August 17 to September 2. •

For more information: artshouse.com.au/events/an-uprising-of-dreams and artshouse.com.au/events/rest-is-resistance

Photo credit: Headshots provided by Tricia Hersey. Other images, credit: Charlie Watts.