MIAMI, Fla. – The Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College (MDC) is presenting “Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras” by Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, a multi-sensory, interactive installation that the hosts say is designed to provide joyful, relaxing relief from fatiguing systems of inequality.
“Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras” will host performative events during its opening reception at 6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 24, and throughout 2019 Art Basel in December.
Guided Nap Meditations and DJ sets will take place on Thursday, Oct. 24, and Wednesday, Dec. 4.
The Platonic Play Party Workshop will take place on Thursday, Dec. 5.
MOAD also is inviting local social-justice organizations to use the installation’s amenities for leisurely, community-building activities throughout the duration of the exhibition.
“Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras” invites visitors to lounge on a variety of embellished beds with gauzy canopies, serene lighting, therapeutic sound vibrations, and other restorative props.
Correlating the exhaustion tactics once used to subjugate slaves with contemporary systems of exploitation and erosive fatigue, the artists offer this “energetic repair” as a way as a way to “reclaim laziness and idleness as power” for those historically deprived of it.
According to recent studies by various institutions, including the Pew Research Center and Stanford University, people of color are five times more likely to get less sleep than white people in the U.S.
Income inequality requires African Americans to work longer hours for less pay. Discriminatory housing policies segregate many people of color into crowded neighborhoods, where nights are noisier and housing stock is in worse condition. Over-policing and inordinately high incarceration rates produce anxieties that disrupt sleep patterns and impair the ability to be at ease when awake.
Taking the “sleep gap” disparity between white and black Americans as its point of departure, “Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras” offers restful and playful experiences as a form of reparations.
“America owes a massive debt to the decedents of enslaved people,” said Sophie Landres, MOAD’s curator of Public Programs and Education.
“This project proposes that repayment accounts for both their deprivation of wealth and their deprivation of energy. While advocating reparations for labor that was most egregiously stolen, ‘Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras’ encourages all audiences to take a break from 24/7 capitalism. It invites us to idly contemplate our free time and thus, our freedom.”
Based in Downtown Miami’s Historic Freedom Tower, 600 Biscayne Blvd., MOAD considers itself a Museum Without Boundaries. Hours are Wednesday 1-6 p.m.; Thursday 1-8 p.m.; Friday-Sunday 1-6 p.m. Admission $12 adults; $8 seniors and military; $5 students (13-17) and college students (with valid ID); free for MOAD members, MDC students, faculty, and staff, and children 12 and under. For events schedule visit mdcmoad.org; call 305-237-7710 for other details.
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