The black body is demanded to labour. We have seen this historically in horrific ways. We see it in the present day in the ways society demands the black body to be and to show up. The demand to perform ideas of blackness. The demand to simply perform. The demand to prove one’s worth. To prove one’s humanity. The demand to be the sacrifice for systems not built for all. The demand to be ashamed of one’s being, skin and ancestry. The demand to overcompensate for stereotypes people try to attach to blackness. The demand to navigate these structures and to survive them daily. It is the demand of physical labour, spiritual labour, labour of the mind and soul.★☆★Rest is power. With the continuous navigation of broken systems and their demands on the black body, mind and soul, rest is resistance. Rest is political. The juxtaposition of the words ‘acts’ and ‘rest’ is a deliberate oxymoron. It emphasizes this complex layer of rest and highlights the active stance and the layer of protest in practicing rest. Rest is not passive. It is an act of rebellion and empowerment.★☆★There are systems of rest that have been part of the black community for centuries. Art, music, imagination, poetry and traditional medicine and practices are all kinds of rest that the black community has used to give voice to pain, to heal, to fight and to escape. Rest is holistic. Rest is when you acknowledge and honour all the parts of your being. To rest is to constantly advocate for oneself.★☆★The duo exhibition Acts of rest is an exploration of rest, healing, protection and sacredness in relation to the black body, mind and spirit. Acts of rest are accessed through ideas of resistance, healing, self-care, protection, joy, escape, liberation, the sacred, future imaginings and precolonial practices.★☆★Esther presents silent, meditative moving images that speak on rest, self-care, protection, access and sacredness in relation to the black body and mind. She draws a cloth symbolically as an act of creation—making a space for healing and rest—but also, in the same breath, as an act of protection of space. She utilizes the cloth as a boundary and refusal of easy accessibility. She pairs the work with a poem that further positions the stance of the work as a position of sitting. Sitting historically was utilized in acts of protest. It was and is an act of taking one’s power and humanity back.★☆★Ruth’s work uses imagination as an act of rest to access healing, safety, heritage, the sacred, escape and power. She uses Nigerian dried leaves used by the Igbo and Yoruba in traditional food and medicine, and various other healing substances, whilst playing around with painting forms. She envelops and immerses her people and worlds in blue. Blue is a cultural layering, a symbol of protection, a warding off of evil. She uses blue as bricks for construction of worlds and portals of re-empowerment, creativity, transcendence, escape, healing and rest.★☆★Rest is not easy. Honouring one’s rest is challenged daily by society and its systems. As we have been brainwashed about our rights for rest and self-healing. It is a daily wrestle. However, through the portal of art we find a glimmer of rest.