Bunker Projects · Things I Took From My Father by Teena Wilder
Edited by Nick Drain and Harrison Smith
Original Publish Date: 2/12/21
In this addition to The Hand-Off series, artist Teena Wilder explores themes of stillness, blackness, and healing while reflecting on the adoption of complex familial narratives as forms of survival. This essay is Wilder’s second work titled “Things I Took From My Father”; Wilder’s performance with the same name can be viewed here.
Teena Wilder is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Madison, Wisconsin. Teena was raised in rural Summerton, South Carolina, and received their BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in New Studio Practice with minors in both Humanities and Art History.
This stillness started in my body. Right before her death,
It showed itself in my grandmother.
It stretched into midnight visits from my father.
It found shelter in my mother’s silence.
It told me to shut up.
It told me speak the fuck up.
It told me to go home,
To become a person
and then let my body follow.
–
I ask myself, as a black person – how am I going to survive?
As a queer body – will I see tomorrow, if I move today?
–
Stillness started with my grandmother.
Before death.
She sat as form,
as person,
as invisible,
and
as myth
as a refusal to be moved.
And stillness was shown to me in water
Where our bodies were submerged in earth,
Where we had a choice to jump.
Where we were forced to jump.
We had no choice, right?
Stillness in water is where my family gives me a greeting.
My grandmother tells me life is worth living even when you are
still.
In my home, we are
unmoved.
I stand, soaked by cold water, shaking in cold air. And they, the audience, watch me. Some look away, some leave the room. Some are confused, some are questioning my black queer body.
Is the wetness sexual? Is (her) blackness sexual? Is her wetness blackness? Is her stillness survival? Is (she) talking to me or herself?
Others in the audience are convinced I poured the water unto myself, but never ask who forced me to jump into the ocean and become unmoved.
I took from my father the art of lying still and dying while losing breath.
–
I’ve never seen the view from the middle of the ocean, but my father was a sailor in the navy. He once told me, after a while, it looks like nothing. You’re just floating along the ends of the earth. Once, he looked outside of the edge of the ship and it was dark, and beautiful, and magical. I wonder what he saw when he was out in the ocean. I wonder; who was he when he returned?–
He returned a father,
a fighter,
a survivor,
a rapist.
And when I took life from him, it was much more gentle than when he took mine.
To make work about trauma is to be cut wide open and then poured into.
I poured into myself.
I poured unto myself;
I don’t know if the water made me clean or dirty. I just know it made me cold and stopped my movement long enough for people to see that stillness is to live another day when you are slowly being killed.
The act of being still when there is movement is to make stillness movement. What is in the background is brought to attention. Nothingness becomes a choice. Disrupting movement becomes
action: resistance; refusal.
–
Braiding Instructions:
grab the piece of hair on the outer left side and cross it over the middle piece
– moving the inner piece to become an outer piece – the inner piece replacing what was once the outer piece on the left, that was once an inner piece, that was once –
repeat the process alternating the pieces, allowing them to sacrifice space for form.
–
When I was a child, my father would do my hair because my mother didn’t know how to.
Now I do my lover’s hair and it feels traumatically intimate.
I always give away parts of myself so I can keep my home whole.
I stand, soaked by cold water, shaking in cold air. And they watch me. Some look away, some leave the room. Some are confused, some are questioning my black queer body.
Is the wetness sexual? Is (her) blackness sexual? Is her wetness blackness? Is her stillness survival? Is (she) talking to me or herself?
Others in the audience are convinced I poured the water unto myself, but never ask who forced me to jump into the ocean and become unmoved.
The two parts of my body where my father touched me –
where my hair grows the most;
holds all the power in deciding when I can move again.
And as I stand still; and my feet become sore;
and my body shivers from the weather;
and the room questions being silent or making noise;
My hair will take the longest to dry. When pouring unto and into myself
– my hair becomes the first to be washed but the last to be cleaned.
And I must hold patience for it.
And I name my hair power, and tell power to take its time because I will wait for it to be done becoming undone.
As I breathe, and then forgive; and
as I wait,
I rest.
and I find the rest of myself.
When you become still, you create more space
You are allowing inner peace to become outer peace,
and outer peace to become inner.
And space takes form.
Nothingness grows and
becomes a line on your scalp.
The braided pieces make up my
father. Somewhere between protection and pain.
If it doesn’t hurt, you aren’t doing it right.
–
But know that this concentration of pain, on the bottom of your lowest point; where the base of you holds strong;
This is where you fall to earth despite being born in water.
–
I stand, soaked by cold water, shaking in cold air. And they watch me. Some look away, some leave the room. Some are confused, some are questioning my black queer body.
Is the wetness sexual? Is (her) blackness sexual? Is her wetness blackness? Is her stillness survival? Is (she) talking to me or herself?
Others in the audience are convinced I poured the water unto myself, but never ask who forced me to jump into the ocean and become unmoved.
My hair will take the longest to dry. When pouring unto and into myself
– my hair becomes the first to be washed but the last to be cleaned.
And I must hold patience for it.
And I name my hair power, and tell power to take its time because I will wait for it to be done becoming undone.
And while it hurts to shake and throb for a gaze or two. This is where I fall to earth.
I throb, and fade,
and breathe, and fade,
and forgive, and fade.
I took from my father the ability to stay invisible
to be person,
then body,
then home.
And most are confused because they are not welcomed where I live.
They will never receive greetings from the ocean.
They will never wait for their wet parts to dry.
They will never become the myth of my grandmother.
It is in the soreness of my feet where I find my father holding me down.
Be still, he says, so that you can become
a movement.
resistance.
refusal.
And then when you get home, soak your feet; cut off your hair; kiss your lover.
Choose survival,
always.
