The work of artist Tricia Hersey defies the lines that are often drawn between disciplines and schools of thought. Tricia’s craft is influenced by her experiences as the daughter of an abolitionist pastor, as a native of the South Side of Chicago, and as torch-bearer of her family’s Mississippi and Louisiana roots. Her upbringing is woven throughout two decades of experience as a teaching artist, chaplain, poet, performance artist and community organizer. Her practice embodies somatics, womanism, womanist theology, Black Liberation Theology, Afrofuturism and her ancestors.
From these reservoirs of knowledge, Tricia created the “rest is resistance” and “rest as reparations” frameworks and founded The Nap Ministry, a global pioneer and originator of the movement to understand the liberatory power of rest. She asks us to study the ways in which our divinity, higher purpose, and ability to resist violent and oppressive systems are intertwined with how we access our rest, imagination and DreamSpace. Her work is a pathway to the rest practices needed to collectively build and imagine new worlds as we simultaneously dismantle and deprogram ourselves from the systems that prop up and perpetuate the racial, social and environmental harm done by white supremacy and extractive capitalism.
Tricia has 20 years of experience as a teaching artist, archivist assistant, activist and arts-integrated curriculum developer with Chicago Public Schools, Columbia College Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre, U.S. Peace Corps, Emory University Rare Books and Manuscript Library, and numerous community organizations and universities. She has exhibited artworks, delivered talks and created collective napping experiences with School of the Art Institute Chicago, Speed Museum, MIT, Brown University, and many more. Her words and work have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Afropunk, The Atlantic, NPR All Things Considered, USA Today, Bon Appetit and others. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Tricia lives in South Georgia with her husband and son.
