self-care corruption

A .PNG print-ready digital download of 'self-care corruption' by Mercy Thokozane Minah.

Additional context for the piece:

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” – Audre Lorde (A burst of light, 1993)

For the month of September, I will be continuing my exploration of the relationship between intimacy and liberation; specifically what intimacy entails in the absence of widespread liberation. My opening artwork is titled ‘self-care corruption’ and it is informed by Audre Lorde’s declaration of the potential of self-care to be a tool of radical resistance. In ‘self-care corruption’ I wanted to create artwork that reflects how the absence of liberation leads to the co-option and corruption of crucial radical concepts created to empower individuals by making them aware of themselves as political beings and encouraging them to include themselves in their efforts to enact liberation. I chose to convey this by illustrating a figure surrounded by an excess of products that reflect a likeness of the figure in their packaging, while the figure applies one of the products onto their skin. Self-care has been so extensively divorced from Lorde’s original messaging that it is impossible to think about it without immediately thinking about all the products you need to buy to enact it. The concept I wanted to explore with this piece is how the co-option of self-care by the Beauty and Wellness industrial complex have created the idea that products are an extension of who we are, and that in order to demonstrate that we care about ourselves and our well-being, it is necessary to buy, buy, buy.