Discovering Nothing: Reverting to Self
05/31/20
By Ahniya Butler
Do you remember the Before? The time when the Earth was brimming with two legged creatures who buzzed their wings at every consumer opportunity. Before, I was an oblivious worker. I collected my drops of dew and contributed my portion. I dropped my oneness and became the collective. I left behind my passions in the haste of day to day responsibility. I became a ghost of myself and in the After I found myself. In the After my first solo curatorial project was postponed as a result of pandemic closures. The Brighter Shade of Blue was set for May 22nd and revolved around combating mental health stigma in communities of color. The exhibition would have featured several contemporary artists of color with programming that included a mental health forum, free yoga courses, and a performance piece called Comfort Food, an interactive piece that invited people to analyze the connections between memory, mental health, and food. The exhibition had consumed the majority of my recent existence. It was my every waking thought. I had nurtured it from a seedling and watched it grow tall before life so cruelly pruned it. My goal/dream/reason was crushed and I soon began to unravel because as a dutiful worker bee; I could not function without a directive. The After forced me to stop and I was uncomfortable. In the absence of work/school/commitments/stimuli I found myself feeling lost and afraid. I no longer knew what I loved. I no longer had passions or direction and as a result my mind began a creeping descent. I found myself slipping into nothing.
Into the Aether, Ahniya Butler, 2020, digital photograph
Obscure memories of my childhood began to flood my mind. For weeks, I was granted little snippets of my recessed memories. I remembered a blue rubber ball, fried tomatoes, and catching grasshoppers in milk jugs. I remembered all and nothing at once. All of these visions varied in length, mood, time period, and importance. The barrage of memories and my failing mental health had me absolutely convinced that this was the way in which life flashes before one's eyes. I’d always assumed that when life flashed before your eyes it would be quick and linear. I had never considered the idea that life, due to its richness and depth, would require more than a thirty second summary. With the idea that my life would soon end at an unknown point, I started down a path of self-reflection. I was processing the grief of my own mortality with the only tool I had. Riddled with visions, I start to take note of the world I am in. I wanted to reach a point of peace if I were to leave this Earth soon.
Las Seis Mías, Ahniya Butler, 2020, digital photograph
My peace was found in nothing. I found peace in things that did nothing to benefit my career/life/world. I found peace in eating ice cream in the cone and sitting on my roof surrounded by stars. I found it sitting in silence with the smell of summer and the presence of my loved ones. In doing/saying/being nothing I rediscovered and reinvigorated my childlike creativity and my sense of wonder. Discovering nothing fostered a sense of creative fervor I had not felt in years and pulled me back from the edge. Before nothing, my mind was being strangled by daily stressors and societal expectations. Getting to a point of peace was hard and harrowing. It felt like my mind as I knew it, had collapsed and I was digging for my true self in the rubble. I dug for the things I loved and the things I still knew and ideas began to erupt from my psyche, spilling out like lava. Between the white scraps of my hive mind were my sense of self, my childlike creativity, and my originality. I found all that I had lost and it reinvigorated me and gave me a passion for life itself. I found my peace in the After. I found my peace in nothing. I encourage you to do the same.
I Found You in the Rubble, Ahniya Butler, 2020
Ahniya Butler is an artist and curator hailing from Robbins, IL. Her works embody chaos in every fashion from choice of media to composition. She creates art to personify personality.