Resting From The Fight

Vanessa & Kadeem

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In this piece, there is a shattering of the glass. Each artist confronts what it means to continue creating while the systems meant to support them remain unstable, extractive, or incomplete. Survival alone no longer feels sufficient. What emerges instead is a collective pivot toward care, ownership, and self-definition. Taken together, these reflections capture artists in a state of becoming. They are not simply responding to burnout or inequity, but actively reshaping how they relate to art, labor, and community in real time.

Vanessa is living in a season of rest after years spent in active resistance. As an education

consultant and artist, she has watched systems dismantle in real time and is now learning that she is not only the fight. Her practice moves between artmaking, community care, and mutual aid, grounded in the understanding that the self and the collective must take turns being centered.

Nature has become a recurring presence in her season of renewal, appearing through hikes, quiet observation, and the deliberate act of turning off the stage lights. For Vanessa, rest is not retreat but assessment: listening, noticing, and allowing space to breathe. She recognizes that in order to fight meaningfully, there must be seasons of stillness, where care for the self becomes an act of preservation.

Kadeem’s journey into wellness began after a dance injury in 2008, which prompted a deeper

exploration of meditation, hypnotherapy, and holistic healing practices. What followed was a

gradual movement from burnout, to reconnection with dance, to restoration, and eventually to boundary-setting through intentional and clear communication. Across these phases, Kadeem has come to understand wellness not as a destination, but as an ongoing practice that requires attention and care.

In every facet of his work, he centers empathy as an artistic pressure point, asking how spaces can be shaped so that people feel seen, supported, and safe. He has since begun implementing his holistic wellness practices within artistic spaces that need them, starting with his own dance company. His advice is simple but grounding: if you are unsure where to begin, start with your breath.

These voices move beyond a focus on survival and push toward sustainability as a necessity.

Whether through rest, refusal, wellness, or restructuring, each artist names the cost of remaining within systems that demand too much and give too little. What emerges is not a singular path