︎

IN THESE TIMES

A COLLECTION OF WORK IN PURSUIT OF RIVAL TIME BY BIANCA NOZAKI-NASSER.  @ LA ART CORE LITTLE TOKYO 9/9/22 - 9/23/22

IN THESE TIMES

SHWAY SHWAY

Installation: Audio/Video Collage Projection, Cushions, Suspended Vinyl Screen
materials
    • multicolored vinyl
    • decorative fabric
    • foam
    • wire
    • video fotage in Baalbek, Beirut, Byblos, Beqaa Valley, Lebanon
    • family photos
Process Notes:

When we see Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) we are often shown a white veteran who’s linear timeline was disrupted by the violence of war and imperialism. We have been told to see PTSD as a loop that interrupts linear progression.

Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), is different, people who have have experienced multiple or chronic events might not have such a clear timeline. Those who are exposed to  systemic violence from begining of life might not even have be a “before” time. CPTSD can be difficult to explain, especially when there is shame around not being able to “pinpoint” one big trauma. With CPTSD flashbacks aren’t just a replaying of a traumatic memory, but rather, flashbacks can visit the present with varying shades of visual, somatic, and emotional flavors.

I was diagnosed with CPTSD when I was 25. In addition to my own lifetime, I’ve worked to understand timelines  present in me that I may have not been present for. We carry collapsed ancestral timelines in our bodies. I am Gosei, a daughter of a Yonsei daughter. I was raised by her Sansei father, the son of my Nisei great grandmother, the daughter of my Issei great great grandparents. I am the daughter of an immigrant, born in Damascus, whose parents survived war and famine. While we are all so much more than what has happened to us, our histories will continue to color our present. Many histories are not things we will “get over and “move on” from,” and that’s not a bad thing. We are not stuck in loops. We are using many lenses to navigate time. Or asLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha says in Care Work:

“ My trauma is a fucking five-act opera, a gorgeous and tough dress made out of my best scars, a seed library, a Gutenberg Bible, a thunderstorm to climb and buck in a small plane, a mountain range, a supernova to map.”

* The Nod has a great episode on research studies on treating racial trauma with psychadelics 

BIANCA NOZAKI-NASSER