Thriving in Place: Cheselyn Amato - COVID Antidote – Dismantling the Crown

24” x 36”, Archival digital print of photographically documented sculptural work (radiant film, silhouettes, clear acrylic disc and light)

Artist Statement

Vanquishing COVID - Healing COVID – Finding COVID’s True Mate

On July 14, 2020, I worked until the wee hours with the COVID-19 coronavirus image, seeking to find what can vanquish it. The image above comes from that exploration.

It has come to me that COVID-19 must be seeking a partner; something has changed for this coronavirus that it needs to find company, connection. I am asking myself what is it that humanity can become that will satisfy/assuage the “yearning” that COVID-19 signals.

In the provision of bereavement support, I have found the concept of making friends with all the thoughts, emotions and sensations including very difficult ones that accompany grief and mourning to have powerful healing effect for my clients: Invite all of your thoughts and emotions to your table, acknowledge them, let them know that you hear their voices, just listen, non-judgmentally. Meet your thoughts, feelings and sensations where they are and just be with them. Out of a place of pause often arises exactly what is needed in order to move forward in a now unfamiliar world to gradually make it anew

Artist Bio

Cheselyn Amato is an interdisciplinary visual artist, spoken text & sound performer, and space/place designer and maker working across the disciplines - 2D, 3D and 4D - with an emphasis on enacting circumstances for the experience of sublimity, awe, wonder and delight via the orchestration of visual props and cues as well as sound and colored light phenomena along with interdisciplinary performance. Cheselyn’s work reflects and chronicles her lifelong spiritual, aesthetic and humanitarian journey. Cheselyn has been teaching art students for decades and has recently added spiritual care and bereavement counseling to her toolkit as light worker and doula for personal, social, societal and global transformation and for the triumph of justice, love, beauty and abundance.

Born: 1958, East Orange, NJ                                                                              Current location: Davis, CA