Black Power Naps/
Siestas Negras

Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras

Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras is an immersive, multi-sensory performance-installation offering rest as a form of reparations. Created by artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, the installation invites visitors to lounge on a variety of embellished beds, replete with gauzy canopies, serene lighting, therapeutic sound vibrations, and other restorative props.

According to recent studies by institutions that include the Pew Research Center and Stanford University, people of color are five times more likely to get less sleep than white people in America. This “sleep gap” is attributed to familiar forms of institutional racism. Income inequality requires blacks to work longer hours for less pay. Discriminatory housing policies segregate blacks into over-crowded neighborhoods, where the nights are noisier and utilities are in worse condition. Over-policing and inordinately high incarceration rates produce anxieties that disrupt sleep patterns and impair the ability to be at ease when awake.

Correlating the exhaustion tactics used to subjugate slaves with contemporary systems of exploitation and erosive fatigue, the artists offer this “energetic repair” as a way to “reclaim laziness and idleness as power” for those historically deprived of it.

Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras is part of the exhibition Where the Oceans Meet, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Asad Raza, Gabriela Rangel, and Rina Carvajal. The presentation of Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras at MOAD is organized by Sophie Landres, Curator of Public Programs and Education. It is made possible by generous support from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.