fierybraxn origins

fire. passion. explosive.

survival. abrupt. rash.

in 2015, i started a passion project through the 100 days project of making art through several mediums: sketching, photography and painting. from there, i started exploring nude art after following multiple artists on social media who had their own take on depicting the body. i started taking self portraits and creating abstract nude art that gradually evolved into the explicit.

through this journey, a few themes began to unravel:

view of the self: distortion, fractured, broken

view of the body: terrain, landscape, history, mapping, pleasure, pain

memories: incomplete, romanticized, inaccurate, brutal, streamed throughout the body

after a few years of making art, i took a break. i came upon becoming a therapist in training, learning about trauma-informed interventions in a clinical setting.

one concept that was repeated throughout my training was that past trauma experiences can be remembered with less pain over time by building the window of tolerance.

what really came to light was the notion that healing can only happen in the therapy space, where the therapist is the legitimate tool to unravel one's self to begin their healing. since then, i've left the field, divested from my licensure, and nourished what mattered to me: bearing witness and support for other victims and survivors of violence.

fierybraxn came from the sensation of when one (i) is/am triggered: the back of the head feels like it's on fire. survival mode is on. an online mutual described the amygdala to me as an over protective puppy who needs reassurance. because this is a sensation i knew so well, and state of being i knew intimately, i wanted to create a space for those who are often pathologized for the ways in which we survive our everyday and our memories of moments that haunt us.

there is a power dynamic that is named but rarely taken seriously in the mental health field when it comes to therapy. therapists are often trained as observers, through a lens that claims to be objective, when it really is enforcing the status quo: the onus is on those harmed with encouragement to engage those who've harmed them. there are also people who claim to do healing work divesting from licensure, who have histories of abusing the people and communities they claim to help.

this serious reality in our society that we are conditioned to believe we cannot heal in community with one another, but rather, it is best if a "professional" is involved. it can be true that there are therapists who are great at what they do, care for their clients, and for many that is enough to save their lives. it is also true we need an entirely different infrastructure for care work: for care to be integrated into our everyday, into how we relate to one another, and most importantly, how this shapes our future for a liberated world.

the process of making art to discover, explore the terrain of my body, my memories, the moments that every year my body feels deep within its being—extending it beyond myself into what it means to care for others in a mutual way: where the people involved are collaborators where all create, are informed and can consent to the ways in which they relate to one another. and this extending to infrastructures of care where there is accountability, restitution, and community for victims and survivors—where there are pillars for possibilities to rebuild life in a communal way where we are no longer disposable.