‘Breathing Disenfranchised Grief’ (Print)

‘Breathing Disenfranchised Grief’, 2018

Ada of Two Rivers Alternative

Art Print – 24″ x 28″
Original: Acrylic, Markers on Paper

Breathing Disenfranchised Grief is a self-portrait of grief as a paradoxical life force and life defying energy. At the age of two, after losing my family, my home, language, and culture, along with the experience of foster care, disenfranchised grief became the only oxygen available to me. Having become a ward of the state, my grief, having been denied me by all who were meant to, “foster care”, became contrarily, inaccessible to me and also pervasive in my life. Breathing Disenfranchised Grief is an expression of my voice, memory, story, tears, loss, and heartache, that was stolen from me. It is a statement of how my mind and body safeguarded my grief in the only way it could; through disconnect from myself and the world, until I was ready and able to reclaim and honor it.

As an Afro-Latina woman, orphan, and former foster child, Ada’s first experience with creativity was largely as a writer. Writing poetry helped Ada make meaning of her early childhood trauma which included the loss of her family, language, and culture as well as the displacement she experienced growing up in foster care. Since Ada’s early school experience with art didn’t encourage coloring outside the lines, she grew up not believing herself to be artistic.

Ada faced her fear of Art and began a rewarding relationship with the Muse and her art. Today, Ada is a Human Potential Educator and Consultant in her own private practice in the Greater Philadelphia area, working with artists of various mediums. Ada supports them in reclaiming and sustaining a relationship with their own nature and creative process.