Artist and RAGGA NYC founder Christopher Udemezue and Recess held a workshop on Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions, generational PTSD, and healing practices, led by the collective Herban Cura. Participants worked with members of Herban Cura to learn, practice, and participate in different healing traditions aimed at healing generational stress. The Herban Cura collective evolved from the acknowledgement that the urban landscape can be taxing on our physical, emotional and spiritual wellness. Their response to this urban disconnect is to provide inclusive spaces of healing, learning, and collaboration. As healers, they observe an inherent integrity present in nature. In natural systems, there is no waste. Difference enriches landscapes and abundance surges forth from simplicity. Herban Cura aims to support the process of awakening these values in our urban world.
Herban Cura Collective members: Antonia Perez (member of the RAGGA NYC family) Graciela Asher, A.K.A Fairy Hawk Carlos G. Rosario, The Green Light Warrior, Donnay and Knoula
Antonia Perez is a clinical herbalist born and raised in NYC. They have apprenticed with several herbalists around the northeast, Central and South America, and Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine. They graduated from Bard College, where they studied environmental and urban studies. They are a community organizer, gardener, food and environmental justice educator. They are also the cofounder of the Brujas collective and Herban Cura. They are passionate to share their knowledge with other folks especially in urban centers, in order to interrupt notions of individualism and separatism from nature and grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities.
Graciela Asher, A.K.A Fairy Hawk, is a guiding healer and artistic revolutionary messenger. She is the owner and founder of Manifest Your Soul, which provides ancient modalities to help us re-align with the highest versions of ourselves. She uses energy and body work, plant medicinal ceremonies, sound healing and meditation journeys, intuitive massage, intuitive tribal facepaint, and chakra alignment pendulum readings, and Kundalini Yoga to assist in this process. She is a Reiki master, Thai yoga masseuse, and has been working with and holding space in the community in social justice and advocacy since 2005. Her mission is to bring our people back to their original divinity and to awaken to their gifts they have within.
Carlos G. Rosario, The Green Light Warrior, is a long-time community advocate and multidimensional spiritual organizer. This advocate curates space for personal and community wellness transformation using modalities from Espiritismo, Kemetic yoga, meditation, energy/body work, and grassroots organizing. Having origins in Isla Boriken (Puerto Rico), he is fueled by the constant erasure of his community and so he strives to learn and share healing arts to support shifts in our collective inner pain into active power. This spiritual warrior has 18 years of life experience and training within Esperitismo and a multitude of Afro-spiritual religions including Palo Mayumbe & Lukumi/Santeria. Carlos is a certified Reiki practitioner and Kemetic yoga instructor, and an emotional release facilitator which are the power tools he uses to reintroduce POC into their healing evolution.
Dreamer. Daughter. Dancer. Lover. Prison abolitionist. Movement fairy. Earth adoring. Liberation believing. Donnay is a Brooklyn born Black Femme from a working class background in Brooklyn NY, where she was raised by a collective of single mothers. She trusts that the power of art can help us envision a future where all our complex love-centered imaginations can flourish. She winds through writing, poetry, theatre of the oppressed, and movement and integrates herbalism in her work. Donnay has a BA from Oberlin and MFA from Pratt. She is currently a member of social justice hip hop theatre company Truthworker, and a teaching artist flowering love around the city.
Nkoula Badila is a multi-talented artist/healer born into a traditional Congolese dancing and drumming family. She is also part of a traveling cosmic soul band, Ladymoon and the Eclipse. Nkoula also makes her own music (Nkodia via SoundCloud) inspired by traditional polyrhythmic melodies from her homeland. Nkoula is the creator of her jewelry business named Nkodia, the name symbolizes the spiral and honors the patience of the inward~outward process like the snail. Nkodia jewelry was established in 2011 after her travels in South America and Africa. The beautiful artwork and craftsmanship of the locals, the warmth in their creations, and the love of their traditions is what keeps her Inspired to express through healing colors.
In conjunction with Udemezue's Recess Session project, Duppy. Duppy reflects Udemezue’s complex longings and projections of nostalgia toward his and his mother’s homeland, Jamaica. Udemezue created a sculptural installation made from printed images, resin, found objects, and audio recordings of conversations with members of the artist’s personal circle that delve into the issues of race, misogyny, homophobia, family lineage, and ancestry.