Sabrina Miller is a British Jamaican multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and curator. Sabrina's work is influenced by the wisdoms that arise through the rituals and rhythms of everyday life and her practice seeks to recognise and discern the essential connections and tensions that emerge from these experiences by using storytelling methodologies to name and study sites of relationship through a didactical and diasporic lens.

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Memories. Memories of sunlight and soft wind dancing on white curtains, travelling to each individual photo to shine a likeness on an Aunty or Ancestor who paved the way. Sweet melodies. Sweet melodies on the radio of reggae, dub, or dancehall booming the legacies of rebellion, of culture, of the Island’s own rhythmic language—an embodied politic of revolt. Sitting in this living room with a living sound, I am transported back to a space of memory through Sabrina Miller’s work. A memory of our shared heritage but also a memory that is recreated to meet the language of what it means and meant for people of the diaspora to be well. 

Reflecting on the theme of wellness and the industry it has become, Miller, a multi-disciplinary, decolonial artist and facilitator of British-Jamaican decent, created a work that invites audiences to journey through a personal and familial understanding of what ‘wellness’ could mean beyond the understanding and standardisations of Western society. What is wellness for the diaspora? What does it mean for marginalised peoples to construct joy in a world that sees their bodies as pure labour—from the beginnings of colonisation to its contemporary capitalist permutation. Can wellness be as simple as popping a probiotic, or might it also be those moments of creating dances and telling stories in the middle of the living room floor? 

‘A practice of daily livity through Sankofa songs: a blues passed down’ brings us, literally, into this space of wellness, a true space of “livity” which in Rastafari terminology means a realisation of life force or the righteous, ever living power within us. I can’t help but reflect on Fariha Róisín’s recent text—Who is Wellness For—which was also a huge theoretical inspiration for Miller’s work. Roísín speaks about how wellness has become a commodity geared towards the wealthy, White and able-bodied folk of late capitalism which perpetuates unequal hierarchies of gatekeeping in which “less-privileged others” i.e. POC, queer, trans, poor and working class—who would actually benefit from wellness as a liberatory practice, are kept out. This very thought, the images of radical black feminist ancestors like bell hooks and Audre Lorde in Miller’s recreated living room, and the radio playing personal stories and speeches foraged as a sonic experience, not only invites the audience into questioning the wellness industry, but seeing that Wellness is about healing and self-discovery through a collective reckoning with the lived legacies of racism and colonialism which also demands taking up themes of trauma and identity through a social justice lens. 

As Miller says in the voice-over, it’s about “livity, to live well, so we can keep telling the stories that we need to tell”, because it’s in the stories that we confront the past and heal it. It’s in the stories we find laughter amidst the pain; individual identity through collective connection; true wellness; joy. It’s in the stories—so we keep telling the stories.

[ Written by Victoria McKenzie, research architect, educator, artist and founder of RRA Agency ]