Tumí Johnson

Lives and works in San Diego, CA

Artist statement

I begin with my feet naked on the earth. That earth might be a sea-kissed beach in Tanzania, a limestone rock in Croatia, a wooden floorboard of a small apartment in New York City. My feet are bare to better listen. It is the way of my ancestors: I begin with a pain within that mirrors a dis-ease I have witnessed in the world. A woman with congestive heart failure whose heart has been broken not just physically but emotionally from childhood abuse. A community that is ravaged by a depression they don’t have words for. A world in which cruelty is normalized. That pain within might first fall out of me into a poem, then be shaped into dance. That pain might begin with my body curving into shapes and sequences which then give me the words to craft the poem. My process sometimes crystallizes into the dance first, sometimes first the poetry, sometimes a simultaneous interplay of both, creating what I call my Healing Poemdances. But it always starts with the still small voice saying “pay. attention. inside. now.” Pain. Pain that echoes a need for healing in the world. As a dance performance and video artist, poet, and physician, my work blends dance performance, poetry, and my health knowledge to powerfully awaken the healing process of the viewer. My Healing Poemdances are art that can be experienced as live performance or as video installation. It is an honor to transmit art as medicine.

Artwork