Healing Dances for Art Spaces
Envision moving Poetry in the form of dance on the walls of your museum or gallery or other art space, dance that was created with the express purpose of igniting the healing process of the viewer.
That is what my Healing Poemdances are – I created this name for these works of healing art, because they are often dances that are crafted from my poetry, informed by my knowledge as a medical doctor, and made to heal.
My Healing Poemdances can be experienced as a video installation in your art space and/or as a live performance by me. I also create site and/or topic-specific Healing Poemdances for art spaces and communities.
If you are interested in my live performance of my Healing Poemdances AND/OR installing them as a video/film exhibit, please contact me at the email address below. I am also open for commissions, creating a site-specific and topic-specific Healing Poemdance.
Learn more about my art process and view video art samples HERE.
Contact me at tumi.johnson@gmail.com for more information.
Artist Bio
Tumí Johnson is a Nigerian-American dance performance artist, poet, and physician.
She quit stable jobs as both a hospitalist and company dancer for two reasons: art and healing.
In 2006, Tumí went to work as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders in the Sahel desert. When she returned to her usual work in NYC, she realized she couldn’t unsee what she had seen: art as medicine.
Tumí had found that sharing her dance in Africa was powerful medicine. She returned to the States to begin creating a newer and truer way to be of service to others.
That service is her Healing Poemdances. These dances are crafted from her poetry, her experience as a physician, and performed to powerfully ignite and propel delicious healing in the viewer.
She has now performed several of her Poemdances around the world, and creates films of her Poemdance performances for video installations in art spaces.
A Sample from My Healing Poemdance Les Mères
