one catalyst expression
What I have seen in my life is that one catalyst expression can have an incredible ripple effect, liberating your voice out into the world, transforming into seeds for powerful art, speeches, blogs, books, coaching, conversations…
…so you are recognized as the no-longer hidden revolutionary, coach, healer, dismantler of oppressions that you are.
I’m Shebana Coelho, a performance artist, writer and facilitator of workshops. Originally from India, once based in New Mexico, now in Spain. My work is about playing with fear & freedom and healing through writing & movement ~ all to express what has kept us silent and what wants to speak.
about my journey
shebana coelho
As child in India, I would get fevers from the weight of too many gazes. And I would wail and wail if someone carried me onto anything that resembled a stage.
Once when I got my finger caught in a car door, I just stood there, embodying a belief I lived with for years: you withstand pain by keeping quiet: CHUP in Hindi. Shut up.
No wonder my first career choice, after moving to the US, was behind the camera. For years, I made documentaries about other people’s stories. All the while evading mirrors, asking people to take down photos of me online and secretly nurturing pain and fears that were so formless, they felt impossible to heal.
“Every time fear arrives, I let in it…I serve it tea on my best china…”
A poem I wrote about fear changed my life. It expanded into The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects, a solo play.about confronting all the systems - especially colonizations - that had kept me silent. Once I performed it, it broke open my love of the stage, took me all over the world, and freed me to play with fear instead of being stuck in it. (read more)
“Everyone is colonized by something,” someone said after the first performance. Yes - that. I see colonization as history and also as metaphor for all the things that keep us small and boxed into fears, without us seeing what they are.
Now I am a performance artist and I facilitate workshops to speak louder than your fear. Give the speech, Write the blog. Embody who you are.
I believe we each need a catalyst expression to dismantle structures, visible and invisible, historical and emotional, that keep systemic inequalities alive and keep marginalized people unseen. I believe the revolution begins by expressing and embodying our true nature, one by one, together. May all of us, especially women of color, live our vulnerable intuitive disruptive power. Aagé chalo, let us go.
PHOTOS: GENEVIEVE RUSSEL
Every time fear arrives….a clip from The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects