Dreamseeds is a socially engaged art, music, and community healing space centered on dreaming for a more just future. Our installations and workshops create space to engage in reflection and conversation through written prompts, art making, and sound healing. Dreamseeds is co-created by Hannah Brancato and Sanahara Ama Chandra; the project originated with interviews with five anti-sexual violence activists.

The launch of the ongoing project was on view at Gallery CA in Baltimore, MD from October 21, 2022-November 18, 2022. Co-created by Sanahara Ama Chandra and Hannah Brancato, we started from a place of understanding that, from all of our individual and collective experiences ranging from our points of pain to our points of bliss, we have inside of us sparks of ideas that are the seeds with which we can co-create a new world.

Playing throughout this installation are a series of sound portraits created and composed by Sanahara Ama Chandra. Her lyrics and musical responses, played on crystal bowls, were improvised in response to hearing the reflections and hopes for the future brought forth by the original 5 interviewees, as well as the group conversations in a series of 6 “Journey to Dreamseeds” public workshops, which took place between June-October 2022. The original 5 interviews with Ignacio Rivera, Nuala Cabral, Alexis Flanagan, Jadelynn St Dre, and Ama Chandra, were recorded in 2021. You can listen to the sound portraits by Ama Chandra here.

In the center of the exhibition were six stitched tapestries, which are portraits of Ignacio Rivera, Nuala Cabral, Alexis Flanagan, Jadelynn St Dre, Sanahara Ama Chandra, and Hannah Brancato. Each quilt features a quote from that individual’s interview, as a wish and a piece of advice for anyone working for a more just future. The fabric was made by creating cyanotype prints using each interviewee’s hair. The process of cyanotype was originally used to reproduce blueprints. These quilts are a meditation on how the experiences of people engaged in activism results in deep wisdom that is held in our bodies; and it is an exploration of how this wisdom might serve as a blueprint for how to do social justice work in a more sustainable and visionary way.

An installation of handmade paper was installed to form a response wall, asking the question: what is your wildest dream for our future? This paper was created by workshop participants, and by Hannah Brancato, Sanahara Ama Chandra and Kendra Hebel. The question was co-written by Hannah and Ama, and the installation was designed by Hannah. In our dreamseeds workshops and throughout this exhibition, we make paper as a way of composting the old into the new. Made from ground up pieces of writing from from dozens of people, reflecting on things from the past that need to be transformed, this handmade, recycled paper is a physical representation of the ways that we can and must work with our histories, to create a new future. Visitors were invited to write or draw their own response, to add to the weaving.

Move Slowly is an interview series and visual art project featuring conversations between creative activists working to end sexual violence, about the toll activism can take on our bodies, relationships, hearts and minds, and how to create visionary and supportive communities of care. Each interview will be paired with a portrait of the interviewee, based on their words and cyanotype prints of their hair (forthcoming). Through public art and collective storytelling, I am seeking to share and find insights about the relationship between movement building and self-preservation.

For each activist interview, I created a portrait of the activist featuring prints of their hair and a quote from our conversation.