{"id":15315,"date":"2026-01-22T14:23:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T19:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artspond.com\/?page_id=15315"},"modified":"2026-02-06T11:48:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:48:39","slug":"bad-for-business","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/artspond.com\/fr\/ilmgo-projects\/bad-for-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad for Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image source=\u00a0\u00bbfeatured_image\u00a0\u00bb img_size=\u00a0\u00bb1920×720″ add_caption=\u00a0\u00bbyes\u00a0\u00bb css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=\u00a0\u00bb1\/2″][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]Created by<\/strong>
\nKamee Abrahamian,
\nFellow, I Love My Gig Ontario 2025<\/a><\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\u00a0\u00bb1\/2″][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]Published<\/strong>
\nFebruary 4, 2026[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]This piece is a poetic reflection on care, creativity, and politicized artmaking. It is rooted in diasporic experience, burnout, and belonging. It weaves personal narrative, community visioning, and a residency experiment into a call for relational, rest-centered cultural work.<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]In Taking Care of Your Self<\/a><\/strong>, my dear friend Sundus Abdul Hadi writes:[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]<\/p>\n

We were never marginal. We are expansive.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]These words have scorched themselves into my spirit. Like a prayer, they\u2019ve guided my recent musings. Through ArtsPond\u2019s I Love My Gig Ontario fellowship, I was able to carve out space and time to crystallize my reflections, struggles, and longings around care and community-rooted creative practice. I distilled my burning questions and responded to them through a blend of personal essay and poetry, interwoven with 35mm photography taken on my father\u2019s old Ricoh camera during time spent living and visiting my homeland.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb15317″ add_caption=\u00a0\u00bbyes\u00a0\u00bb css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text]I grew up in an immigrant community in Toronto called Scarborough, but I now live in a place that is not only far from culturally diverse, but also heavily reliant on a tourism economy\u2014one that feels increasingly precarious for those who depend on it to survive. In places like this, politicized art is rarely practiced, let alone celebrated. When it does appear in public, it\u2019s often seen as disruptive\u2014bad for business.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]As a politicized artist and storyteller, I\u2019m often on the edge of burnout. That pressure is compounded by the struggle to build a creative community of care in a place where I don\u2019t always feel I belong. Part of that is the diasporic dysphoria I\u2019ve carried all my life. But part of it is the conditions of the place I live in now. I am, in many ways, bad for business. And\/but I refuse to accept that this is fixed, final, or unchangeable.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb15318″ add_caption=\u00a0\u00bbyes\u00a0\u00bb css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]I set an intention: to engage with the many communities I belong to\u2014including the one I live in\u2014in ways that are care-centered and life-affirming. In service to those around me, and those I have always and will always be in service to. Through these reflections, I began to trace a path forward\u2014a vision of what could be, if it were aligned with my values, commitments, and needs.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb15319″ add_caption=\u00a0\u00bbyes\u00a0\u00bb css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]What follows is just one piece of that work\u2014a poem, yes, but also a potent invocation of where I\u2019ve landed, and what I\u2019m holding close.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]To live and make politicized art,<\/em>
\nwe need the courage to speak truth in places that reward silence.<\/em>
\nWe need to know where we come from.<\/em>
\nWe need to carry our stories even when no one is listening.<\/em>
\nWe need to show up as whole, unruly selves – especially in spaces that weren\u2019t made for us.<\/em>
\nEspecially when they call our truth \u201cbad for business.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To allow joy and sustainability into the process,<\/em>
\nwe need softness to be a strategy.<\/em>
\nWe need friends who remind us to eat, to dance, to nap.<\/em>
\nWe need to unlearn urgency.<\/em>
\nWe need to remember that pleasure is not a distraction from the work\u2014it is the work.<\/em><\/p>\n

To move beyond survival into thriving as full humans,<\/em>
\nwe need care that is not performative.<\/em>
\nWe need spaces that hold us when we unravel.<\/em>
\nWe need the right to grieve, to wander, to be witnessed.<\/em>
\nWe need rituals of return, and sticky relationships that can hold contradiction.<\/em>
\nWe need to build homes, even in exile.<\/em><\/p>\n

To balance being the productive artist with being the restful muse,<\/em>
\nwe need to refuse the binary entirely.<\/em>
\nWe need to design rhythms, not rules.<\/em>
\nWe need to know when to work, and when to lie down.<\/em>
\nWe need to believe that stopping is also creating.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes, the most radical act is to be still when the world demands performance.<\/em><\/p>\n

And to center care and rest collectively, in real and tangible ways,<\/em>
\nwe need to build what doesn\u2019t yet exist.<\/em>
\nWe need to turn empty houses into sanctuaries.<\/em>
\nWe need to ask what people need\u2014and then actually listen.<\/em>
\nWe need to centre mothers, migrants, misfits.<\/em>
\nWe need to trust that care is not a detour from change\u2014it is the very heart of it.<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]<\/p>\n

About the creator<\/h2>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=\u00a0\u00bb1\/3″][vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb16111″ img_size=\u00a0\u00bb400×400″ add_caption=\u00a0\u00bbyes\u00a0\u00bb css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=\u00a0\u00bb2\/3″][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]Kamee Abrahamian<\/strong> is a queer and SWANA interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, curator, educator, community organizer, caregiver and witch whose work summons ancestral reclamation, diasporic futurism, and justice. Their creative practice is collaborative and oriented towards generative, visionary world-building. They have degrees in cinema, poli-sci, art therapy, and a PhD in liberation psychology. Kamee is a Pushcart nominated writer, a Lambda-awarded playwright, and an alumni resident at VONA, Banff Centre for Arts, and DocX (Duke University). Their short narrative \u00ab\u00a0Transmission\u00a0\u00bb (2019) – the first known Armenian sci-fi film – premiered at BFI Flare. Most recently, Kamee received the 2025 Creative Capital Award, published an award-winning children\u2019s book, and organized a multi-day arts program for a gathering of 4000 global-south feminists in Bangkok.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text css=\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0\u00bb]\u00a9 Kamee Abrahamian, 2025.
\nAll artworks, images, and texts are published with the permission of the artist. The creation and publication of this work was made possible with the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Government of Canada, Ontario Arts Council, and Government of Ontario.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][\/vc_column][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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