On Being in Your Body was created to challenge the ways humans are conditioned to relate to their bodies. OBIYB is a collection of ephemera that asks the viewer to take pause. It exists online, on paper, and in our skin. It is a reclamation and the love child of two writers, artists, and academics who are in constant pursuit of returning to the body. We are a small press that creates zines, alternative publications, and workbooks for personal growth. We collect stories, make space for other voices, teach workshops, and online classes. Our project is about discovering, remembering, and taking back what was taken from us as individuals and as a community.
We focus on how bodies have been conditioned to perform in space through social codes, institutions, childhood, and various systems of power. Through manifesto writing, group discussion, workshops, radical embodiment and self-portraiture—we are passionate about unraveling the multiplicity of what makes us, well, us. We firmly believe that dismantling broken systems of power and healing the body cannot be done without community engagement through organic presence and discussion. We learn together, we grow together, and that’s what we’re here to facilitate—to help humans find their way back home to themselves.
We believe that "together" is the way home. OBIYB is predominantly a space for womxn, queer and non-binary humans to feel supported in their quest towards dismantling and reclaiming their bodies.
Victoria Emanuela
WRITER
MEDITATION TEACHER
EMBODIMENT COACH
OAKLAND, CA
Victoria's work centers around understanding and transforming trauma, somatic writing, and the art of embodiment as reclamation. She's dedicated to deconstructing the performance of being human and what it means to have a body. Overcoming complex PTSD and living with a chronic illness, Victoria was deeply called towards helping people overcome life's adversity by cultivating a rooted connection to their body and coping through self-exploratory writing.
Find Victoria's adventures onInstagram.
Caitlin Metz
ARTIST + DESIGNER
EDUCATOR
TENDER QUEER
ST. LOUIS, MO
Caitlin spends her time exploring self portraiture, writing manifestos and deconstructing the subjugation and disembodiment of the female form. Her work revolves around multiplicity of identity, anxiety and claiming ones self through movement, nature and art making. She is a tender queer, that wants to fuck shit up with empathy.
She can be found over sharing her emotions on instagram.
//EVENT//
June 15: On Being In Your Body Installation
Join resident artists Caitlin Metz and Victoria Emanuela, co-creators of On Being in Your Body Small Press, for their installation show featuring the documentation of two artist’s creative practice as they process complex PTSD through the trope of creation as self-preservation. Caitlin Metz’s installation, Stillness as a Verb, will document the exploration of what it means to be still and how to be okay when you’re not in survival mode, even when it hurts. Victoria Emanuela’s installation, Plumes of Grief, will document the journey of the inner child, cycles of generational trauma, and what it means to reclaim our pain as a measure of our healing
5-8pm. Free!