S1 E5: Sophia Ellis — Art as a form of resistance and wellness

In this week’s episode we welcome Sophia Ellis, an artist, educator, curator, and cultural critic. She is a current Public Humanities Master’s student at Brown University and friend of Zahra from undergrad, so we get into a familiar yet insightful conversation about the reflections from our first experiences in the wellness world and Sophia explains how art serves as a form of resistance and wellness.

Sophia also shares with us a bit of her personal story and what drew her, and like many others, to mainstream wellness practices in the first place. We discuss the binary that exists between mainstream wellness culture and its counterculture. Sophia and Hien point out the ways mainstream wellness culture benefits us by providing some relief but is also potentially dangerous by promoting utopic ideals while upholding oppressive or dehumanizing systems.

Sophia tells us about her experiences living abroad, specifically about the division she saw between wellness practices held in communities for locals versus wellness opportunities marketed to travelers. Sophia and Zahra get into their experiences with wellness travel in Southeast Asia and reflect upon the industry’s ties to imperialist and dehumanizing values. As an English teacher in Vietnam, Sophia tells us about the Western influence on these schools' curriculum and we get into a conversation on the “banking model of education.”

As an artist and educator, Sophia talks to us about art as a facet of wellness. She educates us on the concept of “community art” with beautiful examples of how folks use it to resist colonial or oppressive structures. She also reminds us that art is the way we tell and process our stories, and collective art projects do so on a community scale. We all discuss our perspectives on how art and education play into our wellness.

During this conversation, Sophia mentions an article by Shreena Gandhi and Lillie Wolff that is linked here:

Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation article

Follow us on social media

Twitter: @ThoughtfulWRPod

Instagram: @ThoughtfulWellnessRevolution

Episode transcript

For bonus content, subscribe to our Substack.

If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate and review on Apple or Podchaser

Theme song: Katy Pearson