Over the last year and a half I’ve been seeking out and applying to grants to help me scale and amplify the ceremonial work that is pressing its way through me. A convalescence of story, masks, and adornment as ancient pathways for invoking possibility and stimulating transformations.
I believe in the transgressive power of art and the liberatory nature of the imagination, and will remain devoted to what is birthing its way through my ancestrally liminal body.
To receive funding for my work would be such a holy boon, allowing me the kind of support that is needed within a culture that requires an economic survival dance. So I’m in the running with The People’s Artist and I would deeply appreciate your help.
Vote for Me: https://peoplesartist.org/2026/tempist-jade-Iyu3
If you follow the link above you will come to my profile and can vote there.
Thank you so much for taking a few seconds out of your day to bring me closer to the kind of funding that would expand the presence of my work in and with the world.
Photos & Beadwork by Tempist Jade
Each mask will be utilized in the sacred enactment of a forthcoming short story.
What would you do with $25,000?
I would be able to scale my projects by compensating local community artists (i.e. costume design to accompany masks, photography), fund the publication of my stories via print and video formats (professional recording of performance art), and have more uninterrupted time to devote myself to my writing and mask making.
What does it mean to imagine within the territories of collapse when the world can feel hopeless?
War tearing through communities and ecologies, spilling blood across charred soil and singed seeds. Precious lives of more-than-human and human extinguished by genocide and the greedy hunger for power.
I sometimes think there aren’t enough hymns in the world to beat back the onslaught of such mass colonial & imperial-led despair.
I’ve heard several beloveds recently speak of hopelessness’s weighted presence; of not knowing what to do. I, myself, sensed its demeanor lurking at the edges of my dreaming. Without fail, my curiosity peeked, begging me to investigate hope’s etymology.
With Old English origins, it roughly means “confidence in the future” & “an expectation of something desired.”
But as species disappear, as ecologies crumble and seek reconfiguration, as billions of lives are incinerated, confidence in the future seems like a tall order of bitter futility.
I have to say, I’m uninspired by words like “expectation” and “confidence,” and even less so of concepts like “looking forward.” They’re insufficient dreamers, and lack creativity. I’d prefer to look sideways, peripherally, horizontally, and upside down-ly.
I’ve grown tired of being instructed to hope for a better tomorrow. I’d much rather place my faith in uncertainty, for within that lives the mystery of our shared existence. Within that lives unbridled imagination-the Mother of endless possibilities.
Possibilities whose scent and sound give body and presence to an indeterminate world. A world that will never yield to the demands of perpetual growth. A world that exists beyond the teetering edges of transformation.
None of what I devote myself to will ever save the world, nor would I want it to. The world is woven out of far too many multitudes for that.
What I can do is offer my participation, and let myself be wielded by a greater dreaming. To let my desires (that word I like) unfurl, each a petaled promise to keep gifting the world beauty.
That is what each mask-being is — a promise. Ones that carry a story whose farther reaching impact remains a mystery, especially to me.
With deep love for the world,
Tempist
Vote for Me: https://peoplesartist.org/2026/tempist-jade-Iyu3
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