Breathing Roots

2010

Sika Gallery, Bali, Indonesia-Myanmar Performance Art Exchange

Some plants, such as the Banyan tree, sustain themselves through aerial roots that descend from their branches — extensions that inhale and exhale through the earth, performing a rhythm of survival known as breathing roots. These roots embody autonomy; they find their own air and nourishment, adapting to thrive even in constrained environments.

For Zoncy Heavenly, this natural resilience mirrors the quiet endurance of many women around her — women who remain in abusive or unfaithful relationships, not out of choice, but to avoid losing face within their communities. Their silence becomes a form of suffocation, a learned discipline of survival within social structures that deny them the freedom to breathe on their own terms.

“If a tree can engineer its own breathing space,” the artist asks, “why is a woman still denied the air to exist freely within her own atmosphere?”

Through this poetic inquiry, Zoncy transforms observation into metaphor, revealing how social expectations function as invisible roots — binding, restraining, yet also hinting at the latent power of self-sustained life beneath the surface.