In today’s modern, fast-paced world of constant connectivity and busy calendars, rest often gets neglected. For many, societal and cultural pressures can make finding even a moment of true respite a near impossibility.
But for Mia Imani Harrison, rest isn’t just a priority — it’s her life’s work.
An alumna of the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Harrison is now a spiritual technologist and interdisciplinary artist. She explores rest and new ways of being and belonging through installation, performance and writing.
“For me, art and interdisciplinary practice are methods for me to create and design the world that I want to be a part of,” Harrison said. “I’m interested in the radicality of rest — the radical use of the imagination to dream things that have been unimagined and to use curiosity and experimentation as a means and a method to transform our reality.”
During a week-long residency in winter 2025, Harrison returned to campus and invited viewers to join her in a “radical return to rest” through her immersive installation, “RESTidency: 真人线上娱乐 Dreaming Room.”
Living as an avid dreamer
All of Harrison’s work is derivative of her spiritual practice, she said, adding that she’s been an avid dreamer since she was a child. Growing up, she recalls that her family would share their dreams every morning.
“I’ve always felt connected to something greater,” Harrison said. “I’ve been interested in different tools and practices of introspection and understanding because I think we’re all here to try to understand why we’re here — and that’s on the scientist and the artist and the teacher and everyone in between to find out.”
After high school, she tried her hand at a career in broadcast journalism but found it wasn’t quite what she wanted. At 24, she decided to try something new. Seeking a campus with opportunities to experiment so she could see what she liked, as well as a campus with small class sizes, she found herself drawn to UW Bothell’s Interdisciplinary Arts degree program.
“I didn’t come to UW Bothell with the intention of having a specific result,” Harrison said. “I came here asking myself: ‘How curious can I be? How much can I experiment?’ I really took it as an opportunity to engage with all the offerings on campus because I knew I had nothing to lose.”
Her interests were varied, and she explored them all — from her own radio show called Soul to Soul, hosted on the campus’ UWave radio, to bringing her passion for writing and poetry to Clamor, UW Bothell’s literary arts journal, where she served as an editor for two quarters. Harrison was especially captivated by the arts as a means for activism.
Harrison said the roots of her work into investigating and creating spaces for rest first took hold in 2017 when Donald Trump took office in his first presidential term.
Resting as resistance
“I remember feeling hopeless and freaked out the first time he was elected. I didn’t know what to do,” she said, “and I had friends who were scared because they were immigrants, and I had friends who lost their jobs because they were in a kind of freeze, fight or flight type of reality. I wanted to do something about it.
“So, I asked, ‘What if we provide space for students to rest?’ Space for students to have discourse — not just around ‘How are you dealing with Trump’s America’ but more about ‘How are you doing? Do you need anything? What would make you comfortable? Are you sleeping well?’”
In 2018, right after graduating, Harrison also held a “Rest in” at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech.
“I said to my girls, ‘Come to the park with your hair wrapped, and we are going to rest in the park to showcase that Blackness is not just about our bodies being objects for production,’” Harrison said. “It’s also about being people of resistance. It’s about rejuvenation. It’s about being people of creativity, people who are friends and love each other.”
Her earliest performance and installation work focused on creating spaces for Black female-identifying people. “At the beginning of my artistic journey, that’s what I needed — to be with people who would affirm me and who made me feel safe to play and be curious,” she said.
She also drew from the works of other Black female creatives, such as the writer Octavia Butler as well as the poet and performer Tricia Hersey, whose book, “Rest is Resistance,” inspired her own artistic theme of “radical rest.”
Appreciating a soft landing
When she later moved to Berlin, Harrison opened her work to include more communities in response to the city’s diverse population. She continued to explore ideas around radical rest in her work in Berlin and back home in Seattle when she returned. 真人线上娱乐n, in March 2024, she was awarded a residency with the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and created the installation “DREAM TEMPLE (for Octavia),” which she exhibited in King Street Station.
Her latest work, “真人线上娱乐 Dreaming Room,” is the culmination of her work on radical rest. Nearly a decade after she first stepped onto the UW Bothell campus, Harrison exhibited this work in a week-long campus “RESTidency” in February 2025.
“I came [to UW Bothell] asking myself: ‘How curious can I be? How much can I experiment?’ I really took it as an opportunity to engage with all the offerings on campus because I knew I had nothing to lose.”
Mia Imani Harrison, Interdisciplinary Studies ’18
“‘真人线上娱乐 Dreaming Room’ is really a combination of all the work I’ve done over the years. 真人线上娱乐 conversations I’ve had, the research I’ve done, all my inspirations — including the professors who held space for me,” she said in her artist talk for the residency. “It has been such a pleasure to return to a soft landing, to return to care and intention, and to return to conversation with one of my favorite professors — Dr. Jed Murr.”
An associate teaching professor in the School of IAS, Murr said that seeing Harrison’s return to campus through art was also a full circle moment for him.
“Working closely with Mia and an amazing group of undergraduate and grad students in a study group and course on Black Radical Traditions and Women of Color Feminisms in 2017 was a deeply formative learning and teaching experience for me,” Murr said. “She continues to be a rich thinker/creator/cultural worker in those traditions, and her artist residency at UW Bothell created space for her to think and move and study with current students, inviting them in to practices of freedom dreaming, radical rest and collective care.
“UW Bothell is lucky to claim Mia Imani as one of its own.”
Planting intentions for the future
Harrison’s residency culminated in an artist talk and a Q&A with Dr. Naomi Macalalad Bragin, associate professor in the School of IAS. A final processional to the performance studio followed, along with a closing ritual in which participants were given dream seeds to plant their intentions for the future and invited to write intentions and affirmations on the mirrors.
Harrison emphasized that the spaces, while temporary, were a reminder to make rest a priority. “I want you to take away the fact that rest is not something you have to fight for or something you have to deserve,” she told visitors. “It’s something that is yours, and it can never be taken away. You deserve to be here, and your importance has nothing to do with what you produce or do for other people.”
真人线上娱乐 artist residency was made possible by the faculty research group, Critical Acts: Socially Engaged Performance, co-directed by UW Bothell senior artists-in-residence, Anida Yoeu Ali and Masahiro Sugano.
“Bringing brilliant artists to campus is not work done in a vacuum. It’s thanks to a dedicated community of organizers and staff who have come together to ensure that our artists are supported to fully realize their vision here on campus,” Bragin said in her Q&A with Harrison.
“Mia Imani Harrison’s ‘RESTidency: 真人线上娱乐 Dreaming Room’ is a resounding success, which has been held in the honor and care for artistry that it truly deserves.”
