thirdspacearts
Melissa Raman Molitor, ATR-BC, LCPC
Life is not what you alone make it.
Life is the input of everyone who touches your life and every experience that enters it.
We are all part of one another.
Yuri Kochiyama
Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become, what we are at this moment. - Nick Joaquín
I am a first generation South Asian Pacific Islander American of Filipinx and Indian descent, a cisgender able-bodied woman, a US born citizen, the daughter of immigrants, a descendant of healers, a working mother to mixed race children, a feminist-activist, caregiver, mental health practitioner, educator, socially engaged artist, and scholar in terms not defined by a white, colonial, patriarchal, academic system, but by womxn storytellers, cultural weavers and social framers.
My work explores the visual, performative and culinary arts as acts of disruption, solidarity and care. I seek to create spaces in my community where art making and creative engagement are forms of critical consciousness and healing justice. Spaces that exist in between and outside of the 'norm' and center non-dominant stories that are often silenced or go unheard.
Through my work I seek to create third spaces as a form of healing justice in my community. These spaces exist in between and outside of the 'norm' and utilize the arts to center stories that are often silenced or go unheard.
What is Third Space Arts?