Autumn Breon on Turning Language into a Ritual of Care and Resistance

Like armor forged by the Amazons, Everyday Oracle emerges as a tarot deck that turns words into tools of resistance, care, and empowerment. Behind the project is Autumn Breon, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice lives at the intersection of conceptual art, activism, and spirituality.

In a world where verbal aggression and hate speech spread effortlessly, Breon reprograms those words to restore their healing and transformative power. The deck, born from the cosmology she calls Planet Esoterica, acts as a portal. Each card functions as a message, spell, or reminder that boundaries are also an act of self-love.

In that universe, where aesthetics converse with both the ancestral and the futuristic, the artist proposes a return to clarity, slowness, and tenderness as forms of resistance. Her vision extends beyond paper and design. Projects like The Care Machine or her recent performance, Care Communion, reveal a consistent thread in which art becomes a vehicle for collective care and shared healing.

We had the opportunity to speak with Autumn Breon about the origin and energy behind Everyday Oracle, her relationship with spirituality as a political act, the influences that have shaped her thinking, and the ways her work continues to weave connections between beauty, truth, and community.

‘Everyday Oracle’ turns language into a tool of resistance and empowerment. What inspired you to transform something as everyday as words into an act of symbolic defense? 

Language has always been both weapon and medicine. I’ve noticed how certain phrases used against Black women carry harm that is so casual it often goes unnamed. Everyday Oracle emerged from the desire to reprogram that language. I think of it as similar to jiu-jitsu, where you’re redirecting the momentum from your opponent’s attack. I wanted to transform words into a protective technology, something you can hold in your hand when the world starts to distort your truth. The cards make refusal visible. They remind us to treat the act of speaking as a ritual and to remember that boundaries are sacred. 

How did you approach the visual and conceptual design to ensure the deck conveyed its message without falling into stereotypes? 

I approached the design process through the lens of honesty and beauty. Each card blends collage and text in ways that feel both ancient and futuristic. I used gradients of color to suggest portals as moments of transition between worlds. It’s important to me in all of my work for the visual language to invite contemplation rather than spectacle. I often think of Christina Sharpe’s definition of beauty as “attentiveness whenever possible to a kind of aesthetic that escaped violence, whenever possible.” That phrase stayed with me throughout the design process. I wanted each card to hold the possibility to exist in a space that refuses distortion and offers clarity instead.. 

You mention that the project is “rooted in the cosmology of Planet Esoterica.” Could you tell us more about that universe and its role in your artistic narrative? 

Planet Esoterica is a world that I access through my practice. It is a realm of abundance powered by care and creativity, a place where ancestors rest and experiment. I imagine it as the afterlife of humans from Planet Earth, and it’s 300 light-years from my studio in Inglewood. Everyday Oracle belongs to this cosmology because it operates through portals. Each card is a message from Esoterica translated into a language we can use here on Earth. The project continues my exploration of how art can open wormholes between what is remembered and what is possible, between the seen and the felt.

‘Care Communion’ also involves audience participation in an act of collective care. Do you see any connections between this ritual and the spirit that drives ‘Everyday Oracle’? 

Absolutely. I just performed Care Communion in New York at the opening of the Soft Weapons exhibition. The audience and I made a beverage together that’s served after an abortion to soothe uterine cramps. Both works live inside the same commitment to care as a shared practice. Care Communion uses food, scent, and sound to create a temporary sanctuary where people can rest in ritual. Everyday Oracle invites that same intimacy through language. Both ask participants to slow down and listen differently. I see refusal as a form of care in both works. The refusal to rush, to perform, to accept harm as normal. They each make space for tenderness as an act of resistance and for beauty as something that must be tended to daily.

Throughout your career, you’ve worked on projects that combine conceptual art, performance, and activism. Is there a previous work you consider a direct precursor to this tarot deck? 

The Care Machine was an early version of what would later become Everyday Oracle. It was a bright pink vending machine that offered free items people identified as care: Narcan, pads, tampons, lip gloss, books, and abortion pill resources. It taught me that art can meet people’s needs while also shifting their sense of what is possible. Everyday Oracle extends that lesson into the emotional and linguistic realm. Where the Care Machine distributes physical items of care, the deck distributes phrases and boundaries that nurture the self. Both are experiments in how art can heal and protect through presence and generosity.

Your pieces evoke a genealogy of artists and thinkers who use spirituality as a form of resistance. Which influences have been most formative for you on this path? 

Adrian Piper’s conceptual clarity shaped my understanding of how intellect can be sacred. Her work proved that an idea can be both minimalist and charged with power at the same time. Toni Morrison taught me how language can create portals through time, and Octavia Butler made me believe that futures can be designed through discipline and care. Cindy Sherman also informs my work, particularly her use of self-portrait as a strategy for multiplicity. Her photographs demonstrate that self-representation can critique and embody archetypes while dismantling them. 

My grandmother also remains a central influence. I know her quiet rituals of daily care were lessons in magic long before I had the language to name them.

In a world saturated with discourse and misinformation, how do you envision ‘Everyday Oracle’ acting as a tool for healing or social transformation? 

Everyday Oracle offers a pause in the noise. Misinformation is so noisy and cacophonous. And that’s by design. Misinformation is designed to distract and confuse us. The cards are prompts for reflection and reminders that stillness and clarity are revolutionary in their own right. They help users reframe how they speak and listen, which is a small but essential form of healing. I see them as instruments of frequency adjustment. Each phrase aligns us closer to returning to truths we already know. They encourage us to make time for everyday beauty, which I see as both spiritual and political work. By paying attention to language, we practice care. By practicing care, we practice liberation. 

If you were to create a new card of the deck, dedicated to your own future, what word or message would it carry? 

Return. It would remind me to return to stillness, to beauty, to care, and to community. I am constantly learning that progress does not always mean forward motion. Sometimes the most radical act is to circle back and tend to what has already been planted. The word “return” holds that lesson. It is a call and a homecoming, a reminder that every act of creation begins and ends in the same place: the care that sustains us.

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