The Act of Growing Up: Emanations of a Soul Nerve Revival

The Act of Growing Up: Emanations of a Soul Nerve Revival is Laub’s 2018 solo exhibition at Visitor Welcome Center in Los Angeles, California. Inspired by Resmaa Menakem’s seminal book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Laub looks to the vagus nerve, which Menakem calls the soul nerve, to reorient our habits of feeling. 

When viewers first walk in, they are invited to sit and wash each other’s feet at a foot washing station. Throughout the space are quilted and embroidered portraits of Laub’s niece with other family members. Several glass boxing gloves hang in pairs on the wall, evoking feelings of fragility within masculinity. In the back room plays a video of a sleeping lamb with a soundtrack of lullabies that Laub composed.