Living Room Session 5

Shaquille Shaniqua Joy is an interdisciplinary creative focusing on storytelling through different mediums. Within the cultural sector, her role ranges from researching to conceptualizing and writing, focusing on moderation and program-making. Her excitement for people and their fascinations is the base of her practice. As a moderator she always strives to have conversations rather than interviews. 

Within her work, Shaquille explores sociopolitical and pop cultural subjects by combining research and the embodied experiences of herself and others. This has led her to a range of conversations and programs, including live and recorded panel talks, reporting formats and exhibitions in collaboration with cultural institutions, organizations and museums, as well as commercial brands.

Floating within the liminal realm between art and design, Sandy’s practice involves a diverse array of intertwining disciplines. She researches and reflects on Caribbean narratives within critical issues pertaining to cultural transmission, geopolitics and mental health. These narratives, depending on how they’re best depicted and shared, she embeds into (digital) objects, textile pieces, photo-series and even recipes.

Her practice and resulting work aim to mutually soothe, empower and expand identities for both those engaging with the work as well as personally for Sandy herself.

Tarona (1985, Curaçao) is an artist & director, currently based in Rotterdam. She has dedicated her career to exploring the complexities of identity while creating a space for the Black Diaspora to cultivate a new way of knowing and being.

In 2021 she was granted a four year Mondriaan Fund for Established Artists to further expand her work, research and artistic practices after having received Mondriaan Fund Emerging Talent a year prior.

She directed her first film in 2020, titled ‘Pivot’; a film about Black performances in white spaces, which saw its first light on the 4:3 film platform (by Boiler Room), went on to be exhibited + screened across multiple institutes & festivals across Europe & US.

kairo fumilayo edward, born in 2000 is a Swiss-Nigerian performing artist whose work is located in the in-betweens. kairo’s practice revolves around retracing their heritage and challenging the prevailing canon, (visual) habits and norms within the West-European performing arts scene. Through their diverse practices encompassing, crafting sonic landscapes, songwriting, acting and performance making, kairo delves into the intersections of ancestral realms and contemporary pop culture, composing visceral experiences that blur the boundaries between past, present and future.

🧜🏼🫧🪸water spirits🪸🫧🧜🏾‍♀️ is part of an ongoing research on West-African origin stories, folktales and mythology, particularly coming from the Òrìṣà culture of the Yoruba people.

Zacquel Phipps is a trans-disciplinary artist working at the intersections of dance, writing, music and modern science. Some themes Zacquel explores his works are de/post-colonialist practices, anthromorphism, human polarity and magnetism and the deconstructions of academic conventions of dance.

 Naomi is a German-Guinean movement artist, based in Germany and the Netherlands. Their movement archive consists of training in western styles like Contemporary and Ballet as well as afro-diasporic dance styles such as Hip Hop and House. Naomi’s research revolves around creating a fusion of their varied training, all the while focusing on finding ways to let go of eurocentric and heteronormative codes that are imbedded in many of the dance techniques they embody. This practice is about finding empowerment through movement.

Ezri Jade is a Guyanese/Dutch multidisciplinary creative. Inspired by her roots and Pan-African belief, she takes you on a musical journey exploring the diaspora in it’s many forms. While her selecting journey started close to home with Reggae, her sound expands to (Afro-)electronic and eclectic riddims.