Artist Biographies

Bernard Akoi-Jackson is an artist and writer whose performance-based practice employs “disturbed methodologies,” a critical framework that interrogates postcolonial and decolonial conditions. Trained in painting and sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, he expanded his practice to performance and object-oriented, participatory installations in 2003. In 2007 he began the REDTAPEONBOTTLENECK project, a multidisciplinary participatory work that blends humor and pseudo-ritual as part of a decolonial critique. This and subsequent performances, presented in exhibitions such as An Age of Our Own Making (Reflection II), Roskilde, Denmark; Silence Between the Lines, Kumasi, Ghana; Material Effects, East Lansing, USA; WATA don PASS: Looking West, Lagos, Nigeria, and Malmö, Sweden; and Time, Trade and Travel, Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Accra, Ghana, create spaces for collective inquiry and reflection on the absurdities in colonial bureaucracy and cultural regulation. Akoi-Jackson is also featured in the invitational exhibition in this year’s edition of La Biennale de Venezia as a member of blaxTARLINES Kumasi collective based in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, College of Art and Built Environment, KNUST, Kumasi.

b. 1982, Port-Harcourt, Nigeria
ruby onyinyechi amanze’s practice consists of large-scale drawings on paper that explore the magical potential of space. Her work focuses on the delicate balance between physical magnitude and aesthetic weightlessness. Using seven recurring elements, amanze designs minimal spatial interactions that imagine alternative ways of movement through space. Rooting her research in the dimensional languages of architecture, design and dance, amanze creates three-dimensional drawings that challenge traditional perceptions of the medium. In addition to her drawing practice, amanze creates temporary dance companies to choreograph and perform a ‘first and last’ work before dissolution. Previous companies include The Deck; performing tell me a way you pretend to be strong [2021] and Sin Red Laboratoria de Danza; performing silence is not the end [2025]. amanze holds a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University [2004, Summa cum laude] and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art [2006]. Her work has been included in the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo as well as numerous exhibitions and programs at The Drawing Room and Drawing Center in London and New York, respectively. She has exhibited her work globally in Paris, Johannesburg, Seoul and Lagos. Her work became a permanent fixture of New York City's public art landscape following a 2025 Metropolitan Transportation Authority commission. In addition, her drawings have been collected by the Smithsonian, Deutsche Bank, New Orleans Museum of Art, The Hessel Museum of Art and the Studio Museum of Harlem. amanze is a life-long athlete. This detail is important to everything.

Jelili Atiku is a celebrated Nigerian performance artist and sculptor whose work confronts the overlapping forces of colonialism, globalization, neoliberalism, nationalism, and environmental degradation. Educated at Ahmadu Bello University (BFA) and the University of Lagos (MFA), he has developed a distinctive practice that foregrounds indigenous knowledge and political activism, evolving from his sustained commitment to the development of decolonial artistic strategies. Atiku’s performances often incorporate Yoruba spiritual traditions, ritualistic movements, and symbolic materials to challenge social, political, and environmental issues. He uses his body as a medium to express resistance, resilience, and healing, addressing topics like human rights, environmental degradation, and social injustice. His notable works include “Ejìwàrò: The Unearthly” and “Festival of the Earth,” showcased at prestigious venues like the Venice Biennale. Atiku’s artistic approach is deeply rooted in Yoruba cosmology and mythology, often incorporating elements of Ifa divination, Orisha worship, and ancestral reverence. He believes in the power of art to transform and heal, using his performances to spark dialogue, raise consciousness, and inspire collective action. His groundbreaking contributions to performance art and social advocacy have earned him international recognition, including the Prince Claus Award in 2015. Atiku’s work continues to inspire audiences globally, solidifying his position as a leading voice in contemporary African art.

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [aka crazinisT artisT] is a Ghanaian trans woman, multidisciplinary artivist, curator, mentor, philanthropist, and “artvangelist” living and working between Kumasi, Ghana, and Berlin, Germany. Through performance, installation, photography, video, and ritual-based practice, Va-Bene investigates gender, queerness, identity politics, anti-Blackness, systemic oppression, and the body as a site of resistance and transformation. For Va-Bene, art, life, and care are inseparable forms of practice. She is the founder and artistic director of crazinisT artisT studiO (TTO), Our Railway Cinema Gallery (ORCG), and the perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR), and the initiator of the Va-Bene Scholarship and Mentorship Residency Abroad and the Trans African Ambassadors Network (TAAN). Alongside her internationally presented practice, she has created and personally self-funded opportunities for emerging Ghanaian artists and queer creatives through scholarships, residencies, mentorship, and community care. Va-Bene is the recipient of the 2024 Prince Claus Impact Award and the 1st Prize of the Neuköllner Kunstpreis 2026 for Monument of Second Skin.

Jermay Michael Gabriel is an Italian-Eritrean-Ethiopian artist whose experimental and multifaceted practice deeply explores themes of identity, memory, and transformation. His work unfolds like a complex stratigraphy, reminiscent of ancient architectures worn by time, where hidden traces resurface: fragments of stories seemingly condemned to oblivion. These layers, both material and symbolic, establish a constant dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between what is concealed and what unexpectedly emerges. His research investigates the epistemological constructions between Europe and Africa, decanonizing the European colonial imagination and its multiple stratifications. Through the use of archival materials, architectural references, and hybrid visual languages – spanning performance, photography, and installation – Gabriel examines the intersections of identity, the body, and collective memory. An implicit question runs through his work: are these stories destined to remain buried under the dust of time, or will they resurface to be observed, interpreted, and continually reread? The tension between the act of burying and that of revealing lies at the core of his poetics, which resists definitive answers and invites the viewer to engage with the unspeakable and the unexpressed. Through sound and installation, Gabriel constructs layered, non-linear narratives, creating a true archive of memories and traces where past, present, and future intertwine. His work challenges the gaze to decipher images suspended between objectivity and illusion, between the tangibility of memory and the suspicion of doubt.

Tsedaye Makonnen is an interdisciplinary artist-curator whose work spans across performance, sculpture, textile, installation, and film. Born in Washington, D.C., to Ethiopian immigrants, she draws on her East African heritage, Black feminist theory, diasporic knowledge systems and spiritual technologies, birthwork and migration studies to create works that center social justice and foster greater global equity. Closely connected to, yet distinct from, her sculptural work, Makonnen’s performance practice has received international recognition. In 2019, as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, she staged When Drowning Is the Best Option at the Venice Biennale, a performance addressing global migration and displacement, honoring Black life. She returned in 2022 as part of Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a global Black woman convening organized in conjunction with Simone Leigh’s U.S. Pavilion, contributing a multimedia performance that centered Blackness across bodies of water and borders while exploring care, freedom, and diasporic world-making. Her installations have also been included in major museum exhibitions in the United States, including Africa and Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ethiopia at the Crossroads at the Walters Art Museum. She currently has a solo exhibition titled Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Wura-Natasha Ogunji is a visual artist and performer. Her works include drawings, videos and public performances. Ogunji’s practice is deeply inspired by the daily interactions and frequencies that occur in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, from the epic to the intimate. Ogunji’s performances explore the presence of women in public space; these often include investigations of labor, leisure, freedom and frivolity. Recent exhibitions include O Poder de Minhas Mãos, SESC Pompéia, São Paulo; A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, Tate Modern; rīvus, 23rd Biennale of Sydney; and The Power of My Hands: Afrique(s) artistes femmes, Museum of Modern Art, Paris. Ogunji was an Artist-Curator for the 33rd São Paulo Bienal where her large-scale performance Days of Being Free premiered. She has also exhibited at: Palais de Tokyo; The Lagos Biennial; Kochi-Muziris Biennale; Stellenbosch Triennale; Seattle Art Museum; Brooklyn Art Museum; and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Ogunji is a recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation; The Dallas Museum of Art; and the Idea Fund. Ogunji’s works are in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; International African American Museum, Charleston; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; North Dakota Museum of Art; The University of Texas at Austin; Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College; and Kadist Foundation. She has a BA from Stanford University (1992, Anthropology) and an MFA from San Jose State University (1998, Photography). She resides in Lagos where she is founder of the experimental art space The Treehouse.

Zora Snake is a choreographer, performer, and founder of the Zora Snake Company and the pan- African festival MODAPERF (Movements, Dances & Performances). Drawing from his Bamiléké heritage and combining indigenous performance practices with urban dance and hip- hop, his works interrogate power, memory, and identity. Snake’s immersive choreography, presented across Africa, Europe, and South America, centers social justice and collective transformation. His global reach includes, among others, his L’Opéra du Villageois, a performance that confronts histories of imperial violence, past and present, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2024 as part of a European tour. Staged at the Arsenale’s Navy Officers’ Club, the work opened space to address the extraction of African artworks and to consider the possibilities of repatriation and repair.