Sokari Ekine

The Society for AfroFuture Visionaries – Ola Osaze

Congratulations to this year’s recipient of The Society of AfroFuture Visionaries in They Own Category, Ola Osifo Osaze.   Ola is a trans masculine queer of Edo and Yoruba descent.  Ola is the “National Organizer for the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project and has been a community organizer for many years, including working with Transgender Law Center, the Audre Lorde Project, Uhuru Wazobia (one of the first LGBT groups for African immigrants in the US), Queers for Economic Justice and Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Ola is a 2015 Voices of Our Nation Arts workshop (VONA) fellow, and has writings published in Apogee, Qzine, Black Girl Dangerous, Black Looks, and the anthologies Queer African Reader and Queer Africa II.”

 

 

 

Alexis De Veaux and Sokari Ekine, January 2019

 

“Breath Erotica” – “we have poetry so we will not die of history”

Introduction to Love | Hope | Community
Sexualities & Social Justice in the Caribbean, Online Multimedia Edition

With thanks to Rosamond S. King & Angelique V. Nixon – Co-Directors, Caribbean International Resource Network   for inviting myself and Alexis De Veaux to be part of this event.

 

“Breath Erotica” (Visual Story)

by Alexis DeVeaux and Sokari Ekine

I pray for us
as evening glides over
implore the gods
pray for us pray
for this breathing
planet the milky way
dreams us
into galaxy
no need for heaven
this is how it started:
way out beyond we
below
the sweet of your lips
dipped in promise
anxieties claim us
bark and skin
what we cannot
remember we give birth
to
“we have poetry so
we will not die
of history”

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Black Portraitures III : Johannesburg

Spirit Desire is a series of photographic essays by photographer Sokari Ekine, that explore African Diasporic spiritual practices as spaces of resistance, imagination and sacred memories. The first series [Memwa sakre: – lespri ki nan nou menm. Sacred memories: -The spirits within us ] is a celebration of Haitian Vodoun as a site of resistance, decolonization and community.

The work of Sokari was recently presented by Alexis De Veaux at  “Black Portraitures III : Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures” in Johannesburg, 17 – 19, November, 2016.

The series of photographs “made” by the Nigerian British, self-described black queer feminist photographer Sokari Ekine, beginning in 2013, in Haiti, usher in the photographer’s project, “Spirit Desire.” As codified by Ekine, the project attempts to document [and, ultimately, participate in] black diasporic spiritual practices. Spending extended periods of time in Haiti, Ekine documents ritual, ceremonial, and everyday practices in multiple Haitian spiritual communities known as “lakou.”

 

Artistic Intimacies: A Salon

 

Artistic Intimacies is a Salon that seeks to be in conversation with notions of intimacy at a time when external technologies counter human connections.  Artistic Intimacies began in 2014 in Brooklyn as a contemporary iteration of the Flamboyant Ladies Theatre Company Salons which were co-hosted by Gwendolen Hardwick and Alexis De Veaux in 1980s Brooklyn.

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