Speakers and Workshop Provider
Symposium
Black Irish Contemporary Cultural Production and Social Processes
Henrique J. Paris
Henrique J. Paris is a transdisciplinary artist whose research observes ideas of personal space(s) in relation to colonialism and epistemicide – investigating how “desensitisation” performs through public forces while his works articulate private subjects, interested in sensitising quotidian allegories in counter-colonial
grammar. Henrique’s approach is often site specific and take corporeality as a starting point. Using design, multimedia installations and performance.
Marianne Keating
Marianne Keating is an Irish artist and researcher based in London. She has a practice-based PhD in Visual & Material Culture from Kingston University, London and a MA from the Royal College of Art, London.
She was recently shortlisted to represent Ireland in the 2022 Venice Biennale and has exhibited extensively throughout Ireland and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Jaou, Tunis, Tunisia (2022); Black Tower Projects, London (2020); the Crawford Art Gallery, Ireland (2019); RAMPA, Porto, Portugal (2019); Stanley Picker Gallery, London (2019); South London Gallery, London (2019); Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2018) and Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Barbados (2018).
Ingrid Lyons
Ingrid Lyons lives and works in Dublin. She writes about contemporary art as well as culture and is currently developing a number of works of fiction and art adjacent writing. Lyons is a regular contributor to Ireland’s leading arts publications including Visual Artists’ News Sheet, Mirror Lamp Press and Irish Arts Review. She has written for numerous galleries and art institutions in Ireland as well as internationally. Lyons wishes to develop and distil a writing practice that includes fictional literature and immersive research practices such as collecting oral narratives and musical collaboration to complement more traditional academic research methodologies.
Dr John Wilkins
Dr John Wilkins identifies as U.S.-Black and Gay. He was born in North Carolina, and grew up in Connecticut. He served in the U.S. Navy as a Cryptologist (Russian Language) from 1983-1987. Dr Wilkins earned his B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster Pennsylvania; and he earned his MA in English Literature from the L’Université de Montréal, Canada. His thesis dealt with “Goddess Imagery in the Novels of Toni Morrison”. Dr Wilkins has recently earned his doctorate from Trinity College Dublin’s School of English where he interrogated representations of “Black Gay Male Identity in the African Diaspora”. Dr Wilkins has taught undergraduate and graduate course modules including; The American Genre, Modernism, Post-Colonialism, and Romanticism in Trinity College’s School of English; Sociology Department on “Black African Voices in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade”; UCD’s School of Social Justice on “Black Male Identity”; UCD’s Sociology Department on “Black Activism and Movements in the Black Atlantic”; Dr Wilkins was a Moderator on Trinity College Dublin’s “Black Identity in the Americas” Conference; presented at “Sibéil’s Feminist and Gender Network Studies Conference on “Black Gay Male Identity in the African Diaspora”; and also the African Scholars Association Ireland (AFSAI) Conference on “The Black Body and White Memory”. His research interests are the intersections of gender, race, and National identity.
Chinedum Muotto
Chinedum Muotto is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from Biafra. Artist, Poet, Actor, Music Maker and Community organizer seeks to imagine new ways of seeing, being and doing otherwise. Previously artist in Residency at IMMA, planB (Lagos), Dublin City Council Culture Company. Our works seek to push boundaries whilst capturing the sublime, quotidian and magnificent.
Thaís Muniz
Thaís Muniz is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the territories of identity, belonging, memory, displacement and inwardly love. Through her art practices, she builds bridges and open conversations to propose reconnections, change and healing, from an anti-colonial perspective against innumerable mechanisms of collective illness. Her work aims to unfold intimate practices of collective learning through community workshops, performances, installations, and urban interventions. She also expands her vision through audio-visuals, collages, celebrations, and sculptural textiles.
Her practices are socially engaged and emerge from the need to shatter the status quo when it comes to representation and legacy. She uses diverse disciplines to empower identities, based on the re-appropriation of stories, narratives and habits. She also endeavours to connect people through uplifting topics which she consider important. As an interdisciplinary artist from the South-Global (denomination related to the Third World and colonized spaces), she developed a modus-operandi of collaborative work with others towards liberation and decolonization. Participants in my work are largely from other diasporas whose voices I amplify for all audiences; a form of ‘Culture in Action’ in which the participatory element is key for my practices.
Since 2012, She has been developing a body of work and research about identity in the Afro-Atlantic communities through turbans, headwraps, textiles, and the relationship of non-verbal communications implied through the head. She named this platform Turbante-se – a word She created that means ‘Turban Yourself’. She has used this platform as a way to research and share sensitive topics such as identity and self-esteem. Since its foundation, the platform has been empowering Black and Brown communities, not only in Brazil but all over the world, through an array of practices and actions. She connects with others in tactile, accessible and educational ways, both online and offline.
She has been living and working in Dublin (Ireland) since 2014.
Ishmael Claxton
Ishmael Claxton was born in New York City and has been living in Dublin for 8yrs. As a visual artist, He is driven to create a unique visual multiverse. A Fusion of elements from a range of artistic styles, such as surrealism, Pop Art, Italian Futurist, and Afro-Futurist; the visual images he creates are colourful, spiritual, and embedded with surrealist undertones. Using his photography as an outlet for political expression, Claxton explores a range of socio-political issues within his work, such as race, gender, the finding or creating of moments, and the pursuing and discovery of harmony and balance. His Oeuvre combines elements from his academic, personal and professional background in Mathematics, Art History, creative installations, and costume design.
Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma
Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma is an Igbo-Irish freelance writer, creative producer, and Global Health researcher. Her writing explores themes of identity, home, nostalgia, and longing, while her work and research focuses on community-centred and community-led knowledge production and creative knowledge translation.
Victory’s writing has been featured in publications such as GUAP, Plasma Dolphin, Wahala Zine, Sweet Thang Zine, Crybaby Zine, amongst others. In past years, Victory co-founded and edited Spilt Milk Mag, a Glasgow-based arts and literary magazine. More recently, she is producing Bia! Zine – a food publication centring on migrants in Ireland.
Samantha Brown
Samantha Brown is a London-born photographer and visual artist living in Ireland. She studied Multidisciplinary Design at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Collage informs her current practice combining her own photography with various narratives and storytellers. The online project Middle Passage hosted by the Center for Creative Practices delves into the enslaved transportation routes from Europe to Africa to the Americas. Researching documentation into the enslavement trade spanning works of fact and fiction. Lying Fallow an online workshop facilitated by RHA, traces back to farming methods and how that can relate to bodily experiences.
