A partnership between the Sacatar Institute and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University (USA) is promoting an artistic residency in Itaparica on the theme of the African Diaspora.
The Sacatar Institute, located in Itaparica, Bahia, and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University in California, USA, have joined forces to offer a special artistic residency focused on the themes of the African Diaspora. The program will take place at Sacatar’s headquarters in Itaparica and promotes a very important dialogue between different territories of the Diaspora.
Lasting five weeks, the residency will host eight women artists, including master’s students and professors from Stanford University, from different countries, and Brazilian multidisciplinary artists. This dedicated period will allow the participants to deepen their creative practices while promoting a dialog about social justice, transnational black identity and national privilege.
During the program, the resident artists will have the opportunity to get to know different places, institutions and popular manifestations that are significant to the Afro-diasporic culture of Bahia, as well as to meet people whose experiences and work explore the theme.
The meetings and activities will take place on the island of Itaparica, in Salvador and in the Recôncavo Baiano, expanding the opportunities for cultural and artistic exchange between the participants and local cultural and community agents.
Currently, there are few opportunities for artists, academics and thinkers from different parts of the African Diaspora to meet and exchange. This residency aims to create this space for mutual learning and in-depth dialog, as well as offering each participant the opportunity to develop their individual and collective artistic productions.
The residency takes place from July 15 to August 19, 2024. To find out more about the residency’s public events, the public can follow Instituto Sacatar’s Instagram profile (@sacatar_instituto).
This residency represents a dynamic collaboration between the Committee on Black Performing Arts, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, and Instituto Sacatar on the island of Itaparica in Bahia, Brazil.
Our ongoing commitment to supporting artists at the intersection of social justice, community engagement, and African and African diaspora culture drives this unique residency. It provides Stanford students and faculty, alongside Bahian multidisciplinary artists, with equal space and time to delve deeply into their creative practices while engaging in intentional dialogue on social justice, transnational Black identity, and national privilege. Participants will visit social justice organizations, art and community spaces, Candomblé temples, and other sites significant to Black cultural practice and resistance.
Through these experiences, we aim to foster meaningful dialogues and help each artist develop creative work inspired by their time in the community.
We also envision this residency as a platform for artists to explore how art can foster healing justice and Black futurity in Bahia, the vibrant heart of “Africanidade” in Brazil. Ultimately, this residency serves as a conduit for building cross-institutional collaborations toward these ambitious shared goals.
This new group of residents also includes Brazilian performer Keila Sankofa, selected in the Diaspora Open Call 2024 edition, and Brazilian multisciplinary artist Cíntia Guedes.
A-lan Holt Director, Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) at Stanford University
amara tabor smith Director, Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University
A-lan Holt
Director, Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) at Stanford University
Performance
USA
A-lan Holt is Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. There she trains undergraduates in the areas of diversity and culture; arts leadership and social justice. She is a mother and practicing artist whose work includes theater, poetry and film. She is a former Sundance Fellow, SF Film Screenwriting Fellow, and a frequent contributor on-air at KQED Arts.
amara tabor smith
Director, Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University
Performance
USA
amara tabor smith is the Artistic Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford. Amara is an Oakland based choreographer/performance maker who describes her work as Afro Futurist Conjure Art. Her dance making practice utilizes Yoruba spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity and belonging. She is the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater (DWDT) and was the co-artistic director of Headmistress, an ongoing performing collaboration with movement artist Sherwood Chen.
Ayoade Balogun
Visual Arts
Nigeria > USA
Ayoade Balogun graduated in African and African American Studies and Environmental Systems Engineering from Stanford University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Environmental Communication. A Nigerian living in the diaspora, Ayoade seeks to carry on old and new forms of storytelling and dream weaving inherited from her ancestors and learned from friends and teachers.
At Sacatar, Ayoade intends to use her experience in printing, stamping, and textile dyeing to carry out a fabric design project specific to the Bahian context, based on adire eleko, a Yoruba indigo dyeing technique that uses hand-painted or stenciled cassava paste. Adire eleko, developed in the early 20th century during colonization, symbolizes Yoruba culture and serves as a technology of resistance. This, along with the rich history of indigo in the Black diaspora, makes it a powerful medium for creating narratives about the relationship of Afro-Bahian culture with the land. Her goal is to blend traditional adire eleko motifs with new designs inspired by the natural elements of Bahia, exploring the connections between their cultural meanings, especially in the context of climate change and environmental injustices.
Bryn Evans
Literature
USA
Bryn Evans (Georgia, USA) became the youngest winner of the Rabkin Prize for visual arts journalists in 2022. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in outlets such as Burnaway, Studio, CUE, Women and Migration(s), and Callaloo. According to the artist, her inspiration comes from faith as a healing practice, landscapes that speak, the poetic muscle, and the art of loving.
During her residency at Sacatar, Bryn Evans plans to engage Afro-Bahian and Afro-Brazilian writers to learn more about the poetic history of the territory through creative writing, visual arts, music, and performance. Her work will investigate strategies of resistance, but also of joy, love, and hope. The artist intends to create a micro collection of ekphrastic poetry that considers Bahian geographies in relation to the landscapes and geographies of her own contexts of origin.
Cíntia Guedes
Multidisciplinary Arts
Brazil
Cíntia Guedes is a professor at the Federal University of Bahia, where she has taught in the Arts program of the Professor Milton Santos Institute of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences since 2020, focusing on Afro-diasporic perspectives in the arts. Guedes also holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In her practice, she conducts performance-appearances and radical imagination workshops, experimenting with undisciplined pedagogies and creating counter-colonial imaginaries.
Her residency project revolves around a central question: Can the radical intimacy of Black life with the sea be a tool to recompose the memory of transatlantic navigation? According to the artist, the project proposes an undisciplined pedagogical experience aimed at creating a space-time for creative storytelling about the waters surrounding Itaparica Island, by activating the memories of local residents. Her work builds upon the pedagogies developed in her previous research on ways to perform the temporal experiences of the Black and Afro-Indigenous diaspora.
Gloria Chikaonda
Visual Arts
Zimbabwe > USA
Born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe, Chikaonda is a self-taught artist who uses mixed methods including oil pastel, collage, acrylic, and oil paint to explore themes of political memory and gender in African politics. She has twice received the Stanford Arts and Justice Grant. Her past work includes the project “Flames of Zimbabwe,” a series of portraits of Zimbabwean political figures in which she challenges Zimbabwe’s patriarchal and gender-exclusive political scene.
Chikaonda is also a lawyer, with formal legal training from South Africa, and is currently in the fourth year of her doctoral law studies (JSD) at Stanford Law School. Her research explores African identity and culture and how they impact the development of African legislation.
In her work, Gloria Chikaonda finds synergies between academic research and artistic practice, using documentaries about Black intellectualism and social and print media as inspiration for her self-portraits. These influences often appear in her paintings through collage backgrounds, reflecting themes of Black and African womanhood, Black travel and migration, and African identities in a globalized world.
Keila Sankofa
Performance
Brazil
Born in Manaus, Amazonas, Keila Sankofa is a visual artist and audiovisual creator. Her practice explores the intersections of urban spaces, screens, and salons as fertile grounds for untold Black narratives.
Her work manifests in audiovisual installations featuring performance videos, photographs, and films, all centered around themes of racialized memory. Keila Sankofa employs manipulation and fictionalization as tools and imagistic devices, utilizing techniques such as photoperformance, self-portraiture, and various forms of audiovisual expression.
The artist has been nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2021, 2023, and 2024 and has participated in prestigious residencies like Artlab x Amplify D.A.I (Brazil – Argentina). Her projects include significant exhibitions such as NAVE Rock In Rio, the 40th Arte Pará (PA), A Century of Now – Itaú Cultural (SP), Women Who Changed 200 Years – Caixa Cultural, and the MUTEK Festival (Argentina and Montreal). Keila Sankofa was also selected for the 32nd Exhibition Program at the São Paulo Cultural Center, the 1st Biennial of the Amazons, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She serves as the Artistic Director of the Project Right to Memory-Others and manages the Picolé da Massa – DaVárzea das Artes Group. Additionally, she is a member of APAN – Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals and Nacional Trovoa. Her works are featured in collections such as the Amazonian Art Collection at UFPA and the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Pamela Martinez
Multidisciplinary Arts
USA
Pamela Martinez (she/her) is a Venezuelan filmmaker, UWC and NYU Abu Dhabi alumni, and MFA graduate in the Documentary Media Program at Stanford. In 2020 she was awarded NYUAD’s Summer Film Grant with which she developed her first short documentary “Estado Fallido/Failed State” (2021) which explores the political and social polarization inside the community of Canaima, Venezuela. Among her most recent projects is “Illegal Alien” (2023), a research-based art exhibition that explores gendered migratory processes through the case of Venezuelan women migrants into the US.
In Bahia, the artist will explore Brazilian music and dance, focusing especially on Candomblé and how spiritual knowledge and beliefs are expressed through music. She is particularly interested in learning about Iemanjá and its cultural significance in contemporary Brazil, as well as understanding how drums determine the ritual as a social process.
The artist also aims to use her filming equipment to collaborate on collective artistic explorations, connecting with local artists and musicians.
