Support The (chrysalis) Archives at River to River Festival
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Support The (chrysalis) Archives at River to River Festival 〰️
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CURRENT PROJECTS
The (chrysalis) Archives
An exhibition incorporating video installation, photographic imagery, sculpture, and performance. The project includes past works including the film Chameleon (A Visual Album), three-channel video and installation Syllabus for Black Love, and fabricated sculptural works and images. The work explores metamorphosis, intergenerational knowledge, blood memory, negative space, and the environmental grief that lingers in the aftermath of the living gesture.
the hold
“The hold repeats and repeats and repeats in and into the present…” -Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Meshing the performative uses of fabric, lighting, time, and sound art as sculptural material inside the context of the multi-channel moving image installation, Syllabus for Black Love, the hold is an embrace, a place, a time between time. It is a slippery chameleonic emergent practice rupturing the borders of reality, digitality, and theatricality. Performed by jaamil olawale kosoko with an alternating ensemble of virtual doulas including Everett Asis Saunders and Nile Harris, the work resists capture by jumping through and bending the time-space continuum. It behaves as both arrival and exit - a birth passage into the intricate nuance of Black lives attempting the critical and alchemistic work of self examination, discovery, and becoming.
SYLLABUS FOR BLACK LOVE
Sending the viewer through environments that evoke the ancient elements—air, fire, water, earth, and spirit—the video is conceived as a choreopoem that follows the journey of two artists, kosoko and Jennifer Kidwell. The work reimagines their psychic realities, visualizing Black queer lives in natural settings that span land and sky, bonfire and ocean, while transforming them into sacred, intimate places. Alongside this poetic quest, the video asks “What is Black love and how do we protect its critical embodiment?” by embracing the practice of doulas, who nurture, teach, and create a restorative community of guidance and support.
PORTAL FOR(E) THE EPHEMERAL PASSAGE
Building on previous research involving the intergenerational passage of feminist Black knowledge, queer theory, sacred rituals of intimacy and wellness, kosoko has curated an exhibition centering the radical interior lifeworlds and spatial cosmologies of Black feminist presence and the altered visual legacies and landscapes they occupy in their wake.
BLACK BODY AMNESIA
Blending poetry and memoir, conversation and performance theory, Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts enlivens a personal archive of visual and verbal offerings written and organized by jaamil olawale kosoko.
ABOUT
JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO
jaamil olawale kosoko is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. jaamil’s work in performance is rooted in embodied ritual practice, poetics, Black critical studies, and queer theories of the body as a means to conjure and craft perpetual modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/however possible.
ENGAGEMENTS
Work with jaamil in group settings and privately
CREATIVE COACHING
Creative coaching and energy reading
(individual sessions)
WORKSHOPS
Remote and in-person workshops for creative and professional development
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
jaamil is an independent curator having created hybrid exhibitions, conferences, social gatherings in both the US and EU.
RETREAT
Vision for Black Joy
Nov 27 - Dec 3 2023
A Vision for Black Joy is a participant-driven retreat. Together we will reflect on personal and community centered visions and experiences of Black Joy. By opening up a stimulating and fluid space for creativity and discussion, facilitators Christal Brown and laamil Olawale Kosoko aim to spark transformation, deepen the reservoir of joy and bridge the gaps in our personal narratives through empowering community-led conversations, ambitious thinking and critical embodied engagement.
SHOP
Shop Jaamil Means Beauty - a collection of unique items birthed from the mind of artist, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
