ABOUT THE ARTIST
JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO
jaamil olawale kosoko is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, educator, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent, originally from Detroit, MI. Their conceptual and emergent practice fluidly moves across live performance, video, sculpture, and poetry integrating ritual, spiritual inquiry, and embodied poetics. Through Black critical studies and queer theories of the body, kosoko conjures radical strategies for freedom, healing, and care, offering an expansive vision of artistic and social transformation.
kosoko’s interdisciplinary work explores emergent Black queer theory, critical rest-care strategies, and the politics of visibility and fugitivity. Their projects—ranging from multimedia installations to performative lectures—bridge experimental art with community-driven engagement. As a curator, kosoko has held positions at New York Live Arts and FringeArts. In 2022 they curated Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage (Wexner Center for the Arts and co-curated the 2019 Black Poetry Conference at Princeton University.
Their global impact as an experimental performance and film maker include projects such as The (chrysalis) Archives (2024), Black Body Amnesia (2022), Chameleon: A Visual Album (2020), Séancers (2017), and the Bessie Award-nominated #negrophobia (2015)— presenting at leading international institutions and festivals, including EMPAC, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum, ICA at VCU, Wexner Center for the Arts, Fusebox Festival, Tanz im August (Berlin), Blackbox (Oslo), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), The Centre for the Less Good Idea (Johannesburg), Berne Festival, and Montréal Arts Interculturels, among many others.
kosoko is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Doris Duke Performing Arts & Technology Lab Award for Mapping the Ephemeral Passage, a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Award, the 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short Film, a 2022/24 MacDowell Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a 2020 NCCAkron Creative Administrative Fellowship, a 2019 NPN Creation & Development Fund Award, a 2019 Red Bull Arts Fellowship, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, a 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellowship, a 2018 NEFA National Dance Project Award, a 2018-2020 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency, a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellowship, and multiple consecutive USArtists International Awards from 2016-2020.
Blending poetry, memoir, and performance theory, kosoko’s book Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts(2022) serves as the foundation for Black Body Amnesia: LIVE, a performance work examining the fugitive realities of Black diasporic life in America. As an educator, kosoko has held residencies and teaching positions at Bennington College, Princeton University, UCLA (Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair, 2020), The University of the Arts Stockholm, and Master Exerce, ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France. They regularly lecture on performance, digital archiving, and Black queer aesthetics, bridging artistic practice with critical pedagogy.
kosoko’s current initiative, Mapping the Ephemeral Passage, is a groundbreaking digital archiving tool suite designed to support artists in documenting and preserving their creative work. This project integrates performance-based archival methodologies with technological solutions for metadata tagging, digital preservation, and estate planning.
kosoko has served on grant panels for the MAP Fund, NYFA, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. They are a founding advisory board member of the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving and an artistic advisory member of The Field Center in Vermont.
Follow their creative journey on IG: @jaamil_means_beauty to learn more.
Their 2020 project, Chameleon, is a multimedia living digital art work, film, and radio transmission project that explores the fugitive realities and shapeshifting demands of surviving at the intersection of Blackness, gender fluidity, and queerness in a pirated virtual space. Chameleon is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by EMPAC / Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; the New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency program; and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, in partnership with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), and Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Additional development support for Chameleon was made possible, in part, with commissioning support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, through the Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Program.
Their 2017 work, Séancers, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in December 2017 and has toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Recent highlights include Mousonturm (Frankfurt, DE), FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA), Sophiensaele (Berlin, DE), the Wexner Center (Columbus, OH), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX) and Montréal Arts Interculturels (Montréal, CA), among others.
Their work #negrophobia (premiered September 2015, Gibney Dance Center) was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award and toured throughout Europe appearing in major festivals including Moving in November (Finland), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (Berlin), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), Zurich MOVES! (Switzerland), Beursschouwburg (Belgium) and Spielart Festival (Munich).
They are the guest curator of the exhibition Portal For(e) the Ephemeral Passage on view June 10-Aug. 14th at The Wexner, Co-Curator of the 2019 Black Poetry Conference at Princeton University, 2015 Movement Research Spring Festival and the 2015 Dancing While Black performance series at BAAD in the Bronx; a contributing correspondent for Dance Journal (PHL), the Broad Street Review (PHL), and Critical Correspondence (NYC); a 2012 Live Arts Brewery Fellow as a part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival; a 2011 fellow as a part of the DeVos Institute of Art Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and an inaugural graduate member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University where they earned their MA in Curatorial Studies.
jaamil has performed with various dance companies including Keely Garfield Dance, Miguel Gutierrez and The Powerful People, and Headlong Dance Theater, among others. In addition, creative consultant and/or performer credits include: Terry Creach, Lisa Kraus, Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies, Leah Stein Dance Company, Emergent Improvisation Ensemble, and Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako (The Democratic Republic of Congo).
In 2009, they published the chapbook, Animal in Cyberspace. In 2011, jaamil published the collection, Notes on an Urban Kill-Floor: Poems for Detroit (Old City Publishing). Publications include: The American Poetry Review, The Dunes Review, The Interlochen Review, The Broad Street Review, Silo Literary and Visual Arts Magazine.
jaamil has served on numerous curatorial and funding panels including the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, MAP Fund, Movement Research at the Judson Church, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the Baker Artists Awards, among others. From 2014 to 2020, jaamil served as a trustee on the Board of Directors for Dance/USA, the national service organization for dance professionals. jaamil is also a founding advisory board member for the Coalition for Diasporan Scholars Moving, and currently serves as an artistic advisory member of The Field Center in Vermont.
jaamil has held producing and curatorial positions at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center among others. And has taught and lectured at various educational institutions across the world. In Fall of 2020, jaamil was appointed the 3rd annual Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair at UCLA World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department. Additionally, jaamil lectures regularly at Princeton University, The University of the Arts Stockholm, and Master Exerce, ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France. Follow jaamil’s creative adventures on IG @jaamil_means_beauty
