About jaamil

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.

Let's Dream

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

PURPOSE

Kosoko Performance Studio (KPS) is committed to advancing and amplifying queer Black histories through socially engaged performance, healing-centered education, innovative new media practices, and creative facilitation. As the producing team for artist, poet, educator, and curator jaamil olawale kosoko, (KPS) serves as a hub for artistic experimentation and cultural inquiry, weaving together personal narratives, ancestral memory, and radical imagination.
Our mission is to push boundaries, challenge societal norms, and contribute to cultural evolution by creating transformative and thought-provoking artistic experiences. We approach performance as a vessel for social dialogue, spiritual reflection, and collective healing, utilizing multidisciplinary practices to center marginalized voices and untold stories.
Each project engages space as a site of possibility and transformation—whether it is the stage, a public venue, a digital realm, or the intangible spaces of memory and imagination. By reimagining how bodies, identities, and histories inhabit space, (KPS) fosters dynamic environments where audiences and performers can explore the interplay between self, community, and the broader cultural landscape.

VALUES

Kosoko Performance Studio (KPS) seeks to conjure and craft enduring modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/whoever possible. The studio envisions and creates speculative futures where embodied visual performance technologies are reimagined through the intersection of curatorial, poetic, and improvisational choreological practices and innovative new media experimentation.

Creative Values

Kosoko Performance Studio’s practice exists in an ongoing dialogue with history, examining its imprint on the contemporary moment. Collaborating with a diverse team of creative partners, the studio embraces questions, trauma, and joy as generative forces, crafting performance environments that balance complexity, discomfort, and vulnerability while foregrounding care and healing.

Deeply rooted in Black and queer theoretical, literary, and spiritual lineages, (KPS) intertwines these frameworks with biographical and embodied knowledge fueling a commitment to experimentation while blurring the lines between theatricality, reality, and our collective erotic connection to digital devices.

Through this work, the studio centers radical imagination, creating spaces where historical resonance meets present urgency and future possibility—spaces that are as transformative as they are provocative, as restorative as they are revolutionary.

COLLABORATORS

MAIJ ALADESUYI

Maij (b. 1990 in Atlanta, GA), is a cellist, DJ, tarot reader, and sommelier. He began playing classical cello at age ten and studied music at Indiana University Bloomington under the tutelage of the famed Sharon Robinson. As a DJ, he performs house music in various clubs, bars, hotels, fundraisers, and parties throughout New York City under the moniker 'Black Maij.' Maij is also an astrologer and tarot reader, offering personalized readings that combine his deep understanding of cosmic forces with his intuitive insights.
In 2021, alongside Caitlyn Guarano, he founded Mindful Creatives to bring the artistic community together to discuss how different disciplines, such as art, music, wine, photography, and tarot, all speak a universal language. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

EBONY NOELLE GOLDEN

Ebony Noelle Golden is a theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur, and public scholar. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy that devises systems, strategies, and social justice solutions nationally. In 2020, she founded Jupiter Performance Studio, a space to study and practice Black diasporic performance traditions. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden works to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks in service of liberation and collective wellbeing. Her practice is rooted in community design, ritual performance, and leadership development through a womanist and Black feminist praxis. Invoking messy, magical, and medicinal processes, Ebony and her collaborators, work to conjure a better world.

IMA IDUOZEE

Of Nigerian and Finnish descent, Ima Iduozee is a choreographer, dancer, performance artist and filmmaker based in Helsinki. His debut work, This is the Title, premiered in 2012 and went on to garner international acclaim, touring in 15 countries across Europe, North America and Asia. The solo was selected for Aerowaves Twenty in 2016.

Iduozee´s works are often characterised by poetic and physically rigorous renderings, that meet with notions of fantasy, identity and afrofuturity. In 2015 the annual honorary prize of the Finnish Critics Association, Critics Spurs´, was given to Iduozee, as an acknowledgement for the best artistic breakthrough of the year. His on going series of digital portraits, Adventures In The Sonic Future, celebrates the diversity of black cultural identity in the contemporary African Diaspora.
*Photo by Ilkka Saastamoinen*

EVERETT-ASIS SAUNDERS

Everett-Asis Saunders, New Music USA grant winner, is the founder and creative director of Flux Innovations, a sound and audio services company. His recent clients include PBS, Sony Music and Columbia Records. Saunders is a producer, composer, songwriter and performer. He has specific knowledge and practice in arranging, editing and mixing for theater, film and music entertainment.

His work spans across genres with original compositions for numerous independent films in the New York/LA Dance community, with his latest commissions including Marjani Forte & Works Bessie award winning Memoirs of a…Unicorn and Urban Bush Women’s recent Hair and Other Stories. Film works include PBS March of Washington (2013), Print Shop (2016) and Project Imagination winner, Transporter.
*Photo courtesy of Everett-Asis Saunders*

SONG AZIZA TUCKER

Song Aziza Tucker is a project-based movement and writing artist whose works have spiraled out of her love for black women, music, and poetry. Her latest work “After the Flood”, honors the inspirations of many black femme creators she holds close. Placing herself alongside these artists reminds her that dance is not only an expansive and visceral experience, but an intimate and integral way of communication for historically and systemically hushed bodies. Alongside her own art making, Song has had the pleasure of being involved as a performer and collaborator with Katie Swords Thurman, Jesse Zaritt, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Tommie-Waheed Evans, Jamal Abrams, Jordan Lloyd, Niall Jones, Abby Zbikowski, Doug Varone, and Mark Caserta, among others. Song is deeply moved by folks who bring their voluminous selves to the forefront, allowing creative collaborators to be seen with open and soft eyes. She is looking forward to continuing her collegiate studies as a Master of Fine Arts candidate under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield at the University of the Arts.

TEAM MEMBERS

Clareese Hill - Scholar in Residence

Alvis Mosely- Cinematographer

Cory Seals - Archives and Special Projects Manager

Amy Smith - Business and Finance Manager

JS Wu - Storyboard Artist

Lingling Yang - Grants Advisor

KPS ADVISORY BOARD

LINGLING YANG

Lingling Yang is a strategy and development consultant in the arts with over 10 years of experience helping individual artists and performing arts companies secure funding, develop their vision, and create new presenter, donor, and audience connections.

She is Kosoko Performance Studio's former Grants Manager and is currently the Interim Managing Director at Brownbody.

ALEXANDER THOMPSON

Alexander Thompson is an artist, cultural organizer, and Executive Director of Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge and Retreat Center. He served as the Program Director at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for six and a half years, where he stewarded the nomination, application, and selection processes for the organization’s grant programs.

Prior to his work at FCA, he served as the Associate Artist Program Manager and Interim Director of Education and Engagement at New York Live Arts while maintaining an active dance practice. He has provided administrative support to many individual artists; co-facilitated workshops at the 2015 SDHS/CORD Conference in Athens and at Ezzat Ezzat Contemporary Dance Studio with support from the American Embassy in Cairo; served as a panelist for the Brooklyn Arts Council, Bronx Council on the Arts, Gibney, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; has been a guest speaker at Augusta University, Bard College, Colby College, the Juilliard School, the New School, the University of Texas at Austin, and Virginia Commonwealth University; and was a guest teaching artist at NYU Tisch School the Arts, where he taught a semester-long professional practice workshop to dance students from 2014-2019.

Tanesha Barnes

T. Barnes defies being put into any one box by creating a life that incorporates her full humanity. Although she runs several businesses in beauty, fashion and travel, she has a solid academic grounding with a Bachelor’s from NYU in Sociology, a Master’s in History from Western CT State University and a second Master’s in Teaching for Social Justice from Marlboro College. This fusion of creative, academic and business has afforded Barnes a life spent studying, traveling and building global enterprise, while serving as a bridge between the African Diaspora and the world; actively providing global experiences that help Black people imagine themselves beyond the periphery and limitations of race and geography.

She is currently the owner of T. Barnes Global Lifestyle, the Founder of the Black Freedom Colony and now, she serves as Partner, General Manager and Creative Director of Sbai Palace in M’Hamid, Morocco.

GESEL R. MASON

Gesel R. Mason is a choreographer, performer, and artist-scholar whose practice weaves performance, scholarship, and archiving to question assumptions, confront inequities, and build possibilities for care and connection. She is Artistic Director of Gesel Mason Performance Projects and Professor of Dance at the University of Texas at Austin.

For over two decades, she curated and performed No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers, now a growing digital archive co-directed with Rebecca Salzer (Dancing Digital Project / University of Alabama), examining archives as sites of care, embodiment, and cultural memory. https://noboundariesarchive.com/

Jenn Kidwell

Jennifer Kidwell is a performing artist. Recent projects – Ocean Filibuster (PearlDamour), Fat Ham and Antigone (The Wilma Theater), Michelle Ellsworth’s Body on a Table, Underground Railroad Game (2017 Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work; 2018 Edinburgh Fringe First Award; Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes nominations), Jaamil Olawole Kosoko’s Syllabus for Black Love, Geoff Sobelle’s Home (2018 Bessie Award), Adrienne Truscott’s Still Asking for It (Joe’s Pub), Dan Hurlin’sDemolishing Everything with Amazing Speed, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group’s I Understand Everything Better (2015 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production), Being/With and The Octopus and the Interview (Nichole Canuso Dance Company), Superterranean, Fire Burns Hot: Little Reno!, I Promised Myself to Live Faster and 99 Break-Ups (Pig Iron Theatre Company), Dick’s Last Stand (Whitney Biennial 2014, as Donelle Woolford), Zinnias: the Life of Clementine Hunter (Robert Wilson/Toshi Reagon/Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon).

Wilma Theater Associated Artist, co-founder of JACK. Published in movement research Performance Journal #45 and at hyperallergic.com. 2020 Visiting Artist Duke University, 2021 Visiting Artist UPenn. 2013 TCG/Fox Resident Actor Fellowship, 2015, 2021 Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant, 2016 Pew Fellow, 2017 Independence Fellowship, 2020 Ruthie Award & Hodder Fund Grant.

RASHEED HAMID

Rasheed Hamid is a founder and operations strategist with extensive experience supporting nonprofits, creatives, and small businesses. As CEO of Extra Hands Virtual Assistants, he specializes in building systems that increase capacity and long-term sustainability.

He is committed to mission-aligned leadership and collaborative growth.

JENNI BOWMAN

Jenni is an independent creative producer and facilitator of live performance and experiences. Previously a producer at the Park Avenue Armory, International Contemporary Ensemble, Discovery Green, a public park in downtown Houston, Texas, and for Philip Glass’s Days and Nights Festival in Big Sur, California, she now runs ShowShow, a performance producing company. She serves on the board at JACK.

Jenni's first job in NYC was as the producer of the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. She resides in Brooklyn with her partner and child.

Shannan Elaine Clarke

Shannan Clarke is a social entrepreneur, development executive, and cultural strategist whose work centers equity, care, and purpose-driven systems change. She currently serves as Director of Development at NYU School of Law, where she leads major and principal gift strategy in support of faculty, students, and institutional priorities. Her career spans higher education advancement, social enterprise, international affairs, and the arts. Shannan is also the founder of Queen & Baby, a community-driven company supporting Black mothers through breastfeeding, postpartum transitions, and the return to work. A trained modern and contemporary dancer, Shannan brings an embodied understanding of creativity, discipline, and collaboration to her work.

She trained as a fellowship student at The Ailey School and has performed with companies including the Limón Dance Company, Forces of Nature Dance Company, nathantrice/RITUALS, and STEPS on Broadway. Shannan holds a BA in Theater and Dance from Spelman College and an MA in International Affairs from The New School. She serves on Jaamil’s Advisory Board to offer strategic guidance at the intersection of culture, community, and institutional growth—bridging creative vision with sustainable, values-aligned infrastructure.

PRESS & MEDIA

RECENT PRESS MENTIONS

“Foreget “to re-inherit yourself”. By trade, I am a crafter of words, but I have never imagined so shamanic a reworking of the verb forget. I am galvanized—and grateful.”

- EVA YAA ASANTEWAA, Imagining: A Gibney Journal, Imagining Digital

“...prolific Nigerian-American poet, curator, choreographer and performance artist’s new show explores the erotic fear associated with the black male body.”

- LIZZIE SIMON, WALL STREET JOURNAL

“A foray into the dramatic and vulnerable elements of identity”

- EFFIE BOWEN, INTERVIEW

VIEW ORIGINAL ARTICLE

“Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s #negrophobia has many forms. It is an art installation, a practiced, choreographed performance, and a poetry reading. It is a personal story and a history lesson, told through the lens of internet culture. It might be consciousness-raising and Afrofuturist, but it might also be the negation of both.”

- KATHERINE BERGSTROM, POINT OF CONTACT

VIEW ORIGINAL ARTICLE

CURRENT PROJECTS

Mapping the Ephemeral Passage: Strategies for Archiving Live Performance

Learn More

OFFICIAL BIO

jaamil olawale kosoko is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. Their book Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts was released in Spring of 2022. kosoko is also a 2022 MacDowell Fellow, 2020 Pew Fellow in the Arts, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellow, 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellow, 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant recipient, 2017 MAP Fund recipient, and 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. Their creative practice draws from Black study and queer theories of the body, weaving together visual performance, sculpture, lecture, ritual, and spiritual practice.

Their live art works Chameleon (The Living Installments) premiered virtually in April 2020, Séancers (2017) and the Bessie nominated #negrophobia (2015) have toured internationally, appearing in major festivals including: Tanz im August (Berlin), Moving in November (Finland), Within Practice (Sweden), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), Brighton Festival (UK), Oslo Teaterfestival (Norway), and Zürich MOVES! (Switzerland), among others.

They are the author of two poetry chapbooks: Animal in Cyberspace and Notes on An Urban Kill-floor. Their poems and essays have been included in The American Poetry Review, The Dunes Review, The Broad Street Review, among others. Season 1 of his interview-based podcast, American Chameleon can be found on all podcast platforms.

kosoko lectures regularly at Princeton University, Stockholm University of the Arts, and Master Exerce ICI-CCN in Montpellier, France. In Fall 2020, they were appointed the Alma Hawkins Visiting Chair in the World Arts and Cultures Department at UCLA. Connect with jaamil on IG at jaamil_means_beauty

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