Black Queer Folk Make Magic .
“Haven’t we loved and lost? Haven’t we been here and been queer?” In 2013, though black men loving black men is still a revolutionary act it also remains a dangerous act. There is no freedom without revolution and no revolution…
Circles of Grace
“The nature of Vodou is a bit like jazz : a negotiated conversation improvised between ourselves and telluric forces, variations of a theme. We are free inside a bound framework.” Fragment of Bones Inside the “Circles of Grace” are the…
Dance of Salt – Ayiti
Lost imagination. This is the scariest thing that has happened to me, scarier than cancer. It’s death I thought I had lost my imagination then I found it because I read this and I breathed “One of the most powerful…
Takassa: rescuing our truths through cleansing & consciousness – Photo, Kenya
“Takassa: rescuing our truths through cleansing & consciousness” is a visual and textual collaboration between myself and Kenyan QLGBTI activist, Layla Wangari Two of twelve portraits in this series – June 2017. [envira-gallery id=”3558″] Images © Sokari Ekine In…
Streaming Anxiety
“Haiti occupies a particular place in the collective African memory and imagination. For Europe / whiteness Haiti has always been a place of horror, the irony being the horror was white not black, the savagery white not black” Maybe Me,…
La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar
La Sirene: Rutas de Azucar (loose translation: Black Mermaid: Sugar Routes) takes as its inspiration Cuban revolutionary José Antonio Aponte’s libro de pinturas, a book of paintings of black heroes that served as a catalyst for an attempted rebellion against…
Black Portraitures III : Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures”
Spirit Desire is a series of photographic essays that explore African Diasporic spiritual practices as spaces of resistance, imagination and sacred memories. The first series [Memwa sakre: – lespri ki nan nou menm. Sacred memories: -The spirits within us ]…
Lovership – We are sacred space
Julia Sangodare Roxanne Wallace and Alexis Pauline Gumbs – the third in the series transformation of silence into action whether through speech, words, images or performance. We are sacred space. We amplify love for one another, as each other. This…
The exquisite corpse drinks the sweet wine: 2 – Unmasking
UnMasking – Where will you take me As the curve of you Curves this history Does love become Unbreakable Like a gem’s knot My breath Warms your heart You have imprinted me Exquisite love Even the palms shook In Anguilla…
When We Free – Black Feminist Artist Retreat at Anguilla
Between the 15th and 23rd May 2016 four Black Queer Feminists came together on the island of Anguilla to practice healing, loving, reflecting, sharing and speculating on future possibilities of growth and ways of living. During the retreat we engaged in…
Photography futures – Whats happening for me
2016 is proving to be an exciting year for me and journey into photography. My GoFundMe campaign ‘Spirit Desire‘ has so far raised $3,600 in just over 6 weeks. However, I still need another $1,400 to reach my goal…
Spirit Desire “Dlo sous lavi a”
I think of water and its significance to Blackness, to the Africas. The tens of thousands of enslaved women, men and children, thrown to the Atlantic; the thousands drowned in crossings, forced from their homes to die of hope in…
The exquisite corpse drinks the sweet wine: 1 – Time to the Lover : A Photographic Poem
[envira-gallery id=”3033″] What does love say to death with the touch of black leather When the writing hand breathes this too we want more Time to the lover becomes an anxiety of parting Not knowing where it can touch I…
Queer like the fearlessness to imagine
The importance of speech is not the age of the words but the truth they speak so here I choose the timeless words of Audre Lorde. In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my own mortality, and of what I wished…
My interview with Berlin photographer An Paenhuysen
“When I discovered the blog Black Looks by Sokari Ekine I was disappointed: I arrived too late. Black Looks stopped just a year ago, in August 2014, and had been going on since 2004. The damn thing about…