Black Freedom Fellowship Team
The Black Freedom Fellowship is a community based movement forwarding the voices, skills and perspectives of Black & Indigenous artists & activists
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Isha created the Black Freedom Fellowship the way they believe Black womxn have always created things: out of love, vision and necessity.
Isha (They/Them) is an Ayitian-American post-disciplinary artist whose works use somatic poetry to explore the distance between colonial documentation and African Diasporic truth-telling. Isha is the founder of the Black Freedom Fellowship, an international rest residency that offers resources for BIPOC artists/activists to create vital futures. They are a 2022 Curator-in-Residence at SOMArts San Francisco, 2022 Artist-in-Residence at Mirante Xique Xique in Bahia, Brazil, and a 2021 California Artist Council Individual Artist Fellow.
Isha is a yoga teacher certified through Integral Yoga Institute’s inaugural BIPOC Decolonized Yoga training as well as a trained meditation facilitator through East Bay Meditation Center’s Practice in Transformative Action 7 (PiTA 7) an award-winning yearlong program for social change and social justice activists, community workers and volunteers, transformative thought leaders.
Most importantly, Isha believes in balancing the individual healing process with communal care. As taught to them by their Sangha at East Bay Meditation Center, “trauma does not happen in isolation so neither can healing”.
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Isha criou a Black Freedom Fellowship da maneira que elu acreditam que as mulheres negras sempre criaram coisas: de amor, visão e necessidade.
Isha (Elu/Elx) é uma artista pós-disciplinar ayitiana-americana cujas obras usam a poesia somática para explorar a distância entre a documentação colonial e a narrativa da verdade da diáspora africana. Isha é a fundadora da Black Freedom Fellowship, uma residência internacional de descanso que oferece recursos para artistas/ativistas BIPOC criarem futuros vitais. Elu é Curadora-em-Residencia 2022 no SOMArts San Francisco, 2022 Artista-em-Residencia no Mirante Xique Xique na Bahia, Brasil, e 2021 Artista individual do California Artist Council.
Isha é uma professora de ioga certificada pelo treinamento inaugural BIPOC Yoga Descolonizado do Integral Yoga Institute, bem como uma facilitadora de meditação treinada por meio do Practice in Transformative Action 7 (PiTA 7) do East Bay Meditation Center, um premiado programa de um ano para ativistas de mudança social e justiça social, trabalhadores comunitários e voluntários, líderes de pensamento transformadores.
Mais importante ainda, Isha acredita em equilibrar o processo de cura individual com cuidado comunitário. Conforme ensinado a elu por sua Sangha no Centro de Meditação de East Bay, “o trauma não acontece isoladamente, portanto, a cura também não”.
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Jono Lena is an interdisciplinary brazilian artist, based in Salvador, Bahia's capital. Her art research and practice revolves around gender, identity, ancestrality, race and queerness in the face of a white heterocispatriarchy system of opression. Working in the center of what she calls "a crossroad between sound, imagery, word and body", she crafts her artwork using her own experiences as a starting point, her research and poetic as a compass and her own body as a vessel through the journey. Creating as a black trans non-binary artist in Salvador (formerly Portuguese America’s first capital that was built by the enslavement of africans and amerindian population), Lena desires to bend colonised views of gender and racial identity while denouncing structural violence. Through her experimentation, she aims to reject the victimhood imposed upon black, trans, queer and gender non-conforming corporalities. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Art Studies from the Federal University of Bahia.
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Jono Lena é uma multiartista transdisciplinar que vive e trabalha em Salvador. Sua pesquisa e prática artísticas atravessam temas como gênero, identidade, ancestralidade e raça. Do centro do que ela chama de uma encruzilhada entre som, imagem, palavra e corpo, materializa suas obras a partir de suas próprias experiências, usando sua pesquisa e poética como bússola e seu próprio corpo como um receptáculo através da jornada. Sendo uma pessoa transvestigênere não-binária racializada, seu trabalho busca ruir visões colonizadas de gênero e raça ao mesmo tempo em que denuncia a violência estrutural, ativamente rejeitando o local de vítima imposto às corporeidades dissidentes. Ela é Bacharel em Artes pela Universidade Federal da Bahia e atualmente é graduanda em Psicologia na mesma instituição.
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Tusi Camb, 24 years old, born in the territory of Salvador-Ba, Brazilian multi-artist and builder; currently weaving the Ofó project, developing clay sculptures that speak about transatlantic countercolonial diasporic language/image/memory, bringing life to life through their spiritual experience having indigenous/African teachings as a source.
Fluid poet between waters moving the magic of words, I am the Ofó of my ancestors.
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Tusi camb, 24 anos nascida no território de Salvador-Ba brasileire multiartista e construtora; atualmente tecendo o projeto Ofó desenvolvendo esculturas de argila que falar sobre linguagem/imagem/memória diaspórica transatlântica contracolonial, fazendo emergir vida através das suas vivências espirituais… tendo como fonte os ensinamentos indígenas/africanos. Poeta fluido entre águas movendo a magia das palavras, eu sou o ofó dos meus ancestrais.
Our Community Network
Learn more about the community partnerships that empower the
Black Freedom Fellowship to make long lasting impact.
Artist As First Responder
Atlantic Archives
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Sedrick Miles’ art and intellectual praxis are tied together through social engagement, including participatory art and community archives. He is trying to weave a dialogue between working-class communities in the Black Diaspora.
Miles is a Fulbright Scholar researching transnational archives in the Black Atlantic (Brazil and the United States). His work emerges from questions on identity, negritude, and surrealism.
His goal is to leave artifacts for his descendants to know what he saw and loved in the moments of his life. He hopes this serves as fuel for both their struggles and celebrations.
He is blessed to see his people reflecting so much light, magic, strength, and aesthetics. He couldn’t imagine a life without it. He simply believes that our humanity is quintessentially beautiful.
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Atlantic Archives (AA) has sponsored in-kind donations in the form of art materials, volunteer support and professional translation services to empower the Odù Film Festival’s intercultural connections.
AA helps grassroots groups in Brazil to create community-driven heritage projects and connect them with a diverse, international network. For under-represented groups who want to provide educational service to an international community, we provide the training and resources for success.
Secondly, they serve the international tourist market by specializing in connecting Brazilian visitors to sustainable cultural activities powered by the community-driven archives.
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Ashara Ekundayo is a queer, Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian, arts organizer, and consultant whose creative practice is rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study and creation of Black archives, site-responsive ceremony, and artist-based strategies such as screenprinting, zine-making, installations, and altar-making that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. Her work explores healing, memory, and place, and she is the founder of the philanthropic organization Artist As First Responder which serves as a platform to support creatives working at the intersection of design, technology and activism to heal communities and save lives. She is also the principal at AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC where she places artists and cultural production as essential in equitable design practices, real estate development, and movement building.
Prior, Ekundayo stewarded Omi Gallery at Impact Hub Oakland (2012-2017) and Ashara Ekundayo Gallery (2017-2019) both in Oakland, CA which featured work by emerging and established Black women artists as well as Indigenous and other artists of color through exhibitions, installations, and experimental programming that cultivated a burgeoning generation of makers and collectors.
She has served as a Fellow with the U.S. Dept. of State Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, Institute For The Future, and Auburn Seminary in NYC, and has held Artist/Curatorial Residencies at Schools Without Borders, The Space Program SF, Villa Albertine, the United African Alliance Community Center in Arusha, Tanzania, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2023 she will join the Muholi Art Institute in Cape Town South Africa as the inaugural Curatorial Research Fellow in collaboration with photographer and humanitarian Sir Zanele Muholi.
Ashara currently sits on the Advisory Boards of the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, SECA at SFMoMA, and the Artist Changemaker Program at the Global Fund for Women and has collaborated with institutions including the Museum of the African Diaspora, Museum of Sonoma County, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She is co-founder at Black [Space] Residency and director of The Black Curators Lab – studio-based artist residencies celebrating the dynamic imagination of Black creatives. She lives and works between the San Francisco Bay Area and her hometown of Detroit, MI.
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Artist As First Responder (AAFR) is one of the founding financial sponsors of the Odù Film Festival.
AAFR is a 501c3 organization and 6-point philanthropic and interactive arts platform that acknowledges, engages, and financially supports Black, Indigenous, and other Artists of Color whose creative practices heal communities and save lives.
Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival
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Nia is a multidisciplinary artist and who has consistently found community with black femme filmmakers in her travels around the world. During her first solo art show “Drapetomania; The Strong Urge to Escape” Nia created and hosted the first Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival as a means to hold space for black femme filmmakers from all over the world. As an international freelance journalist by trade who has written for sites like DAZED, VICE, Paste Magazine, LA Weekly and the Village Voice, Nia hopes that the festival will travel and meet black femme filmmakers where they are, wherever that may be.
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Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival provided contracted services to support in the development of the overall structure and marketing strategy of the Odù Film Festival.
BFSFF is a grassroots endeavor that aims to connect Black Femmes throughout the African diaspora through the medium of film. It is a film festival that embodies a futuristic vision, centering Femme-identifying Black individuals in its programming. Recognizing the historical dominance of white males in the film and media industry, BFSFF encourages filmmakers on the margins to come together and forge a sense of community.
The festival seeks to redefine the Black Femme as a global protagonist and universal archetype. Since its inception in spring 2018, BFSFF has showcased over 40 short films created by Black filmmakers from diverse ethnicities and nationalities.
BFSFF envisions the Black Femme as a powerful force in storytelling and screens films of any genre that center Black Femme protagonists or are crafted by Black Femme filmmakers.
The festival caters to a niche market that represents the future. These are the individuals who not only shape the minds of the youth but also hold influence over the economic decisions of their families and communities. BFSFF strives to appeal to the entirety of its audience, recognizing the intersectional identities of Black Femmes who are often forced to choose between their blackness or queerness. This festival celebrates and embraces both aspects of their identity.
Casa Cultural do Reggae
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Born and raised in Salvador, BA, Brazil, Jussara Santana is the founder, producer and director of the Reggae Cultural Center.
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Casa Cultural do Reggae is one of the community venues for the Odù Film Festival as well as a recipient of the 2023 Black Freedom Fund.
Casa Cultural do Reggae promotes the inclusion and promotion of racial and cultural equality within the existing cultural diversity in our city Salvador, Bahia.
Seeking firm and public policies of inclusion and promotion of racial equality for the black people of the state of Bahia, in 2008 several groups and militants of the black movement gathered and presented several proposals to the state government and among them was Casa do Reggae with the objective of promoting the promotion of racial and cultural equality and understanding the great contribution that this rhythm has for the cultural transformation of our city.
Reggae is not just music, it is also a lifestyle, expressed in the way of being, behaving and thinking, lived by Rastafarians. Casa Cultural do Reggae/ Bahia strengthens and consolidates a strategic line for the growth of visibility and autonomy of affiliates, it also serves as a research center for Universities that already do this with several interviews for jobs in universities in the state of Bahia and other States.
Deep Waters Dance Theater
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Born in San Francisco, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land, and based in Oakland, amara is a choreographer/performance maker and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater.
She describes her dance and performance making practice as Conjure Art. Her interdisciplinary site-specific and community responsive performance experiences utilize Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. Her work is rooted in Black, queer, Afro futurist/surrealist, womanist principles, that insist on liberation, joy, home fullness and well-being.
In addition to her own work amara has also performed in the works of artists such as Ed Mock, Joanna Haigood, Ana Deveare Smith, Ronald K. Brown, Julie Tolentino, Adia Tamar Whitaker, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Faustin Linyekula. She is the former associate artistic director and company member with Urban Bush Women, and was the co artistic director of Headmistress, a performance collaboration with Sherwood Chen.
amara is a 2021 inaugural recipient of the Rainin Fellowship; a 2020 recipient of the Hewlett 50 grant with East Side Arts Alliance; a 2019 Dance/USA Fellow; a 2018 United States Artist Fellow and a 2018 recipient of KQED’s “Bay Brilliant” award.
Her current project, House/Full of Blackwomen in collaboration with director Ellen Sebastian Chang is a site-specific ritual performance project addressing the displacement, well-being and sex trafficking of Black women and girls in Oakland.
Rooted in her Oakland community, amara is a member of the Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) Arts and Culture working group in East Oakland. She is a co-founder of the Oakland Anti-Racist Organizing Committee (OAROC), a collaboration of BIPOC artists, activists and educators that holds space for individuals and organizations to address internalized structural racism. And she is the co-founder of Conjure and Mend, a creative sanctuary for survivors of Sex Trafficking in Oakland in partnership with sex trafficking abolitionist Regina Evans.
amara received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University and is an artist in residence at Stanford University.
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Deep Waters Dance Theater is one of the founding financial sponsors of the Odù Film Festival.
See their previous work, here.
Casa Cultural SoMovimento
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She is a teacher, dancer and choreographer, graduated in Dance from the Federal University of Bahia. Vera began her modern dance training in Salvador, Bahia, and has dabbled in other forms of dance such as Classic Ballet, Jazz, Contemporary and Traditional Brazilian Dances. She has studied with renowned Brazilian professors, including Gal Mascarenhas, Lia Robato, Angela Dantas, Lucinha Mascarenhas, Fafa Daltro, Mestre King, Carlinhos Moraes, Jorge Silva, Paco Gomes, and Zebrinha. She has danced in companies such as África Poesia, Companhia de Dança Jorge Silva and was a soloist dancer for the acclaimed Bale Folclórica da Bahia, with which she toured internationally in North and South America, Canada, Europe and Australia.
He began his studies in the Silvestre Technique, with the creator Rosangela Silvestre in 1992, deepening his theoretical and practical research, accompanying Rosângela in her workshops in Salvador. In 2002, Passos received his graduation and began to apply the technique at the Dance School of the Cultural Foundation of Bahia, in Brazil, in Free Courses and in the Preparatory Course.
In 2008 Vera Passos took over the coordination of the Preparatory Course at Funceb's Dance School. Her classes attract students in training, professional dancers and dance lovers in general. Vera is director of Silvestre Link Bahia.
In artistic productions, he collaborated with the eclectic American musician Steve Coleman, participating in his European tour in 2002 and 2003. He also choreographed the Orquestra Popular da Bahia, directed by the pioneering ethnomusicologist, Emilia Biancardi;
In co-production with O Kontra, an experimental jazz musical group, directed by Nei Sacramento, Vera choreographed works such as:
Rupture (1999), Oração (2005), Triângulos (2007), producing experimental dance performances.
With the Italian musician Aldo Brizzi, he participated in the film "Terra em Transe". Passos also danced at the Opera, "Lídia de Oxum", choreographed by Carlos Morais.
In 2010, Passos was invited by Linda Yudin and Luiz Badaró to work as a dancer, teacher and choreographer at Viver Brasil Dance Company, which is based in Los Angeles, CA, where he is currently performing as an artist in residency, revamping shows, creating new pieces, and also takes on the position of associate artistic director.
In 2019, he signed the choreography and script for the advertising video of the fashion brand Farm, where he announced a collection in honor of Bahia.
Vera Passos actively teaches seminars on Silvestre Technique and Symbols of Orixá Dances, in the United States, Europe, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.
Together with Rosangela Silvestre, they lead the annual training of the Silvestre Technique Intensive during the months of August and January in Salvador.
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Cultural Association House of Sound and Movement is one of the community venues for the Odù Film Festival as well as a recipient of the 2023 Black Freedom Fund.
The Cultural Association House of Sound and Movement was created in 2020 by Vera Passos and Nei Sacramento, in order to create an independent space in Salvador, Bahia with the goal to spread art that is accessible to all. This artistic, cultural and educational space will serve as a center for dance and music from the African Matrix (from Brazil) and from the diverse forms of the African diasporic.
This integrated approach seeks to affirm the ancestral presence that empowers the doing and the movement of individual emancipation, based on the recognition of I who dialogues all around him/her. Associação Cultural Casa Somovimento is the spokesperson for a people who do not want to be silent, so we will transform our stories into dance/music, seeking to strengthen this place of connections between art and education, where equality and difference bring us together.