jaamil olawale kosoko is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent originally from Detroit, MI. kosoko works across the creative realms of live art performance, video, sculpture, and poetry. As an educator and community organizer, they approach politics and education as extensions of their creative process. Through ritual, embodied poetics, Black critical studies, and queer theories of the body, kosoko conjures and crafts perpetual modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/however possible.
Their practice has been honored with a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellowship, a 2018 NEFA NDP Production Grant, support from the MAP Fund in 2017, a 2017-19 Princeton Arts Fellowship, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, a 2019 NPN Development Fund Award, a 2019 Red Bull Writing Fellowship, a 2020 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and a 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short film. kosoko recently received the inaugural Doris Duke Performing Arts Technology Lab Award and has been recognized as a 2024 curatorial consultant for FringeArts in Philadelphia.
A recent work, Chameleon (The Living Installments), premiered virtually in April 2020. Previous works, such as Séancers (2017) and the Bessie nominated #negrophobia (2015), have toured internationally appearing in major festivals including Tanz im August (Berlin), Moving in November (Finland), Abrons Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Fusebox Festival, Within Practice (Sweden), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), Brighton Festival (UK), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), Center for the Less Good Idea (South Africa), and Zürich MOVES! (Switzerland), among others.
At MacDowell in 2022, kosoko worked on their book Black Body Amnesia.During their 2024 residency, they focused on completing an essay for a forthcoming publication in 2026. They also worked on the conceptual and developmental phases for experimental performance pieces Voncena's Spell and The End of Dances, immersive performance installations exploring themes of corporeality, memory, and transformation.
Portrait by Ryan Collerd
