Sokari Ekine
4123 South Prieur Street
New Orleans, LA-,-Sokari Ekine has worked and lived in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the US and who
now lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Sokari's work overlaps creatively in her multiple roles
as photographer, independent scholar, blogger, and community builder. Her ten year blog,
Black Looks, is a foundational site which at its center documents African queer
subjectivities and forms of intersectional activism. Additionally she has contributed to four
ground breaking publications on Africa including the Queer African Reader, recently
translated into Portuguese.
A recipient of the 2013 International Reporting Fellowship from John Hopkins, Sokari
began her journey as a photographer in Haiti, exploring Haitian Vodoun, creating the photo
essay “Spirit Desire: Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories in Haitian Vodou”. In
2017 she received The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice “Global Arts Fund” grant for
her visual documentary, "The Vernacular of Freedom, and the Politics of Rescue in Queer
Futures” which contemplates the centrality of spiritual practice for queer Kenyans. Most
recently she received a grant from the Awesome Foundation and a Monroe Fellowship from
the Center for the Gulf South in New Orleans.
Her visual work draws on some 32 plus years of global experience, working and living in
multiple geographies in the areas of African spiritual practices, education, technology,
advocacy and activism in social justice, scholarly and journalistic writing. Over the past two
years, she has broadened her creativity to include digital and non-digital collage making;
working with natural materials such as iron, glass and vegetation.
Her photographs are included as part of the permanent collection at the Amistad Research
Center, New Orleans and at Xavier University Gallery Collections. Sokari sits on the Board
of Directors for Synergía - Initiatives for Human Rights.
Education
1996: University of London, Institute of Education: Masters Rights in Education. 20,000
word dissertation: ‘Education of Somali Refugees in Inner London’.
1996: York University, Canada, Center for Refugee Studies: Certificate in Refugee Studies.
1992: University of London, Institute of Education: Further Education Teachers Certificate
1991: University of East London, BSc. (Hons) New Technology & Education (2:1) 12,000
word dissertation: ‘Computer Based Learning in Further Education’.
Employment
1996 - Present: Freelance writer / editor, life coach / career development, independent
photographer, researcher
Exhibitions
November, 2019 “Working the Spirit” Xavier University Art Gallery (11 images)
September, 2019: “AfroFuture - Ground Zero”, New Orleans African American Museum (2
images)
May, 2019: “Memento Mori”, Second Story Gallery, New Orleans (2 images)
April, 2019: “PhotoVille”, Los Angeles (2 images)
December, 2018: “Spirit Desire: Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories in Haitian
Vodou”, Photo Nola, New Orleans, Louisiana (8 images)
December, 2018: “AfroFuture”, Miami, Florida (2 images)
October, 2018: “Loa Spiritual Family”, Ashe Power House, New Orleans. (2 images)
September, 2018: PhotoVille 2018: MFON [Women Photographers of
the African Diaspora] “Altar: Prayer, Ritual, Offerings” (2 images)
December 2017 : “Pioneers to a WE Future”, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, Photo Nola 2017 (2
images)
January 2017: “Contemporary African Spirituality” Calabar Gallery, Harlem, New York. ‘ (1
image)
November 2016: Black Portraiture[s] III: The African Influence, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Panel presentation on “SPIRIT DESIRE: Black Diasporic Bodies, Imagination, and the
Peripheries of Space,” by Alexis De Veaux
October 2016: 4th Biennale of Fine Art and Documentary Photography, Berlin, Germany. (2
images)
“Spirit Desire: Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories' in Haitian Vodou”
September 2016: “Black Canvas: Reverberations of Freedom”, Bahia, Brazil presented by
Black Feminist Forum and AWID (8 images)
May, 2016: “Black Diaspora”, Digital Display, The McKenna Museum of African American
Art, New Orleans, USA.
September, 2014: Manifest Destiny, Little Haiti Cultural Center, Miami, Florida. "Fatimah
and the Erosion of River Grise, Haiti” (6 images)
Permanent Exhibition, 2016 - present “ Persistence of Blackness” Private Gallery,
Broadmoor, New Orleans.
“Shhh Shhh Shhh,Shhh, Papa Legba Rele Lwa” A collaborative experimental film using
sound and photographic stills.
Ongoing photographic essays
“Altars: Black Queer Ecologies of the Spirit ” a visual intervention that addresses the
making and significance of altars in the lives of black queer subjects in the Gulf South.
“Ways of Dying” a visual narrative on the ways of mourning and celebrating Black life as it
passes through death to the afterlife;
”Ways of Dying - the Environment” visually explores landscapes that have been
compromised due to mining, and deforestation;
“Signs of God” is a series of collages in which I excavate the past so as to erase the silence
around the complicity of the Christian church in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the human
factories known as plantations. I draw on the work of Saidiya Hartman's "Afterlife of
Slavery" as seen in the ubiquitous “signs of god” on the streets of Ghana, Nigeria and other
African countries.
Portraiture - includes people in Haiti and queer life in Kenya and the United States.
Fellowship and Grants
2019: Monroe Fellows Research Grant issued by the Center for the Gulf South in support of
my visual documentary “Altars: Black Queer Ecologies of the Spirit”
2019: The Awesome Foundation grant for artists.
2017: Global Arts Fund grant issued by the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice for
LGBTIQ artists for “Spirit Desire: The Vernacular of Freedom, and the Politics of Rescue in
Queer Futures” a collaboration on queer spiritual practices along the coastal region of
Kenya;
2013: International Reporting Fellowship. Issued by the International Reporting Project,
John Hopkins University. Fellowship undertaken in Haiti reporting on grassroots health and
action from January to December 2013.
Photographic contributions to publications
“Spirit Desire: Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories' in Haitian Vodoun” Photo
Book, published on Blurb.com 2018
“Sinister Wisdom 107 Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution”. 2017
“The Art of Nigerian Women” . 2017
“Blessed Body: The Secret Lives of Nigerian LGBT” 2016
‘Spirit Women” as part of the Accra street festival in August, 2016
“Ways of Dying” Saraba Literary Journal, #15, 2014
Major scholarship
“Love in the Age [of] Evolution” in Opoku-Gyimah, Phyll, Rikki Beadle-Blair, John R
Gordon [Eds] “Sista! An Anthology of Writings by/about Same Gender-Loving Women of
African Descent in the UK” . Team Angelica Press, London. October 2017
“Blogging Queer Africa - In Conversation” The Scholar & Feminist Online, Issue 14, 2017
“Beyond Anti-LGBTI Legislation: Criminalization and the Denial of Citizenship” in Bakshi,
Sandeep, Suhraiya Jivraj, Silvia Posocco [Eds] “Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational
Perspectives, Critical Interventions” CounterPress UK. October 2016:
Ekine, Sokari and Hakima Abbas [Editors] “Queer African Reader” Fahamu/Pambazuka
Press, April 2013
Ekine, Sokari “Women's Responses to Environmental Destruction and State Violence in the
Niger Delta" in “Women’s Lives” , McGraw Hill, November 2012
Manji, Firoze and Sokari Ekine [Editors] “African Awakenings” Fahamu/Pambazuka Press
2011 Ekine, Sokari [Ed] “SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa” Fahamu/Pambazuka
Press, 2010
Black Looks - A ten year blog [2004 to 2014] and foundational site which at its center
documents African queer subjectivities and forms of intersectional activism
Ekine, Sokari “Blood and Oil: Testimonies of Violence from Women of the Niger Delta”
Center for Democracy and Development, London, 2001 [Out of Print]
References
Dr Charlene Désire, Professor, Nova South Eastern University.
Relationship - Scholarly collaborator on Haiti, Vodou and education in South Florida.
Email:- Phone:-
Dr Sarah Clunis, Assistant Professor of Art History, Xavier University
Relationship - Curator and Mentor
Email: Phone:-
Ms Hakima Abbas, Executor Director, AWID
Relationship - co-editor of Queer African Reader; co-member of queer African activist
networks; colleague at Fahamu.org
Email:
