Creative Exchange Lab

Anika Deb is a Bangladeshi-British artist working across mediums from painting, sculpture and performance to interactive installations, interested in creating spaces of gathering to explore relations between people and culture/s. Recent exhibitions and performances include: We’re going to the Chapel, Open Studios, Spike Island, Bristol (2019); Wherever I go, I’m in a movie, EBC Screening event, Trinity Centre, Bristol (2018); Throwing Shade, Vestibules, Bristol for residency with Artspace Lifespace and Bristol City Council (2018). Anika is currently a graduate fellow at Spike Island and recently curated Why are we not here? for Test Space in association with Rising Arts Agency (2019) with a panel discussion and workshop forming conversations on institutional racism.

Asmaa Jama is a Danish-born Somali poet, visual artist and filmmaker based in Bristol. Inspired by Agha Shahid Ali and Warsan Shire, Asmaa uses her artistry to speak intimately and honestly about her identity as a Somali woman, and her experiences of being a third-culture kid in the UK. In 2018 she was commended by the Young Poets Network for her poem Bi-när. As a visual artist, she has been featured online by Dark Yellow Dot. As a writer, she has also created online content for Rife magazine as an official contributor. In 2019, she competed in the semi-finals of BBC 1Xtra and BBC Asian Network’s Words First.

Channie B is a young Black, Caribbean, British female artist based in London. Her work advocates for the equality of race politics and stereotyping within British society. Many stereotypes come with a complex identity and Channie’s work aims to give voice to these issues of injustice, as well as feelings of dislocation and belonging, which aren’t always heard in the UK. She performed her first solo show SURGE this summer as part of Offbeat festival.

Charneh Watson is a performance maker, facilitator and support worker based in Glasgow. Her creative and care practice explores humanising the de-humanised with a focus on identity politics and how this shapes our bodies, lives, and environments. She creates whimsical, conceptual and choreographic work. Charneh has most recently presented work at Kelburn Garden Party and The Stove Network.

Chisara Agor is a singer-songwriter, performer and theatre maker from Peckham, London. She creates art that is interdisciplinary, combining her love for philosophy, social critique and introspection. Chisara is an Artist who endeavours to create meaningful and inspiring work in a world that is rapidly changing and growing. She joins The Roundhouse as a resident artist this year and is a successful recording artist.

Diwas Dewan is a Bristol-based artist whose practice attempts to understand and translate his situations, to demonstrate forms of communication in domestic context, and explore the possibility of exchange through simple dialogues. His work relies on the degrees of intimacy or formality that he experiences within his personal relationships, to feel the psyche affected and examine what can be encouraged or exposed in each person. Whether that be two strangers or two lovers, Diwas’ work looks for the tension between romance and absurdity. Diwas graduated with a BA Fine Art from the University of the West of England in 2017.

Folake Shoga is an artist working across disciplines, based in Bristol. About ten years ago she started exploring Live Art as a reaction to digital notions of disembodiment, freedom and transcending the body. Her body, biracial and unheroic, has always determined how she experiences the world and is, in turn, experienced. Folake writes about live art using the name Osunwunmi which is coined from Yoruba culture.

Joseph Funnell is a visual artist, performer and writer of afro-Caribbean and white British origins who works with dance, gestures, movement and the voice. His research-based practice is concerned with the perennial instability of identity, considered through the lens of mutated mythologies and unrequited longing. From 2017-2018, Joseph worked as part of the queer performance/curatorial collective Kem in Warsaw. Recent solo works include mugged by invisible men for CAMPerVan at Grow Tottenham, and Low Swings for CAMPerVan at The Art Car Boot Fair, London. Further works include ‘Gayle Rubens: The Catacombs (1991/2012), at the Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw.

Julene Robinson is a multidisciplinary performance artist, writer, director and chemist based in London. Robinson’s work interrogates the self and relationships across culture and the world. Her previous works paid close attention to social issues faced in the Jamaican society and the diaspora, human relationships across cultures and shared narratives. Robinson completed her Masters in Theatre at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance and is working on her first original solo performance piece in the UK.

Kelvin Atmadibrata is an Indonesian-born artist currently based in London. He works primarily with performances, often accompanied by and translated into drawings, mixed-media collages and objects compiled as installations. Approached as bricolages, Kelvin translates narratives and recreates personifications based on RPGs (Role-playing video games), theories and pop mythologies. Previously based in Singapore for a decade, he moved back to Jakarta, Indonesia and established Sepersepuluh, a performance-focused gallery in the northwest fringe of the capital. Kelvin is currently undertaking Master of Art in Contemporary Art Practice (Performance) student with Royal College of Art.

Muneera Pilgrim is an international Poet, Cultural Producer, Writer and Broadcaster concerned with telling alternative stories and colorfully etching a poetic space of dialogue which is accessible to all, regardless of religious and cultural boundaries. Muneera is the co-founder of the Muslim female Spoken Word and Hip-Hop duo Poetic Pilgrimage and co-founder of ::nana:: Poetry Collective. She regularly contributes to Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2, is currently the 2019/20 Associate Artist with The English Touring Theatre and has written for The Guardian, Huffington Post and Al Jazeera Blog amongst others.

Rubiane Maia is a Brazilian visual artist based in Folkestone whose practice occupies the intersection between performance, video and installation. She is attracted by states of synergy, encompassing the invisible relationships of affect and flux, and investigates the body in order to amplify the possibilities of perception beyond the habitual. She is interested in studies on Feminism, Racism and Ancestry. More recently, she has been analysing the relation between memory and incorporation, often making use of personal narratives as a device for action and resistance. In 2016, she worked on the project ‘Preparation for Aerial Exercise, the Desert and the Mountain’ which required her to travel to high landscapes of Uyuni (Bolivia), Pico da Bandeira (Brazil) and Monte Roraima (Brazil/Venezuela)’. In 2017 she completed her second short film ‘ÁDITO’.

Tania Camara is an Interdisciplinary solo performance artist based in Manchester working across performance, installation, video, and photography. Tania creates work that challenges the concept of nationality, belonging and the black performing body. She takes her cultural heritage, personal experiences, research and the interdisciplinary structure of Batuku which includes singing, dancing, drums and spoken word, as a starting point. Tania holds an MA in Artistic Research from the University of Amsterdam.