How We Get Free: Queer Bodies in Resistance

How We Get Free invites global majority artists from the Island of Ireland and beyond to engage with Black Feminist theory and practices in the context of performance art. 

This night begins with insurgent films empowered by sex and sexuality, followed by an autobiographical performance from Diana Bamimeke on being a young Black artist in Ireland, and Fiona Fitwi delivering spoken and culinary delights at the end of the night. These happenings will be documented by Belfast based visual artist Macy Stewart, employing a Black gaze to gather moments between audience and artists.

Book tickets here! 

About the artists:

Diana Bamimeke 

Diana is an independent curator, art writer & transdisciplinary artist from Dublin via Nigeria, primarily interested in curating and creating socially engaged art. Their practice encompasses text, exhibition-making, performance, pedagogy and other artistic interventions in contemporary Irish contexts. Informed by critical and political frameworks including anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles, Black feminist thought and others, Bamimeke is interested in how people become political subjects, processes of abjectification, and their presence in Bamimeke’s own lived experience.

Fiona Fitwi 

Fiona is a supper club host, cook and writer, inspired by the beauty of human connection and the bonding powers of food. Fiona works to create spaces and pieces that unify and comfort, whilst encouraging meaningful discussions and through doing so, meaningful connection.

Macy Stewart

Macy is a filmmaker and photographer based in Belfast. Coming from an Irish and Jamaican background, this plays a significant role in her work as she consistently aims to bring diversity into every project, not only in front of the camera but also behind it. After years of building her photography career from the age of 17, Macy started to follow her love and passion for film in the past few years. Over time, her passion evolved toward directing, where she found new freedom in storytelling. Macy's recent directing credits include The Rhythm We Know (BBC & NI Screen), Silver Linings (Macmillan Cancer Support), and You Only Open the Window (The Dead Rabbit). 

Screenings:

Vanilla sex 1992

Directed by Cheryl Dunye

A short exploring what the term ‘Vanilla Sex’ means in black and queer communities through polaroid photographs.

Kink Retrogade 2022 

Directed by Basyma Saad

Kink Retrograde (2022) was shot in 2019 in a sea-side landfill on the outskirts of Beirut, against a backdrop of environmental collapse and toxicity. In the film's original plot, the intoxicated characters decide that the social contract between themselves and the sovereign powers has always been breached; they must devise a novel type of contract aware of its own abjectness, risk, and deviance—one of total kink. The remake revises and rehearses that call for a risk-aware kink, in light of recent historical and biographical events in the life of the city and the author.

Build or Destroy 2021

Rashaad Newsome

Build or Destroy is a cinematic exploration of identity, resistance, and the transformative power of community. In this film, a bejeweled figure in flames vogues to an original soundtrack featuring Kevin JZ Prodigy and Kyron El, embodying the resilience and strength of Black fem bodies. This figure, an amalgamation of many, symbolizes the collective power and importance of community as a form of resistance.

Project funded by: Esmée Mitchell Commissions by Outburst Arts through the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Art Fund.

PS² is supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council’s Artists’ Studio and Makerspace Organisational Grant, and Arts & Business NI’s Blueprint Investment Grant.