jaamil olawale kosoko
jaamil olawale kosoko '05, is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, and curator of Yoruba and Natchez descent, originally from Detroit, MI.
Biography
kosoko moves across the creative realms of live art performance, video, sculpture, and poetry using both cultural and academic idioms. As an educator and community organizer, they approach politics and education as extensions of their creative process. Through ritual and spiritual practice, embodied poetics, Black critical studies, and queer theories of the body, he conjures and crafts perpetual modes of freedom, healing, and care when/where/however possible.
kosoko’s works - including Black Body Amnesia (2022), Chameleon (2020), Séancers (2017), and the Bessie Award-nominated #negrophobia (2015) - have toured to venues and festivals such as Abrons Art Center, Gibney Dance Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Fusebox Festival, Montréal Arts Interculturels (CA), Moving in November (FI), TakeMeSomewhere (UK), SICK! (UK), Tanz im August (DE), Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Norway), Zurich MOVES! (CH), Beursschouwburg (BE) and Spielart Festival (DE) among others.
kosoko is the recipient of several awards including the 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize for Best Experimental Short film, 2022 LaBecque Residency (Switzerland), 2021/22 MacDowell Fellowship, 2020 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, 2019 Red Bull Arts Fellowship, 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, 2017-2019 Princeton Arts Fellowship, among many others.
kosoko has held curatorial positions at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center. They lecture regularly at Princeton University and The University of the Arts Philadelphia. They are a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Fall 2024.
Photo Credit: Ryan Collerd