SAFOU LOVER
performance
(2020)
SAFOU LOVER
performance
(2020)
(RE)APPROPRIATION OF WEALTH
installation, performance
(2020)
FRUITS OF THE FUTURE
workshops
(2020)
NYUM ELUCUBRIS
Video installation, performances
(2018)
Soñ Gweha (she/they) is an artist, researcher and community organizer born in 1989, who lives and worksbetween the outskirts of Paris in France and Vienna in Austria.
Through a transdisciplinary practice, Soñ Gweha works in video, performance, installation, sculpture and aims to deconstruct the survival mechanisms of healing in “subcultures”.
Navigating through contemporary creation and research, they use moving images, poetic writings, archival conversations, sounds, body gestures, textiles and fruit & plant matter, in order to explore intimacy, trauma, resilience from the black womxn experience. Thus, Soñ Gweha creates immersive spaces that interrogates mythology and the social constructions of past-present-future space and time, in relation to various forms of queer eroticism and family ties and narratives. Pulling from their personal archive - often-time using their Cameroonian cultural heritage and landscape - and from the works of black womxn feminists and queer activists and theorists, they make use of Utopia, speculative fiction, spirituality and mysticism as vectors of emancipation and interconnectivity.
Co-founder of Atayé, an art collective and online magazine based in the Paris area, Soñ Gweha studied at the Mod’Art International Paris Fashion School before exploring Media. Graduate of a Masters in publishing and communications from the University of Cergy, they are deepening their research and artistic practice through a thesis in Arts & Média at La Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, and started the PhD. in Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna led by Annette Baldauf and Renate Lorenz in the Fall 2020.
Soñ Gweha's work was published in Afrikadaa Magazine as well as Ex Nihilo Magazine and she contributed to the Afrocyberféminismes cycle in Paris (2018). They performed and exhibited at the TU-Théâtre de l’Usine in Genève, CH (2020), at the Kaiku Club, Helsinki, FI (2019), at the Museum of Black Civilisations of Dakar, SEN (2019), at the Magasin des horizons - CNAC Grenoble, FR (2019), at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris (2018), at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018) or at La Colonie, Paris (2017) etc.
SAFOU LOVER performance (2020)
NYUM ELUCUBRIS video installation, performances (2018)
VICTORIOUS ON THE SUN performance, video, manifesto (2020)
Kinje Gweha (2021), performance (extract), Sonic Entanglements (PhD in Practice)
SHOWS / PERFORMANCES
SARAH MALDOROR : TRICONTINENTALE / Exposition collective, curation de François Piron et Cédric Fauq l Palais de Tokyo, Paris
SEX ECOLOGIES / Exposition collective sur invitation de Stefanie Hessler et Katja Aglert l Kunsthall Trondheim (Norvège)
2022 : PARTY OFFICE b2b Fadescha, Documenta Fifteen, WH22, Kassel, Germany
2021: SONIC ENTANGLEMENTS / Performance zoom collective sur invitation du European Artistic Research Network (EARN) l HKU University of the Arts Utrecht (Pays-Bas)
2020: MOSTRA CURA / Performance zoom avec Mario Lopes, curation de Maêlys Meyer l Mostra de Artes Cênicas Negras de Porto Alegre (Brésil)
2019: IMAGES POUR NOTRE TEMPS / Projection et performance sur invitation de Eric Baudelaire et Koyo Kuoh l Raw Material Company, Centre Yennenga, Dakar (Sénégal)
2018: DÉCONSTRUIRE «L’ÉROTICOLONIE» / Performance sur invitation de Sylvie Chalaye l Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris
2017: OUVRIR LA VOIX / Lecture in situ sur invitation de la réalisatrice Amandine Gay et Synesthesie l Centre Commercial Saint-Denis Basilique, Saint-Denis
PRODUCTION AND WORKSHOP
LABORATOIRE DES CURIOSITÉS (ARTEC, Paris 8) / Atelier co-animé avec Louyi Natillia, sur invitation d’Asaf Bachrach l POUSH–Manifesto, Clichy
2020: CUTIE.BPOC FESTIVAL / Atelier zoom «Fruits of the Future» sur invitation de Sunanda Mesquita l Événement international
2019: FESTIVAL KREYOL / Atelier photographie et écriture «Identité-immatérielle» - Collaboration Atayé et le photographe Cedrick Isham l La Maison des Arts Créteil
2018: FESTIVAL KREYOL / «2018-1848 : Ateliers d’écriture créative «Rencontre avec un.e ancêtre» - Collaboration Atayé et la Cie Dife Kako l La Maison des Arts Créteil
2017: AFRO! / Atelier «Ecrire sur le cheveu» sur invitation de Brigitte Sombié et Rokhaya Diallo - Atayé l Maison des Métallos, Paris 2017
INTERVENTIONS : CONFÉRENCES / TABLES RONDES
POET.E.SS.E.S : QU’EST-CE QU’UNE FXMME POÈTE ? / Colloque universitaire, les Parleuses l ENS, Paris
2020: FOODCULTURE DAYS / Création radiophonique «Transmissions matrilinéaires avec Ngomboa : Safou et fruits du futur» l Radio 40, Lausanne (CH)
2019: SISTAS! BLACK WOMEN ON THE MOVE IN PARIS / Sur invitation de Janis Mayer pour Syracuse University l Hall Pajol, Paris
2018: SALON DU LIVRE D’ART DES AFRIQUES / «Technologies numériques et circulation des connaissances», dans le cadre de la Fiac l La Colonie, Paris
2017: RENCONTRE JUSTICE SOCIALE & POP CULTURE / «La représentation des minorités dans la pop culture» l Le Pavillon des canaux, Paris
RESIDENCIES / DISTINCTIONS
2020-2021: THE SEED BOX - SEX ECOLOGIES / Résidence de recherche-création sur invitation de Stefanie Hessler et Katja Aglert l Kunsthall Trondheim (Norvège)
2020: ARCHIPELAGOGO CLUB / Résidence pour création sonore/visuelle et performance avec Maïté Chénière (Mighty) l L’Abri, Le TU-Théâtre de l’Usine, Genève (CH)
2019: IMAGES POUR NOTRE TEMPS/ Résidence dirigée par le cinéaste Eric Baudelaire l Raw Material Company, Dakar (Sénégal)
2018: TIMELIGHT / Résidence «Disco never dies» dirigée par Le Tube l Centre Européen d’Action Artistiques Contemporaines (CEAAC), Strasbourg
2016: ONE YOUNG WORLD / Distinction de l’ESSEC | Ottawa (CA)