An evening of readings with Lola Olufemi, Remi Graves, Jay Bernard & Imani Mason Jordan.
6th April 6.30-9pm
Doors: 18.30, Readings: 19.00
Dyke Hands is an ongoing artistic programming strand curated by lead curators Languid Hands at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, focusing on the work of dykes, lesbians, and queer and trans people more broadly, exploring their work through various disciplines including poetry, writing, film, performance, & music.
The event is free to attend, with donations welcome at www.justgiving.com/198cal. All donations will support the work of 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, allowing us to continue our over 30 year legacy of supporting and showcasing the work of artists and creative practitioners who are Black or of colour through exhibitions, programming, artist development and other forms of engagement, and of creating creative learning opportunities to local communities.
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Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the feminist imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective.
Remi Graves is a London based poet and drummer and author of the poetry pamphlet ‘with your chest’ (fourteen poems, 2022). A former Barbican Young Poet, Remi’s work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, at St Paul’s Cathedral and in Pan Macmillan’s She is Fierce Anthology. Past commissions include ‘coal’ for Rosa Kwir’s Tender and Masculine Group show, ‘don’t text me, i’m dreaming’ for Apples and Snakes and ‘On Breathing’ for Barbican Centre. Remi has taught courses at The Poetry School and delivers workshops in schools and libraries across London and UK. Remi has performed at Cheltenham Literature Festival, Tate Modern and more. You can follow Remi’s work @shadebutter on Instagram.
Jay Bernard is a writer, film programmer and archivist from London. As well as working on BFI Flare, London’s LGBTQ film festival, they work at Statewatch, a state research library, archive and collection based at Mayday Rooms. Jay’s first collection Surge (Chatto and Windus, 2019), based on the New Cross Fire archives, won the Ted Hughes Award 2017, a cross-disciplinary exploration of the New Cross Fire in 1981. Surge is published by New Beacon Books, specialists in African and Caribbean Literature since 1966, and the George Padmore Institute, an archive, educational resource and research centre housing materials relating to the black community of Caribbean, African and Asian descent in Britain and continental Europe. Jay’s other works include several pamphlets: The Red and Yellow Nothing (2016), English Breakfast (2013) and Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (2008). Their work is interdisciplinary, critical, queer and rooted in the archive. Jay’s short film ‘Something Said’ has screened in the UK and internationally, including for Aesthetica and Leeds International Film Festival (where it won best experimental and best queer short respectively), Sheffield DocFest and Cinema Africa. Jay is a programmer at BFI Flare, an archivist at Mayday Rooms and resident artist at Raven Row.
Imani Mason Jordan is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator interested in poetics and performance. Recent projects include their solo performance TREAD/MILL: WIP (Somerset House Studios 2021, and Aspen Art Museum, 2022); ATLANTIC RAILTON: LIVE with Ain Bailey (Serpentine Pavilion, 2021) & WELCOME NOTE IN A WELCOME SPEECH with Libita Sibungu (Gasworks, 2019; Spike Island, 2020; Sensing the Planet / Serpentine, 2021). Imani is the author of the pamphlet Objects Who Testify (PSS, 2019) as well as numerous articles, reviews, essays, poems, plays and love letters, some of which they have published.
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198 Contemporary Arts & Learning’s artistic programme is supported by Arts Council England, Freelands Foundation & Lambeth Council.