This Referentiality: Towards a Decentred Future event features multi-disciplinary artist and disability activist Christopher Samuel, and Tanzanian interdisciplinary artist and writer Valerie Amani, in conversation Nana Ocran, the London-based Founder and Editor of People’s Stories Project and former Editor-in-Chief for the Time Out Group’s series of guides to Lagos and Abuja.
Christopher Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics, often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience. Seeking to interrogate his personal understanding of identity as a disabled person impacted by inequality and marginalisation, Christopher responds with urgency, humour, and poetic subversiveness within his work. This approach makes his work accessible to a wider audience, allowing others to identify and relate to a wider spectrum of human experience. The Archive of the Unseen, which was commissioned with the support of Unlimited and the Wellcome Collection, addresses the imbalance of representation in medical and social archives to build a better understanding of the wider spectrum of the human experience.
Valerie Asiimwe Amani is a Tanzanian interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice interrogates the ways in which body erotics, language, place and perceived reality are used to situate (or isolate) the self within community. She has exhibited internationally including group shows in Lagos, Paris, Cape Town and Leipzig with recent shows being a solo performance at South London Gallery in collaboration with the Roberts Institute of Art as well as a solo exhibition at Alliance Française, Dar es Salaam. Valerie holds an MFA from The Ruskin School of Art and is the recipient of the 2021 Ashmolean Museum Vivien Leigh Prize for a work on paper. She is a winner for the 2022 Ingram Art Prize and received a commendation for the 2022 Dentons Award. She has been featured in Art Monthly, Hyperallergic and BBC amongst others. Valerie has given various talks on Art and Activism including SOAS, University of London with The Royal African society. She is also an art writer focusing on emerging African artists in Emergent Art Space.
Nana Ocran is the London-based Founder and Editor of the People’s Stories Project. She was formerly Editor-in-Chief for the Time Out Group‘s series of guides to Lagos and Abuja (2007–2013) and has consulted on and established publications on West African culture for the Danish Film Institute, Arts Council England, and the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva). She was Editor-in-Chief for the British Council’s Connected Futures print magazine, which was developed as part of the organisation’s Connected ZA programme (2013-2016). In 2014 she was a curatorial advisor for the Afrofuture design programme at La Rinascente retail store in Italy, during Milan Design Week. She has also written design-focused articles for Design Indaba (Cape Town), Gestalten Books (Berlin) and has previously been a Pan-African trends watcher for the Breakthrough Innovation Group (B.I.G.), a creative marketing think-tank for Pernod-Ricard, Paris. She has also been engaged as an editor for the Clore Leadership Brilliant Routes Cultural Programme. Nana is a long-time Associate Lecturer at the London campus of Omnes Education, a private multidisciplinary higher education and research institution, where she has designed modular courses in Visual Culture and creative Trendspotting for international students. Nana has designed and delivered transmedia storytelling workshops for cultural producers in Columbia. This was in partnership with the British Council Americas, the Columbian Ministry of Culture and the digital agency, Poliedro in Bogotá. She has been a cultural advisor and artist nominator for the Rolls-Royce contemporary textile-based Spirit of Ecstasy Challenge, which is one of the company’s annual arts programmes. Nana also contributes reports and articles to Canvas8, the award-winning behavioural insights agency.
