Asmaa Jama & Gouled Abdishakour Ahmed

Asmaa Jama is a Somali artist + poet and co-founder of art collective Dhaqan Collective, based in England. This
year, Asmaa was shortlisted for Brunel African Poetry Prize, shortlisted for the Wasafiri Writing Prize +
longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. Asmaa’s a Cave Canem 2021 Fellow.
Asmaa has been published in places like Poetry Review, The Good Journal, Ambit, Ballast and Magma. And
have been translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, German and Somali. Asmaa’s writing has been
commissioned by Arnolfini, Hayward Gallery and Ifa gallery.
As a film director, Asmaa was commissioned by BBC Arts to make Before We Disappear an interactive film
and by Bristol Old Vic to make ‘The Season of Burning Things’ - which was screened at Venice Architecture
Biennale, as part of ‘100 Ways to say We’. (Instagram: @asmaa_floats)

Gouled Abdishakour Ahmed is an Addis Ababa based Somali visual artist, stylist, costume
designer and writer. Their work explores the themes of memory and belonging through the lens
of self portrait photography and self fashioning. Their ongoing self portrait series One Day These
Names Will Be Ours explores the gaps that exist within formal language in the understanding,
and contextualization of gender expressions that exist outside of the binary. Gouled's work deals
with the notion of futurity, and is heavily aimed at envisioning new & equitable aesthetic futures
for the Horn of Africa.⁠
Gouled has exhibited both locally and internationally most notably in the Africa Center in
London, and Bozar, Brussels. Gouled continues to collaborate widely with talents in their native
land and beyond. They are currently working on their upcoming debut capsule collection. (Instagram: @xawaashking)

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