The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis
The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis (CBP) is an experimental, multidisciplinary research incubator and co-working research-creation hub, an archival nexus, and creative atelier/studiolab that is rooted in the importance of black study, Afro-Indigenous relations, and Afro-diasporic technologies. The CBP was established in 2022 and is led by Prof. SA Smythe. It is a coalitional space where transnational and anticolonial cultural workers, educators, researchers, technicians, artists, activists, system-impacted and other community members collaboratively and creatively attend to the genre-defying aesthetic interventions of Black life and Black studies. We embrace our roles as makers and maintainers, relishing liberatory practices and ideas about where we’ve been and (re)imagining where and who we want to be, together.Find out more

Yanaminah Thullah
Yanaminah Thullah is an award-winning community builder and curator with a rich background in public speaking, policy, writing, and strategic consulting. She was born and raised in Toronto and is of Liberian and Sierra Leonean descent. Her work centres marginalized voices through immersive and interdisciplinary exhibits such as the award-winning “Beyond The Body” with Design TO and “We Do Not Dream of Labour” at the Ottawa Art Gallery. With a trilingual Bachelor’s degree in International Relations (uOttawa) and as a current MFA Graduate student at SAIC, she brings a global, intersectional lens to projects across cultural and institutional contexts. Yanaminah is passionate about world-building and storytelling as tools for representation, healing, and systemic change.Find out more

Jasmine Liaw
Jasmine Liaw is an emerging interdisciplinary artist moving fluidly between roles of filmmaker, curator, designer, performer, and producer in contemporary dance, new media art, and experimental film. Evidenced in collaboration and community, her work leans into transcultural narratives intersecting her Hakka-Chinese diaspora, her queerness, and queer theories in temporality and ecology.
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Amin Alsaden

Amin Alsaden is a curator, scholar, and educator whose work focuses on transnational solidarities and exchanges across cultural boundaries. His curatorial practice is committed to advancing social justice through the arts, and to disseminating more inclusive narratives that decenter existing canons and challenge hegemonic epistemological and power structures. His exhibitions invariably raise questions concerning the interrelated domains of geography, colonialism, extraction, organized violence, and displacement.

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Anne Macmillan

Anne Macmillan is currently based in K’jipuktuk (Halifax). She makes digital animations and drawings to consider relationships with what is unknown, and the appearance of things. She received her masters degree from MIT on a Fulbright scholarship, and a BFA from NSCAD university.



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