Karimah Ashadu (b. London 1985) is a British-born Nigerian Artist and Film Director living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s practice is concerned with labour, patriarchy and notions of independence pertaining to the socio- economic and socio-cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora.
Her work has been exhibited and screened at institutions internationally, including the 60th Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition. Upcoming exhibitions include Camden Art Centre, London. Her work has been shown at Canal Projects and MoMA PS1, New York, Kunsthalle Bremen, Tate Modern, London, Secession, Vienna, Kunstverein, Hamburg, South London Gallery, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and Trautwein Herleth, Berlin.
Ashadu is the recipient of other awards such as the Prize of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen (2022) and the ars viva prize (2020). Public collections include MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the City of Geneva Contemporary Art Collection, the Kunsthalle Bremen and the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany. Fellowships include the Abigail R. Cohen fellowship at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Paris. In 2020, Ashadu established her film production company Golddust by Ashadu, specialising in Artists’ films on black culture and African discourses.
Leonardo Bigazzi is curator at Fondazione In Between Art Film for which he co-curated the exhibitions “Penumbra” and “Nebula” on the occasion of the Venice Biennale in 2022 and 2024. He is also the curator of Lo schermo dell’arte – Contemporary Art and Cinema Festival, Florence (2008–); founder and curator of VISIO – European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images (2012–); and was founder and codirector of Feature Expanded (2015–18). He has curated exhibitions and film programs at Paul Klee Zentrum, Bern; Museu Tàpies, Barcelona; MAXXI Museum, Rome; and Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; among others. He commissioned and/or produced over thirty artist’s films that were presented at Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Biennale Arte, Venice; and Manifesta 14, among others. Machine Boys by Karimah Ashadu, that he produced, was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Artist at the Biennale Arte in Venice in 2024.
Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society within UCL’s Faculty of the Arts and Humanities, and a Faculty Associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. Prior to UCL, he was Lecturer in Film and Literature the Department English and Related Literature at the University of York and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was an LSE Fellow in Film Studies within the Department of Sociology.
Nwonka’s scholarship broadly centres on race and the humanities. He is the co-editor of the book Black Film/British Cinema II (2021), the author of the book Black Boys: The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film (2023), which was longlisted for the 2024 Krazna Krausz Moving Image Book Award, the author/co-editor of the book Black Arsenal: Club, Culture and Identity (2024) and co-author of the forthcoming book Race and Racism in the Creative and Cultural Industries (2025). He is Professor in Practice at the British Film Institute, his writing and research have featured regularly in The Guardian, The Observer, New York Times, BBC News, and Sight and Sound, as featured on BBC Radio 4, Front Row, Channel 4 News, ITV News, and CNN International.
Alessandro Rabottini is a London-based art critic and curator, and the Artistic Director of Fondazione In Between Art Film. He initiated STILL – Studies on Moving Images and curates exhibitions in museums and institutions internationally. Projects include Robert Overby’s retrospective at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (which travels to GAMeC, Bergamo, Bergen Kunsthall, and Le Consortium, Dijon); solo exhibitions of John Latham and Gianfranco Baruchello at Milano Triennale; Elad Lassry and Adrian Paci at PAC, Milan; Danh Vo and Victor Man at Villa Medici, Rome; Walid Raad and Ettore Spalletti at MADRE Museum, Naples; and Keren Cytter, Latifa Echakhch, Giuseppe Gabellone, David Maljkovic, Tim Rollins & KOS, Sterling Ruby, Tris Vonna-Michell, and Jordan Wolfson at GAMeC, Bergamo.
Rabottini contributes to museum catalogues on the practices of artists such as Uri Aran, Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, Piotr Uklański, and Paloma Varga Weisz. From 2017 to 2020, he served as Artistic Director of miart – the international fair of modern and contemporary art in Milan.
