Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence is an ongoing performative forum that reimagines the spaces where treaties, coalitions, trade deals, and manifestos are negotiated — not in distant halls of power, but in the everyday lives of Black and global majority women and non-binary folx. It transforms the architecture of the conference hall into a site for collective reflection, resistance, and world-building — a space to reckon with the past while reimagining new possibilities for coalition, togetherness, and intimacy.

At its core, the project gathers contributor-performers to share personal stories, memories, and embodied knowledge in response to Ama Ata Aidoo’s 1992 poem As Always, a Painful Declaration of Independence. These individual “declarations” weave together intimate narratives of survival and liberation, addressing the legacies of slavery, colonialism, immigration, refugeeism, and more. Together they imagine new ways to move through grief and to celebrate our continuing presence — despite it all.

Over time, these declarations have evolved into video installations, live performances, and sound works that affirm the power of collective thinking and honour ritual and storytelling as tools for historical and political transformation.

Declaration of Independence has been realised in multiple iterations, including:

Art on the Underground, London (2023)

O Quilombismo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies, HKW – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2023)

Towards the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice, BAK, Utrecht (2021)

On-doing Undoing: Ecological Futurisms, CREAM, Ambika P3, London (2020)

Brent Biennial, Metroland Cultures / Brent 2020, London (2020)

Re-Imagine Europe, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2020)

Propositions #10: Instituting Otherwise, BAK, Utrecht (2019)

Still I Rise, Arnolfini, Bristol (2019)

Solo Exhibition and Sky Art 50, BALTIC, Gateshead (2019)

Relating Narratives, Horse Hospital, London (2018)

Tricksters Brewing Futures II, Tate Exchange/198, London (2018)

The Library of Performing Rights, LADA, London (2018)

Body Politics, Troppenmuseum, Amsterdam (2018)

Feminist Emergencies, Birkbeck, University of London (2017)

Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2017)