Anna Maria Nabirye
Actor, Visual Artist, Director & Space Maker.
Creator of Stories, Characters & Visions.
Anna Maria Nabirye
Actor, Visual Artist, Director & Space Maker.
Creator of Stories, Characters & Visions.
2023 Be like...
Anna-Maria Joins Dr. Taiwo Afolabi & Emma Blake Morsi
Part of A Series from Africa on Climate Emergencies, Sustainability Practice in the Arts, and Planetary Crises
Dr. Taiwo Afolabi, Emma Blake Morsi & Anna-Maria join together to discuss Responses to Climate Crisis and Emergencies through Storytelling from the Performing Arts. You can watch the conversation HERE as well as see all episodes.
This is a broad-based interdisciplinary, intercultural, and cross-sectoral exploration of climate justice within the context of theatre and performance with a focus on the Global South. The series comprises seven episodes and two articles.
Guests range from theatremakers to climate change artivists/activists to scholars from the Global South sharing their perspectives on different topics within the broad theme of the series.
Produced in partnership with The Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Art (CSPA, Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C SET), and Theatre Emissary.
photography by Emile Holba
Anna-Maria in conversation with Nephertiti Oboshie Schandorf
Since September 2020, Anna-Maria Nabirye has been working with Cement Fields as part of their Jerwood WB Artist Attachments, a bespoke development programme providing paid time and support for three early-career artists.
She sat down with artist and curator Nephertiti Oboshie Schandorf to discuss her work and influences, and the importance of prioritising love and care in creative practice. Read the full conversation HERE
Participants at Refugee Week life drawing event , 2023
Anna Maria is co-founder and co-director of creative community dreaming space Afri-Co-Lab in St Leonards-On-Sea. A hub of experimentation, community care and actions through arts both for professional artists and community members alike. She recently wrote this piece regarding her journey to this venture - her most ambitious venture into anti-racist joy to date. Read the full article HERE.
Up In arms the exhibition
February 4th - May 21st 2023
De La Warr Pavilion presents a major new multimedia commission by artists Anna Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders, exploring friendship, anti-racism and feminism.
Removing the boundaries between process and outcome, artists Anna Maria Nabirye and Annie Saunders bring together social practice, visual art and performance in their interdisciplinary project, Up in Arms, to create meaningful dialogue amidst the complexity of interracial friendships.
Up in Arms is an ongoing collaboration initiated by Nabirye and Saunders in 2016. In each new context the artists start with a series of sessions in which they extend an invitation to Black women to bring a friend of a different race and together re-create and re-embody the iconic 1971 portrait of activists and friends Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Gloria Steinem. This process becomes a ritual that opens up the space for transformative conversations around female friendship, feminism and anti-racism.
Click HERE for more infor
2022 was like...
Self Portrait. 2022
LISTEN to
The Funnest Room in the House – Afterword
You can now listen to Anna-Maria Nabirye's 'The Funnest Room in the House – Afterword' on the website for a limited time.
Presented as part of Whitstable Biennale 2022, this audio work was created after Anna-Maria’s installation, 'The Funnest Room in the House', was destroyed by a fire in the build-up to the festival.
“With the ashes still warm I’m holding firm and responding to this moment with an audio work that speaks to the act of trying to create a celebration of Black Joy and that advocates for a work that no longer exists. A work that carries the pain, the exhaustion, the community, the love and the joy I still hold for 'The Funnest Room in the House' and all it represents.” – Anna-Maria Nabirye
Taking inspiration from the kitchens of Anna-Maria’s childhood and those of her diaspora peers, 'The Funnest Room in the House' invited visitors to travel through time and space to explore a Black British kitchen collected from many pasts. LISTEN HERE DURATION 36 MINS
Up In Arms: ComMissioned by The de la warr Pavilion
February 4 - May 2023
Anna-Maria and Annie Saunders will present the full execution of their multimedia project Up In Arms, a project they have been working on since 2016. Up In Arms creates meaningful dialogue around friendship, racism and feminism through social practice, visual art and performance.
During the lead up to the exhibition opening, local residents of Hastings and Rother can join free social practice sessions facilitated by Nabirye and Saunders. Participants are invited, two at a time, to re-create and re-embody the iconic 1971 portrait of activists and friends Dorothy Pitman-Hughes and Gloria Steinem. Through this process, the artists create a safe space for two friends to have a conversation about friendship, racism and feminism.
The resulting documentation and recordings will be integrated into an expansive installation in the De La Warr Pavilion’s First floor gallery, comprising film, photography and archival material. Footage will also be used in a live performance presented alongside the exhibition at De La Warr Pavilion in spring 2023.
Up In Arms has been developed through residencies, performances and live events at no.w.here, The Showroom and Artsadmin, London; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; MANA Contemporary, Jersey City, USA; The International Women’s Film Festival, Dortmund; The Association of Austrian Women Artists, Vienna; and online for the WOW (Women of the World) Global 24 Festival and Hungry Eyes Festival, Prague.
Photography by Julia Gaisbacher, VBKOE, Vienna
LAST TIME I SAW SNOW: AT THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL
October 6-17 BFI London Film Festival, Leake Street
Anna-Maria is lead in Typeone’s The Last Time I Saw Snow. This mixed reality installation has been nominated for Best Immersive Art and XR award at London Film Festival.
You can see the work between 6th-17th of October, as part of London Film Festival Expanded Program, in London.
The Last Time I Saw Snow was written and directed by Isobel Mascarenhas-Whitman and Alex Tennyson of Typeone.
Tickets available HERE
BREATHE | PLAY | LAUGH
August 27 De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill
RESOLVE Collective’s De La Warr exhibition LIDO, a work at conceived as a leisure space for Bexhill, created through research and collaboration with students from Bexhill College and the DLWP young people’s group, The Blueprint Collective became the home for creative away day Breathe | Play | Laugh. Under Afri-Co-Lab Anna-Maria conceived and co-delievered tiis creative respite for Black and POC folks working as artists, creatives, community organisers, space holders and facilitators. It was a radical act of community care.
Anna-Maria used anti-racists practices to work across difference and lead a movement and embodying session. The day also held mark-makings sessions, time to rest, eat and build new relationships, without expectations, specific outcomes, or any specific experience or practices needed.
Breathe | Play | Laugh was conceived in response to seeing the exhaustion, fatigue and additional emotional labour impacting the BPOC creative community, which has been filling in the gaps of care that has been so needed in recent times.
The event was free to attend and supported by SHED.
Anna-Maria’s installation ‘The Funnest Room In The House’ was destroyed by fire on May 26th
Anna-Maria’s installation, described below, was destroyed by fire on 26 May. She says: ‘Twelve months of mentoring, nine months of hard work and a lifetime of heart was stored in The Cockle Shed. With the ashes still warm I'm holding firm and responding to this moment with an audio work that speaks to the act of trying to create a celebration of Black Joy and that advocates for a work that no longer exists. A work that holds the pain, the exhaustion, the community, the love and the joy I still hold for The Funnest Room in the House and all it represents.
Please see Whitstable Biennale website for more details: HERE
Anna-Maria Nabirye share’s newest commission ‘The Funnest Room In The House’
June 11-19 The Cockle Shed 10:00-17:00
Taking inspiration from the kitchens of Anna-Maria’s childhood and those of her diaspora peers, The Funnest Room in the House invites visitors to travel through time and space to explore a Black British kitchen collected from many pasts. These intimate spaces were individual to each family’s life but were also a performance of collective culture, containing expressions of ancestral homelands and nostalgia for back home, mashed up with British culture.
This slice of social history is quietly disappearing, for the most part unrecorded, with kitchen renovations filling skips around the country and links to homelands feeling further and further away as elders pass on to become ancestors. The Funnest Room in the House joyfully brings these kitchens into the spotlight, with playful interventions that track the changing roles that have always taken residence in the kitchen from the 1980s to during the lockdowns of the last two years. If visitors linger and make themselves at home, the kitchen will reveal surprises that give space for celebration, joy and healing through nourishment, dance and movement.
Anna-Maria Nabirye was a recipient of the Jerwood WB Artist Attachments supported by Jerwood Arts.
Photography by Anna-Maria Nabirye 2022
Reignite Artist development fund: with home live art
Anna-Maria was awarded an Reignite Artist Development Fund from Home Live Art, to spend time in collaboration with other artists. Anna-Maria spent time re-looking at work Black Joy Matters with movement director and collaborator Imogen Knight and cinematographer Bani Mendy. Time was spent exploring themes and ideas for a new work that will sit both in the live and cinema space, ‘The Story Of Joy’.
“What is it to reimagine your body as a home for joy and pleasure. How can the words of Black women describing what they find joyful, be a pathway to healing. The skin as a thin place where words, imagery and ancestors can pass through. Moisture for dry skin. Sometimes the skin is so dry it cracks and breaks and bleeds. Sometimes the skin is so dry and the balm too potent to penetrate it. Finding healing through movement, the rhythms in the spoken love. Love for the mundane and epic. What is it to not only survive on this island built on blood but to thrive.”
When the day met the night & The night met the day COMMUNITY THEATRE
PROJECT with HASTINGS LAST THURSDAY!
Nature stops for no one.
Like the millisecond between an inhale and an exhale.
An Audio Piece, A Theatrical Experience, A Community Creation
The Spring Equinox is upon us - a moment in time when the day is equal to night, announcing the arrival of Spring.
Nature is awakening, the dead of winter is over and life appears once more. Another year. The journey continues.
When The Day Met the Night And The Night Met the Day was a promenade, audio piece made with a community cast, co-directed by Anna-Maria Nabirye & Darragh O’Leary, with sound design by Ted Barrow and produced by Afri-Co-Lab. When The Day was experienced on the move around Marine Court in St Leonards-On-Sea as the streets and land marks of St Leonards itself become the stage.
Anna-Maria cast as the mountain poet in Georgina Starr | Gelato Balleto ! | A performance artwork for Hermès | SS22 Collection | 2022
The international fashion house Hermès invited Georgina Starr to create a performance artwork to showcase their Spring Summer 2022 collection — Gelato!
"The mountain has spoken her spell upon us! Numbers sing letters and shapes gently buzz. Its ovals. Its circles. Its arcs hold the clue. 7 8 9 5 3 6 2. Pinks shimmer violet and coppers glow gold. As we cliquertis-click and our fortunes unfold!""
Starr designed a giant magic mountain set with undulating curves. The sculptural set transformed into a musical score as percussionists, dancers and models emerge with circular 'notes' to enact a mesmerising geometric dance. The immersive performance expressed all the joy, colour and drama of Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski's SS/22 collection whilst being a unique take on the fashion show presentation. Using percussive mallets threaded with the collection colours—rose bois! blanc casse! jaune itauba!—and a dynamic score devised with composer Thomas Haines, the piece unfolded like a surrealist theatre for voice, movement and sound.
Photography by Amelia Allen
2021 be like...
Anna-MAria & Annie Saunders awarded Grant for the arts
Photography by Julia Gaisbacher
Anna-Maria & Annie are in residence at the New Art Exchange Nottingham working on Arts Admin project Up In Arms. For more information please Click HERE
Anna-Maria as Medea in Emily Juniper’s ‘MEdea/Worn’, Part of The Faction’s Triple Bill of solo Shows this November London & Scarborough
Photography by Christa Holka
Anna-Maria, long standing associate ensemble member of award-winning ensemble The Faction joins other ensemble members Jude Owusu and Amelia Donker in a series of thrilling solo shows.
This triple bill is a diverse collection of stories old and new as The Faction “expertly treads the line between classics and new writing” with their hallmark inventiveness. Anna-Maria reprises Emily Juniper’s Off West End nominated take on Euripides’ classic Medea is a blistering dialogue between Medea and her wedding dress that emerges as an emancipatory call and an expression of resistance as she contemplates the ultimate crime. The triple bill plays at Wilton’s Music Hall London (November 2nd-6th) and The Stephen Joseph Theatre (November 11th-13th) - Scarborough. Click HERE for more info.
Film 4 presents a Fruit Tree Media Production:
“The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be”
Set in the year 2080, with the Earth ravaged by climate change, director Adeyemi Michael’s stark and powerful science-fiction drama tells the story of a desperate nomad who makes a discovery that leads to an unexpected mission and a chance for solace.
Directed by Adeyemi Michael | Written by Courttia Newland | Produced by Fiona Lamptey | DOP Luciana Riso | Casting Heather Basten |
CAST: Anna-Maria Nabirye | Donna Banya | Anton Cross |
Screened at Black Star & TIFF 2021
Anna-Maria as Medea in solo short film ‘Medea/Worn’
Directed by Rachel Valentine Smith, Cinematography by Bani Mendy, Written by Emily Juniper, Designed by Holly Pigott, produced by The Faction
In the second of two short films specially commissioned by The Lowry as part of the #LoveLowry programme, and predominantly filmed in Salford and Greater Manchester, The Faction have reimagined and revitalised a solo show from their repertoire, originally performed in 2016 at New Diorama Theatre.
Medea / Worn adapted by Emily Juniper, Euripides’ original text is transformed into a striking dialogue between Medea and her singing wedding dress and emerges as both an emancipatory call and expression of resistance.
Starring Anna Maria Nabirye as both Medea and her Dress and directed by The Faction’s joint Artistic Director Rachel Valentine Smith. The film was commissioned by The Lowry and produced by The Faction in association with New Diorama Theatre.
A large projected image of the back of a Black woman in a stonewash denim dress and large silver geometric earring, her head is bowed. She is facing 2 women both have their heads bowed, one has dark curly full hair the other grey/blue straight hair. On the left side of them is a Black woman wearing a head wrap in a front bun and on the right is a white woman with short dark hair, they both have their backs towards us and are casting large shadows on the screen next to the projected images of woman with dark curly hair and silver/blue hair. Photography by Julia Gaisbacher, VBKO, Vienna.
Intersectional Collaboration Workshop: ARTS ADMIN RADAR PROGRAMME
Working from and through their work Up In Arms, Anna-Maria and Annie Saunders will share the journey of their project Up In Arms: where it has been, where it is going, and what they have learned, working across differences in a collaborative art space. This workshop will provide collaborators the tools and methodologies to lay a groundwork for intersectional collaboration, as well as opening space for collaborators to start building their own toolkit to approach difficult conversations in collaboration contexts with dexterity and understanding. This workshop is for artists and creatives who are collaborating and working in intersectional contexts. BOOK YOUR FREE SPACE HERE (BSL AND CAPTIONS AVAILABLE)
MAY 11TH 2021 6-8PM BST
MOTHERHOODY PRESENTS SHORT DOC: GESTATIONAL DIABETES ONE PRICK AT A TIME.
MAY 2021
Motherhoody is a collaboration between Anna-Maria and Jess Mabel Jones. They were invited to make a piece of artwork that amplified the voices of women with lived experience of Gestational Diabetes.
In usual circumstances we would have ran a gorgeous, wholesome workshop in real life, in an actual room with lots of GD-appropriate snacks...but along came Covid and so we had to come up with a safer idea!
Here is One Prick At A time a short documentary about GD in the voices of those whom it has affected. Click HERE to watch the full film.
Marine Court in St Leonards, a large block of flats that was built to look like a cruise ship. It’s night and the lights of the flats and corridors glow. Rows and rows of windows some illuminated others not. Text laid over the images reads: Coming To Our Census?
COMING TO OUR CENSUS? Part of The De La Warr’s Care and Citizenship programme.
APRIL 2021
The census is a ‘snapshot of society’ organised by the Office for National Statistics every 10 years. The results of questionnaires sent to households inform the way local authorities and the government plans and funds local services including education and healthcare provision. Many people feel alienated by government structures, or don’t want to take part – what does this mean for society?
Is a census really the best way to find out about who and how we live in the UK?
Are they asking the right questions?
Who is they?
Who feels safe enough to engage with it?
Come and dream an alternative
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