Studio Nkisi

Archi-textura maxing🧱💛 São Paolo to Rio de Janeiro Thank you @studionkisi Research Pilgrimage, April 26’

Social and Architectural Research Studies #2: Museu Afro Brasil 🇧🇷 São Paulo, Brazil 26’ During my time in São Paulo, I made sure to visit Museu Afro Brasil to continue my research on African diasporic influences throughout the Americas. I was especially impressed by the depth and scale of the museum’s collection, which included a wide range of artwork, artifacts, and historical materials. One thing that stood out to me was seeing African spiritual symbols and orishas displayed alongside Catholic art and depictions of saints. Seeing these two visual traditions juxtaposed showed a real level of intention in keeping the narrative honest and acknowledging all of the influences that shaped the culture, rather than leaving parts of that history out. The museum handled this history with a level of honesty and care that made the experience feel complete and thoughtful. I also appreciated the contemporary artworks that reinterpreted African spiritual imagery within a modern context. Seeing the preserved instruments, tools, and materials brought from different regions of Africa added another layer to the experience, emphasizing the cultural knowledge and traditions that continued across generations. What made the visit even more impactful was the museum’s attention to detail beyond the exhibitions themselves. From the interior moldings to the furniture and spatial design, every element contributed to a stronger sense of historical and cultural immersion.

Snapshots of Day 1 in the Kingdom of Hawai’i - on a research pilgrimage alongside @afrotronix.beat 🇹🇩x🇰🇪 in Polynesia

Social & Architectural research studies #1: Museu da Historia e da Cultura Afro-Brasil 🇧🇷 Rio da Janeiro,26’ One of the things I love about Brazil is the access to African Diasporic arts & education. The moment I entered MUCHAB I was amazed by the architectural interior (love a spiral staircase). I valued that the space was not a traditional institutional space but instead one that gave the feeling of being in actual family home looking through the walls of family framed history. And to add to the experience as I walked through the space I heard drums leading me to an open courtyard where the @escolaolodumrio was guiding a class of young students to a Dança Afro. This visit not only took me into a glimpse of the past but also to the contemporary works of Brazilian artist @rivers________ and the future of the the youth paying if forward through their curiosity towards ancestral roots. 🌀🐚 Thank you to @take.back.theinternet @studionkisi 💛🫂

Dozens of streets named “Kenya” all over Brazil … & “Soweto,” “Lesotho,” “Uganda,” “Botswana,” “Sudan,” “Fiji,” “Eritrea,” [the list goes on]. Will be hashtag mapping & hyperlinking our way thru archives all month long to get to the bottom of how/when this many streets in ‘random’ neighborhoods all over Brazil took up the names of cities & countries which even Afro-Brazilians (allegedly) don’t have strong explicit ties to. 🌍🌎🌏 The birth of a #cybercartography ⛲️

Introducing Catherine A. Lie (@century.late ) - the Lead Spatial Architect & inaugural RAFT fellow at @studionkisi , ft. snapshots from our second site visit with @institutoarquitetosdafavela in Andaraí, Rio de Janeiro 🇧🇷 (for a forthcoming collaboration we can’t share all the details for yet, but are excited to be able to soon!) To quote the otherworldly brilliant cover letter she submitted for the RAFT program: “[Growing up in postcolonial Indonesia] taught me to read architecture as a living archive, [and] shaped my understanding of commoning as the convergence of philosophy and practice: designing with and alongside human, non-human, and more-than-human systems, while amplifying oft-repressed (invisible) forces that sustain built environments through care, ritual, and adaptation - resonating deeply with Afropresentism’s emphasis on response•ability within our present; architecture as a living condition shaped through collective stewardship. Trained architecturally at MIT, my transmedia practice now operates across spatial research, environmental design, and artistic inquiry, often rendered through site-specific participatory workshops, installations, oral histories, and experimental pedagogies. Across these modes, I’m interested in how architectural thinking can trespass Western institutional frameworks and translate culturally into accessible, embodied languages of practice.” Catherine’s M.Arch thesis, sourdough architecture, has evolved over the past 7 years into a transcontinental research pilgrimage distributing sourdough starter and breaking bread across East & West Africa, the Mediterranean, Central & now South America. “Sourdough architecture explores how everyday practices—wild-yeast fermentation, baking, feeding, tending, and sharing—can function as relational technologies for understanding time, space, and collective worldbuilding. Through bread-making and place-making workshops, the project studies how diverse communities carrying ecological knowledge, memory, and care practices come together through everyday acts of making and sharing.”

We came to Brazil to incubate the @studionkisi Relational Architecture & Fellowship Techne (RAFT) program and what a blessing to get to do so alongside @institutoarquitetosdafavela (the Institute of Favela Architects). Beyond honored to learn alongside you • Snapshots from our first site visit together today 🏗️ “A missão do Studio Nkisi é reindigenizar a tecnologia por meio de arquiteturas reparadoras. Liderado por Neema Githere Sïphone em uma cocriação com (e dentro da) #diásporadigital, o Studio Nkisi se especializa em colaborações de longa duração que desafiam o mito da autoria exclusiva. O Studio Nkisi é um escritório de arquitetura relacional que produz programas discursivos, cibercartografias, abrigos instalativos de grande escala, peregrinações de pesquisa e intervenções curatoriais concebidas no espírito do Afropresentismo.” 📸: @take.back.theinternet

After 1.5 years of ideation, today “NKISI NET” (2026) will be opening @massmoca !!!! My first ever large scale installation - a 23-foot sculptural steel portal / “net you can rest in” ft. 2 “Log In <> Log-Off” hammocks woven in Colombia, a Fijian cowrie shell, a Burkina Bronze, clay & a meteorite. To the rear of the sculpture is a prompt: “HOW MUCH OF WHAT IS YOURS HAS BEEN MIN(E)D?” • This sculpture is 1 of 3 pieces featured in my broader “DATA HEALING RECOVERY CLINIC” (2019-2026) installation, as part of the “Technologies of Relation” show on view @massmoca until July 2027 !!!! 🧡💚🤎⚜️🐚 GRATITUDE ETERNAL TO THE ENTIRE FABRICATION TEAM @massmoca FOR HELPING ME TURN THIS IDEA INTO A REALITY!!!!! to Susan Cross for believing in it & being the first curator to commission a large scale work from me, to @k.hailesilassie for helping me make the early seeds of this vision architecturally sound & to @mashinkahakopian for introducing me to Susan back in 2024 after our @eyebeamnyc fellowship together!!!! 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🧡💚🤎🐚⚜️

THE KISII-KUNDIAWA BRIDGE • Afropresentist Technologies for Finding Your Way Home [7 Sept <> 7 Dec 2025] ~ Directed•By Neema Sïphone 📍🇵🇬(@datahealing – [email protected]) in ever-unfolding call&response* with kin+comrades ...& heeding the call to attend to our response•abilities at large]* • An Afropresentist technofossil experimenting with testimony as (silence+ craft)*, coming•together as pt.1 of a recursive*, durationally•(re)developing* film. • Droned [by @blackbillygoat ], styled [@maahleek + Lynda + Neema], produced [Mommy Boss + Neema] & creative directed [Everyone Present + the sum of our ancestors] improvisationally* on location, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea as part of the inaugural Nkisi Research•Netting Group for #transmediale2026. This technofossil was edited by (@datahealing ) in one 7-hour long sitting* in Nairobi, Kenya; informed by the experiences and engagements from within & beyond the third Nkisi Netting Group [Wairimũ Nduba @astoldbytsige @shomadjozi @rharha_nembhard @puntojpgs @digitalafrican @g.a.m.s.a @k.hailesilassie Catherine Lie @blackbillygoat + @bamichic_ ] in Lamu Island and Watamu, Kenya. [[“Siphone”, in Sheng - the creolized dialect of Kiswahili that is endemic to Nairobi - translates to “[I’m] not a Phone}}* The fossil/shell•terminal [4 minerals to be well-sheltered, too] is dedicated to all of the people who have taught me about the art of praying-through-doing (namely the Baye Fall & @rharha_nembhard - who is the Head (+ Post-Gender Womb) Ritual Architect for transmediale 2026), and my prayer is that it may reach the many more for whom this art of prayerful•making could provide refuge - if and when (and as soon•as) it is most necessary. [* = indicates a clue towards shared/invited Afropresentist + Futura•Tropica tech•styles / #methods /#protocols / #praxis / #mythology] ~ 🌬️ • Initial credits below/at the @datahealing #LinkInBiome <> most robust citation can/will be found from 28 Jan - 1 February at transmediale 2026: by the mango belt & tamarind road in all of its (re•de)*distributed zones. Tickets are available on the transmediale website. See you there ~ x

Incredibly honored to have been entrusted to co-curate transmediale 2026 alongside the incomparable @puntojpgs . ••• @datahealing began in 2019 as a speculative desire — evolved into convening body — turned into series of vocabularies/toolkits — & 7 years later, it will materialize as a compass for one of the world’s oldest festivals for art and digital culture. transmediale 2026 will be a web of global proportions shaped by enchanted protocols and I hope this web will be warm & wide enough to reach you ~ 🌬️ “Both Neema and jpgs bring varied experiences in developing projects with renowned institutions as well as independent and interdependent spaces in Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean, the African Continent, South Asia, and SouthEast Asia. Their shared vision for transmediale 2026 builds on perspectives from geographies and epistemologies that have been historically marginalised in dominant digital narratives – articulating them into circuits, protocols, and systems of relation. This approach expands the festival’s scope by establishing and reinforcing dialogues between emerging technologies and multipolar situated practices. transmediale 2026 will not be understood as a static event but as a living carrier net – an assemblage of practices, temporalities, and geographies that challenge conventional narratives of progress and innovation. This also entails reimagining experimental infrastructures or containers, knowledge-sharing protocols, and participatory interventions that braid together the complexities of art, computation, and social fabrics.” • Full press release available in the #biome

Today @kerearchitecture (a dear friend/mentor to whom I owe being able to be in Burkina Faso) introduced me to Thomas Sankara’s brother, Valentin Sankara, after a tour to the site where Sankara took his last breath & the place where he has been laid to rest (an in-progress mausoleum which @kerearchitecture has been commissioned to design). I’ve been going on pilgrimages across Africa for almost 10 years now but this one in Burkina Faso has without a doubt been the most transformative.

LONDON | 14 April 2022 @ 6 PM | @bcaheritage Teaming together with the incredible team over at Decolonizing the Archive for this program on Afropresentism as part of their project entitled “University of Repair”: a mobile, open-ended series of interventions reimagining learning spaces and offering communal knowledge sharing using the ‘groundings’ principles laid down by Dr Walter Rodney. ••• Event flyer features a collage by @flattendacurve #Afropresentism