Rashida Bumbray

I am so excited to present my film “Untitled (How High the Moon)” at @blackstarfest this year. I’m honored to be among the Jury Nominated Films for Best Experimental Film. Tickets for In-Person & Virtual Screening in Bio. So much gratitude to my amazing collaborators. This film reimagines my mother’s childhood visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art through the lens of magical realism, as the youngest child in a large Harlem family with a lineage of astral travel. FEATURING     ZAHARA SHABAZZ FREDERICA GLASER @iamleslieking ELIJAH ALLEN @3lijah.allen INTERVIEWS WITH SHERRY BELLAMY @110thst SUZANNE BELLAMY  DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY   JAMAL SOLOMON @_jamalsolomon_ EDITOR  STEFANI SAINTONGE @steffisees PRODUCER    JASAUN L. BUCKNER @jasaunsvision SOUND DESIGN   COREY DE’JUAN SHERRARD, JR.  COLORIST    ALEXIA SALINGAROS @alexia_films ASSISTANT PRODUCER DAPHNE HERNANDEZ EXECUTIVE PRODUCER RASHID SHABAZZ 1st AC  ZANIN LINDSAY 2nd AC   NAFSI BUBB GAFFER  ALVIN ADADEVOH SCENIC DESIGN    RACHEL SCHAFFRAN @raychillsaffron BOOM OPERATOR  RUBEN MORALES  PRODUCTION ASSISTANT RODNEY CAMPBELL STUDIO SOUND ENGINEER     TIROP KIITUUR @itstirop RASHIDA BUMBRAY ACKNOWLEDGES @simoneyvetteleigh @rubysartistgrants AND @tate INFINITIES COMMISSION R&D AWARD FOR DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE CREATION OF THIS WORK, WHICH WAS CREATED AS PART OF @metmuseum CIVIC PRACTICE PARTNERSHIP, created by @sandrajacksondumon

Rashida Bumbray here. Day 2 of my Ruby’s IG Take Over. Today I want to speak about the influence of two very important teachers who are also my choreographic, and theoretical antecedents: Adenike Sharpley & Kamau Brathwaite. Slide 1. RUN MARY RUN featuring Adenike Shapley at UVA (2018), Prod. by Paloma McGregor @dancingwhileblack 🎥:@shanijamila Featuring: Jabari Exum, Colin Chambers, Malik Bellamy, Lisa E. Harris, Cecily, Rachel Schaffran, Francisca Chaidez Gutierrez.(IBATARUN). Slide 2: ADENIKE SHARPLEY My professor, mentor, and the founder and director of Dance Diaspora @oberlincollege During a 25+ year tenure at Oberlin, Sharpley taught Ritual in Performance, Jazz & Blues improvisation, West African Dance Forms in the Diaspora, Haitian, Afro Cuban, Afro Brazilian dance, and traveled with her students to study and perform throughout the Midwest and globally in The Gambia, Salvador, Cuba, Bahamas and India. Slide 3: KAMAU BRATHWAITE, Caribbean poet and theorist, was my Grad professor at @nyuniversity I studied with KB in his courses on Magical Realism. Starting with “MR: Amazonia & the Choral Plantation.” Rather than only a literary genre, magical realism, as defined by KB, is also a larger cacophonous movement with multiple representations. The plural, instant, and collective improvisation, a radical disruption of Western progressivist history. Magically real forms are the music, literature, and movement languages developed by Black people in the New World as a result of the catastrophes of colonialism and the Middle Passage and as an alternative to insanity. I consider the ring shout to be a prime example of Magical Realism. Slide 4: RUN MARY RUN @thewhitneymuseum (2012), during Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran’s BLEED at @whitneymuseum . Featuring: Adenike Sharpley (Master Dancer); Percussion: Matthew Hill & Christian Almiron; Dance Diaspora Collective: Dominique Atchison, Ayanna Lee Blue, Kristal Boyd, Francisca Chaidez Gutierrez (IBATARUN), Tai Collins, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Lisa E. Harris, Carl Hewitt, Chinyelu Ndubisi, Muthi Reed, Rachel Schaffran, Haydee Souffrant, Kantara Souffrant, and Raven Taylor. 🎥: Bradford Young & Hans Charles.

I am extremely honored to have opened the Performance Pyramid in @akilitommasino ‘s incredible exhibition Flight Into Egypt! @metmuseum with a new performance work, “Way Down.” “Way Down” illuminates a psychic bridge between Katherine Dunham’s choreography for the 1948 film “Casbah” and the Egyptian art, artifacts, and human remains housed at the MET. Using Black music and dance as relational praxis, the performers and myself led a sojourn back and forth across the Atlantic by way of the Mississippi and the Nile. So much gratitude to my collaborators: Pheeroan akLaff (percussion), Ayanna Blue (dance and dramaturgy), Cecily (vocals), Zachary Cutler (guitar), Navasha Daya (vocals), and Camille Weanquoi (dance). Lighting Design & Stage Management: Phoenix Ballentine @polighting @pballen1 Directed by Rashida Bumbray. With Choreographic Lineage: Adenike Sharpley, Toni M. Lombre, Margaret Christian, Syvilla Forte, Pearl Primus, Katherine Dunham, Sherrill Berryman Johnson, and the McIntosh County Shouters. Musical References: Abbey Lincoln, Ella Jenkins, Bessie Jones, Marcus Garvey & the UNIA Choir, Pharoah Sanders & Leon Thomas, The Jones Girls. Dedicated to Katherine Dunham, Amy Jacques Garvey, Harriet Tubman, and George Alexander Bumbray, Jr. This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant @foundationforcontemporaryarts Slide 1: Sit Down / Who All is Here /Martissant Slide 2: Go Down Sister Moses Solo: @cecilyalexa Slide 3 & 4: Down Here Below / Abbey Solo: @navashadaya Slide 5: Throw Down / Casbah With Terry Adkins video “Obelisks in Rome,” circa 2012 Videos 🎥: @rcembalest

Celebrating our daughter’s 15th birthday today has made me weepy and nostalgic for the days when we had lots of luxurious time for stories, and songs, and dress up. This song and video was one of our favorites. Holding on to the precious time we have together now. “We don’t have to change at all…” @zaharashabazz

RASHIDA BUMBRAY @sunrara TWU West Gallery DBFF | Denton Black Film Festival 01.26–2.13.26 RECEPTION 🗓️ TH 02.12.26 ⏰ 5:00–7:00pm Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer based in Baltimore, MD, whose curatorial and performance projects have been featured in exhibitions and museums worldwide. Weaving magical realism, Black healing practices, and submersible modes of intergenerational transmission evoked by Black women into her work, Bumbray’s three-year residency at The Met engaged with African objects and spaces in the museum’s collection. This residency produced two films that illuminate the continuation of vital cultural practices within Black and African diasporic communities. #twuvisualarts #txwomans #texaswomansuniversity #twuevents #twugalleries

Thank you to the incredible Lauren Kelley @laurendkelleypage2 for organizing this exhibition of my work and that of Amanda Kerdahi M at Texas Woman’s University during the Denton Black Film Festival. What a gift. On view now through Feb 13. Unfortunately, the reception and talk have been cancelled due to weather. Stay tuned for the new date. Repost from @twuvisualarts • COMING SOON | Rashida Bumbray Denton Black Film Festival TWU West Gallery 01.26–02.13.2026 Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer based in Baltimore, MD, whose curatorial and performance projects have been featured in exhibitions and museums worldwide. Weaving magical realism, Black healing practices, and subversive modes of intergenerational transmission evoked by Black women into her work, Bumbray’s three-year residency at The Met engaged with African objects and spaces in the museum’s collection. This residency produced two films that illuminate the continuation of vital cultural practices within Black and African diasporic communities. This years DBFF Exhibition, was curated by Lauren Kelley: “In partnership with Texas Woman’s University, and in alignment with the DBFF’s 2026 theme of courage and hope, I am honored to present two multidisciplinary artists—Rashida Bumbray and Amanda Kerdahi M—through separate screenings of their film and video work. In a moment when community building is inseparable from sustaining hope and courage, both artists exemplify cultural workers who use art as a site of assembly, dialogue, and empowerment. Kerdahi M explores women’s narratives and diaspora, while Bumbray draws from African American traditions and collective memory. Together, they create spaces that amplify underrepresented voices, bridging local histories with global audiences through ritual, movement, and storytelling. DBFF | Rashida Bumbray & Amanda Kerdahi M 🗓 Jan 26 – Feb 13, 2026 📍 TWU Fine Arts Building, TWU East | West Galleries #twuvisualarts #txwomans #texaswomansuniversity #twuevents #twugalleries DBFF

In the midst of the many abuses of power surrounding us, my prayer on my birthday is for the amplification of Real Power from the Creator, Orishas and the Ancestors to live right, do right and keep my mind right —with joy and intention. Deep gratitude for family, chosen family and artists who always keep my heart intact.

Curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray (@sunrara ) was introduced to Koyo Kouoh in May 2014. Kouoh, the late Cameroonian curator who served as the executive director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, was slated to curate the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 before her untimely death this spring. Throughout their years-long relationship, Kouoh and Bumbray engaged in ongoing, heightened conversations about the state of the global art world, what it means to work in the parallel African and Black American art worlds, and the Pan-African crossroads where they meet. “The moment I learned of Kouoh’s death immediately altered my perspective on my own subjectivity in Nairobi,” Bumbray writes. “One of South-South interdependence, an ethos I have also been privileged to inherit as a child of the Black radical tradition.” To read Bumbray’s reflections on Koyo Kouoh’s work and Pan-African solidarity, visit the link in bio. . . . #KoyoKouoh #PanAfrican #Solidarity #Curator #VeniceBiennale

We remember Koyo Kouoh, the trailblazing curator who unexpectedly passed away this year at the age of 57. Koyo long championed Black and African artists and was set to curate the 2026 Venice Biennale. She leaves her mark on the world through the many artists she impacted on her journey. “You chose Dakar. You knew where seeds could take root. / You made RAW not just a space, but a pulse. A place where art meets society. Where questions matter. Where beauty becomes practice,” writes Malick Welli in a tribute to Kouoh. Read more tributes to Kouoh from janera solomon, Mehret Mandefro, and Rashida Bumbray in the print edition of #Seen009. Order a copy at the link in our bio. 🖊️: @sunrara , @malickwelli , @janerasolomon , and @drmehret 📷: Photos courtesy of writers.

Rest in Power, D. Thank you. 🕊️ Africa is my descent And here I am, far from home I dwell within a land that is meant Meant for many men not my tone, yeah The blood of God is my defense Let it drop down to my seed Showers to your innocence To protect you for all eternity And with this wood, I beat this drum We won’t see defeat, yeah -D’Angelo, Voodoo, 1999

Rest in Power Assata Shakur. We needed your example of freedom under your own terms more than we could ever imagine. “And so we just decided that we were gonna live.” —Assata Shakur in “Eyes of the Rainbow” (1997). 🪶💔 #blackliturgies

Scrolling won’t heal you. But stepping into movement, memory, and community will. The Ring Shout and Ancestral Healing Circle is a site-specific performance of the ring shout, a site of active healing. 🙌🏾 Accessed through the architectures of improvisation, surrender, and possession—in pursuit of responses to displacement, erasure, and social forgetting. This spiritual dance work considers the harmonic ideas and language of the McIntosh County Shouters, master ring shouters! Featuring Rashida Bumbray, Cecily Bumbray, Ayanna Lee Blue, Navasha Daya, Camille Weanquoi, Jabari Exum (percussion), and Colin Chambers (keys). 🧡 Rashida Bumbray’s Run Mary Run channels the power of the ring shout—an unapologetic reminder that healing is ours, and it cannot be taken. 📅 October 10–12 | MGM National Harbor 🎟 Tickets in bio — stop scrolling, start healing.