Diasporas Now

Featuring works by RCA students Adam Dove, Ashleigh Williams, Catalina Correa, Josh Woolford with Ijeoma Uzoukwu, Lulu Wang, Ning Zhou, Paola Estrella, and Rieko Whitfield.

Diasporas Now is a collective manifestation of personal and often political identities reflecting the multitude of minority voices under the hegemonic culture. The core value of Diasporas Now (DN) is intersectional solidarity. The community we are building is a celebration of diverse lived experiences, and DN is providing a platform for artists from the cultural peripheries – from the complex socio-economic matrix of gender, race, class, religion, and nationality – to connect with wider audiences.

We, the three founders, Rieko Whitfield, Lulu Wang, and Paola Estrella, are performance artists from different diasporic backgrounds who believe in curating with the utmost level of care for the artists who explore deeply personal, political, and often spiritual aspects of themselves in the process of self-empowerment. We believe it is through radically listening to and supporting each other’s needs that larger social shifts can take place. The format of live-streaming is also central to DN as a portal between local communities and global audiences through both pre-recorded and real-time performances.

What sets performance art apart from many other mediums of art is that it blurs the boundaries between fine art and adjacent disciplines such as film, fashion, music, dance, and design. Filming or live-streaming performance art is inherently a highly embodied and collaborative process, and we believe DN can also help make connections between a wide range of creative industries. Through the medium of live-streaming and performance, the possibilities for local and global collaborations are endless.

The first event is a live-streaming platform for multidisciplinary artists from Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and Latin American diasporas who use performance as radical acts of self-representation. The platform is a collective manifestation of personal and often political identities reflecting the multitude of minority voices under the hegemonic culture. This event expands the boundaries of performance as a medium by exhibiting a diverse range of forms such as dance, music, spoken word, and installation.

The platform will launch on the 1st of July at 16:00 via RCA2021 with guest artists Whiskey Chow and Chooc Ly Tan. The event will be live-streamed as both pre-recorded and real time performances.

Important dates:

• 1st of July 16:00 - Launching platform event via RCA2021
• 22-24th of July - a series of performances taking place at Cromwell Place CAP exhibition will be live streamed via Diasporas Now Platform.
• August (exact date TBC) - Behind the scenes with Diasporas Now, a panel discussion and conversation about the process behind the performances that were presented across the Royal College of Art’s degree shows, with both current students and commissioned guest artists.