Nuit Blanche 2026 – Forever and the Now In Person Exhibition

Oct 3, 2026 — Oct 4, 2026

Opening—  7:00 pm — 7:00 am

We are in a moment of profound transformation. The world is becoming something new through art-based change making. We are at a crossroads: environmentally, in relation to racial justice, and in terms of the kinds of futures we are chosing to build towards. Creative activisms are needed to ensure life on this planet long into the future. Forever and the Now helps us to situate ourselves in the longitudinal experience of intergenerational organizing and futurity rooted firmly in our present.

Through video, installation, painting, photography and sculpture we consider this crucial moment of world building and Black liberation. The artists in this show explore the many intersections of spirituality, Black, migrant, and crip justice, queer and trans resistance and interconnected movements for social change.

Date: October 3, 2025 – October 4,2025

Time: 7pm to 7am

Venue: Wildseed Centre For Arts and Activism (24 CECIL ST, TORONTO ON – Ross Street back entry, which is wheelchair accessible)

More Info: toronto.ca/NuitBlanche

Artists

æryka hollis o’neil, lwrds duniam, Hagare Shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, Kim Ninkuru, Ky Williams, Mandela, dbi.young anitafrika, Samson Bonkeabantu Brown, Chason Yeboah, DAI, and Kobena.

AUDIO DESCRIPTION:

There are 6 films in this program as part of Forever and The Now that will play on a loop from 7pm until 7 am starting on October 3 and ending on October 4. The 6 films tell stories of Black liberation, trans justice, AfroIndigenous Magic, Migration, speculative futures and possible ways forward. Some of these films are abstracted, some are narrative, some are set in the present and some are set in the future. We hope that you enjoy time with these films and that you feel free to watch the whole program or as much as you like, and come back again and again to see the program’s progression.

We have audio described versions of these 6 films, thanks to the support of Rebecca Singh and Superior Description Services. 

ACCESS INFORMATION
To access these videos with audio description please click the links below:

Nuit Blanche Access Announcement

æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil
in the interval

Year: 2022
Runtime: 24 minutes
Original format: Digital and 16mm

lwrds duniam
auguajunípe

Year: 2020
Runtime: 4 minutes

Ky Williams
ZARMINA

Year: 2022
Runtime: 18:11

lwrds duniam
i know the feeling too (make it stop)

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1:50 minutes

Hagere Selam Shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot
DIASPORA ETHIOPIA

Year: 2012
Runtime: 9:59

Kim Ninkuru
These Are My Reparations

Year: 2023
Runtime: 22:08

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Dr. d’bi young anitafrika

When I returned to Tkaronto after seven years of graduate study in London, UK, I had a renewed innerstanding of my artistic practice. Completing my PhD in Black Womyn’s Theatre gave me language to name the creative processes I had been developing for more than twenty-five years. It led to the articulation of the Anitafrika Dub Praxis (ADP).

The ADP is a philosophy of beinghood whose first concern is the nature of existence and whose practical project is cultivating liberated personhood through artistic, pedagogical, and communal practice. Returning to Tkaronto allowed me to re-establish Watah Theatre, launch the Black Theatre School, and open the Watah Studio Theatre space, so that pedagogy, artistic experimentation, and professional performance could come together under one roof.

The Watah Theatre’s 2025-2026 Kincentric Theatre Season began with the Black Theatre School’s professional theatre training program, which incorporated a SummerWorks workshop and Theatre Centre’s mainstage 20th-anniversary reimagining of The Sankofa Trilogy, followed by the culmination of biomyth monodrama projects by artists-in-residence. Towards the end of the season, in February and May of 2026, we staged reimagined productions of parts 1 and 2 of The Orisha Trilogy—esu crossing the middle passage and shx mami wata & the pxssywitch hunt—at the Watah Studio Theatre. The Theatre Centre co-produced the twentieth-anniversary reimagining of The Sankofa Trilogy: blood.claat, benu, & word! sound! powah!, which hosted Watah Black Theatre School as a company-in-residence 2025-2026. 

All five productions, featuring an all-Black cast and predominantly Black creative team, gave me room to experiment with new formulations of African Dub Theatre from a director’s perspective and challenged me to adapt the Sankofa Trilogy from its original Biomyth Monodrama genre to Pantodub’s multi-cast framework and esu crossing and shx mami wata from Pantodub to monodramas. The Images of The Sankofa Trilogy are by Selina McCallum. Nicole Brumley of the Branded Lens is the photographer of esu crossing the middle passage and shx mami wata.

Kobena Ampofo (we/they) 

Kobena Ampofo (we/they) is a queer Akan anti-disciplinary artist. We cultivate a curiosity-led research practice around witchcraft, Akan mediumship, and the spirit realm. We were born on a dark Tuesday morning in Kumasi and have since also lived in Accra, South Bend, Chicago, Brampton, and now Toronto.Our practice is guided by stories.

We have had the opportunity to study the works of Édouard Glissant and Sylvia Wynter, among others who form parts of the Black Studies cannon. In this study, we have learned of their philosophies and theories that bridge the immaterial realms of spirit and intellect with the material world of living bodies. Sylvia Wynter’s work, especially emphasizes how everything we hold and understand about ourselves, each other, the entire world and the universe beyond begins with a story. These stories sometimes seem permanent and shape the ways we connect with and beyond ourselves, but we also have the power to tell new stories.

Our practice builds on this understanding of the power of stories to explore how to intentionally conjure new realities into being and find new ways to communicate. This has also shaped our desire to let our storytelling expand beyond artistic disciplines, and manifest in the forms that make sense for that particular story.

Our storytelling practice expands beyond writing. Our first showing was with Goldhost’s “In the Flesh” online exhibition in 2020 where we debuted the Shadowmancer digital performance series. Since then we had the privilege to participate in a residency with the Saman Archive in 2021, collecting stories and oral histories on the cultural, colonial and spiritual history of the Ghanaian coast from elders and townspeople. This was incredibly eye-opening and a major inspiration in developing the “Notes on Making Jollof” digital collage series, which was exhibited at the 2024 Toronto Outdoor Art Fair. We were also part of the 519’s group exhibition “In What We Carry, We Become” in 2025 for the “In Each Other’s Magnitude” project held at the Wildseed Center for Art & Activism, where we created and debuted a mirror sculpture titled “Younion”. In 2024 we joined the VUKA Performing Arts Residency at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of the 1 year Cohort where we wrote and performed the solo performance piece, “Bonsam Din”. In 2025, we had the opportunity to participate in the Paprika 2025 Design Lab where we worked as the Projection Designer for Anansi v God(s). We recently performed in “Dimensions of Opacity” for Ottawa Fringe and supported the production of “Please Leave When It’s Too Much” in Hamilton Fringe.

Chason Adjoa Nana Yeboah-Brown 

Chason Adjoa Nana Yeboah-Brown (she/her) is a Ghanaian-Trinidadian, Toronto based self-taught textile sculptor, full circle doula, community worker and workshop facilitator. Working primarily with crochet, her work challenges conventional distinctions between craft and fine art, using fiber as both material and metaphor to explore themes of ancestry, diaspora, human connection, hybridity, energy transference, sexuality and the like. The black body and the human(oid) figure has been central to their practice often reflected as nude, allowing the body to exist as a site of shared humanity and ancestral continuity. Her work has been exhibited at the Textile Museum, La Musée Nationale des Beaux Arts de Quebec, Nuit Blanche, Aresenal Gallery, and she has facilitated crochet workshops at the 519 community centre, UofT Scarborough, TDSB, Nia Centre for the Arts, Wildseed Centre, and more. As a workshop facilitator she uses  crochet as a tool for healing, connection and mindfulness. Having over twenty years experience working with youth, families, and varying communities Chason’s works stands at the crossroads of art, education and collective healing. 

DAÏ 

DAÏ is a Canadian-born multidisciplinary artist of Grenadian descent whose work transforms textile, paint, paper, poetry, and mixed media into deeply personal explorations of memory, identity, ancestry, and belonging. Rooted in the storytelling traditions of her Caribbean heritage, she creates visual, textured and poetic works that weave together personal histories and collective experience, preserving the moments, relationships, and cultures that shape who we are. Through her celebrated Love Stories quilts and Tongue Prints poetry, she invites audiences to reflect on the connections that endure across generations, reminding us that our shared humanity is built one story at a time. Her work reminds us that the stories we carry today become the legacy we leave behind.

Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot

DIASPORA ETHIOPIA (2012) 9:59

Hegare Selam Shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot (b.1990) is a lens based artist, writer and film programmer. They explore diaspora and placemaking among other themes in their work. shimby’s labour takes root and blooms in counter-institutions and archives across the continent and around the world. From 2020-2024, they were co_director of WNDX Festival of Moving Image and Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Filmpool Cooperative.

Ky Williams

ZARMINA (2022) 18:11

Ky Williams is a Toronto-born writer, director, actor, and health promoter. Ky fuses public health (MPH) and digital media to create socially relevant content that discusses health and promotes healthy sexuality and consent culture. They believe that the screen is a beautiful and engaging teaching tool. Ky created their first film; Red Lips [cages for Black girls] (2010), with the support of the Inside Out Film Festival’s New Visions Film Program. In 2016, Ky completed the Black Women Film! Leadership Program, and in 2017 their team won the BravoFact pitch competition allowing them to create Queen of Hearts (2018), now getting International attention.Ky is a graduate of Toronto Film School’s Film Production program (2021). Ky has acted in over twenty TV episodes, Feature films, Short films, Commercials, and PSAs.

lwrds duniam

AUGUAJUNÍPE (2020) 4min, I KNOW THE FEELING TOO (MAKE IT STOP) (2018) 1:50min

lwrds duniam (they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, independent researcher, community educator, and 2019 OCAD University graduate (BFA Integrated Media) living and creating in Tkaronto (Toronto). Born in Callao, Perú in 1984, lwrds has been calling Turtle Island home since 2002. Their ARTivist practice is informed by frameworks of Decolonial Critical Theory and is anti-racist, anti-oppressive, sex-positive, trauma-informed, and grounded in disability justice. With a focus on Critical Design and decolonial research practices and pedagogies, they have been working as an artist & designer for over a decade. lwrds’ art-making—process they labeled Brujería Praxis—conjures performance, sculptural, illustrative, sonic, poetic, and remediated mixed-media outcomes, emerging from a foundation of transgressive witchy knowledge. Traversing the multiple realms of their idiosyncratic spirituality, their work responds to their journey of healing sexual trauma at the intersections of gender variance, Blackness and Indigeneity (complicated by an imposed latinidad they reject for its colonial underpinnings), and disability, as a neurodivergent, chronically ill person. Brujería Praxis is an intuitive process of un/learning with more-than-human beings and valuing energetic exchanges with all that exists.

Kim Ninkuru

THESE ARE MY REPARATIONS (2023) 22:08

Kim Ninkuru is a multimedia artist who was born in Bujumbura, Burundi. She has been living and working in Montreal and Toronto since 2009. Using video and sound performance, storytelling, and installation work, she creates pieces that explore and express rage, love, desire, beauty, or pain in relation to her own body, mind, and soul. While her art is very personal, she is committed to speaking out about liberation of Black women and femmes everywhere. Her work heavily questions our preconceived notions of gender, race, sexuality, and class. It is grounded in the firm belief that Blackness is past, present, and future at any given moment. 

Ninkuru’s work has been shown in numerous galleries and exhibitions including the Gardner Museum, Trinity Square Video, Studio 303, Mainline Theatre, among others. Her work appears in the anthology Other Places: Reflections on Media Arts in Canada by Deanna Bowen.

æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil,

In the Interval (2022) 23:53

æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil, PhD, MFA is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and artist whose research spans the fields of Black queer and trans studies, Black feminist theory, political ontology, visual culture, performance studies, and film theory and practice. hollis o’neil is currently Assistant Professor of Trans Cinema and Media at the University of Toronto, jointly appointed in the Cinema Studies Institute and Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. Prior to beginning this appointment, hollis o’neil concurrently completed her PhD in Black Studies and MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern University with graduate certificates in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Critical Theory. In addition, hollis o’neil also holds a Master of Arts in American Studies and a graduate certificate in Documentary Filmmaking from George Washington University in Washington, DC. Her writing can be found in the journals Feminist Theory, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and is forthcoming in a special issue of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory.

Apart from her written scholarship, æryka maintains a creative research and artistic practice, having screened her work at Harvard University, Prismatic Ground, Onion City Experimental Film Festival, San Francisco Documentary Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and Prism: Austin’s 37th Annual LGBTQ+ Film Festival, with her film in the interval receiving a Special Jury Recognition of “Best Media Archaeology Meditation” and “Queer Black Voices” Award at the latter two. Utilizing an assemblage of narrative, documentary, experimental, personal and performative modes of address, hollis o’neil produces work that convenes and questions related themes of racialized gender, sexuality, desire, kinship, embodied capital, personhood, violence and belonging.