When You Meet Us – A Collective Speed Dating

Keabetswe Boccomino is a South African curator and founding director of Basel, Switzerland-based contemporary African art platform, Afrinova. Her work is positioned at the intersection of arts, culture and community to introduce collaborative modes of creative engagement, dialogue and artistic showcase.

Elisa Valentina da Costa Policarpo (she/her) is a communication and media scientist based in Basel. Her work centers on DEI, sustainability, decolonization, and Pan-Africanism, particularly in media, communications, arts, film, tech, and education. While pursuing her Master’s in African Studies at the University of Basel, she applies co-creation, transdisciplinarity, and multimedia methods to foster pluralism in knowledge production. Elisa is building her agency network Afrokaana, which engages in collaborations such as the Heritage Concept and the Forum de Tecnologia e Educação in Luanda, Angola. She also hosts the podcast Blackfluencers.

Kadiatou Diallo works as a freelance curator, mediator and cultural practitioner in Basel. She is a research assistant at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel and a lecturer in the Master in Arts in Public Spheres (MAPS) at the EDHEA (école de design et haute école d’art) in Sierre.

Dembo Jobarteh is a master of the Kora, hailing from a traditional Griot family deeply rooted in the Mandinka musical culture. “For generations, the art of playing the Kora has been passed down in my family, and I continue this tradition while incorporating modern influences. My goal is to blend the ancient music of my ancestors with contemporary elements, all while preserving the essence of our culture. Through my performances on international stages, I aim to share the beauty of West African music with the world.”

Larissa Tiki Mbassi (she/her) is a curator and a PhD candidate based in Zurich. Her research focuses on the intersections between colonial history and “Blackness” in Switzerland. She is particularly interested in how “public art” reflects and challenges collective memory, especially concerning colonialism. Through her work, Larissa highlights the importance of valuing Afro-diasporic narratives in Switzerland, a country where belonging is still associated with whiteness.

Sindi-Leigh McBride is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa and PhD Candidate at the Centre for African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland. Her doctoral research explores the politics and poetics of climate change in South Africa and Nigeria, focusing on how contemporary art and literature in South Africa and Nigeria can be read as forms of climate knowledge.

Lorena Rizzo is a historian of Namibia and South Africa, with a special interest in gender and visual history. She has published widely on gender and colonialism, photography and public history in Southern Africa, and co-curated exhibitions on Namibian visual history and memory. She is currently working on a collaborative project entitled The (In)Audible Past. Southern African sound archives and histories (SNF/NRF). and another project entitled Inherited Futures. Objects, time, knowledge (SNF).