29.04.2025

Performance as Radical Resistance

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) will share insights from her practice as a frontline queer activist in Ghana. Her presentation will focus on her work as a multidisciplinary artivist, artvangelist, curator, mentor, and philanthropist. As the founder/director of perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR), Va-Bene will also discuss the origins of her advocacy, which shifted from painting to performance as a form of resistance and decolonial expression. She will also address the threats to pIAR due to the proposed anti-LGBTQIA+ Bill in Ghana. Furthermore, her presentation will shed light on the persecution of the LGBTQIA+ community in Ghana and the draconian anti-LGBTQIA+ Bill that seeks to criminalize and imprison queer individuals, allies, parents, landlords, and sympathizers.

Born 1981 in Ho, Ghana, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [ aka crazinisT artisT] is a trans woman with the pronoun sHit if not She. Va-Bene lives in Kumasi, Ghana but works internationally as a multidisciplinary “artivist”, curator, philanthropist, artvangelist and a mentor across several countries. She is the founder and artistic director of crazinisT artisT studiO (TTO), Our Railway Cinema Gallery (ORCG), perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR), Va-Bene Scholarship and Mentorship Residency Abroad and Trans African Ambassadors Network (TAAN). All of which aimed at radicalising the arts and promoting exchange between international and local artists, activists, researchers, curators, and critical thinkers. As a performer and installation artist, crazinisT investigates gender stereotypes, prejudices, queerness, identity politics and conflicts, sexual stigma and their consequences for marginalised groups or individuals. With rituals and a gender-fluid persona, She employs her own body as a thought-provoking tool in performances, photography, video, and installations, ‘life-and-live-art’ confronting issues such as disenfranchisement, injustice, violence, objectification, internalised oppression, anti blackness, systemic indoctrination and many more.