A conversation between Ghanaian artist, curator, and organizer Va Bene Elikem-Fiatsi and Anya Miller on the on the role of the artist, the power of silence, and the necessity of activism. It is an episode about life and death, sound and silence, action and stillness. It is designed for the listener to feel the urgency with which Va Bene performs and lives, and it forces the listener to understand how performance art and life are inseparable entities. This episode addresses the current state of anti-LGBTQ+ efforts in Ghana, interlaced with the hope that Va Bene inserts into her performances and the courage that she and other artists must continue to embrace in order to awaken society to its  inequities.
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About The Artist
Va Bene Elikem-Fiatsi (she/sHit) is a multi-disciplinary performance and installation artist, as well as the artistic director of perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) in Kumasi, which aims to promote exchange between international and local artists, activists, researchers, curators, and thinkers. Va Bene works internationally, but was born and lives in Ghana; she has exhibited throughout the world, including Philadelphia with her exhibit Ritual Realities at Slought. As a performer and installation artist, Va Bene investigates gender stereotypes, prejudices, queerness, identity politics and conflicts, sexual stigma and their consequences for marginalized 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, social justice, violence, objectification, internalized oppression, anti blackness, systemic indoctrination and many more.

​About The Host

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​​​Anya Miller (she/her) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Sociology and Design. More importantly, she is a student of life—on a radical journey of learning and unlearning, each and everyday. As a human and as a scholar, Anya is passionate about the intersection of art and activism; public art and spatial production; ethnographic research, podcasting, and photography; social justice curation; and intersectionality. She hopes to continue gathering knowledge from the animate and inanimate environment that surrounds her in hopes of, one day, utilizing her energetic passion for humanity to leave this world a better place than she found it.
 Picture​self-portrait​, by Anya Miller
                 















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More From The Artist

Episode Audio Credits (in order of first appearance):