How Diasporas Now met at the RCA

Diasporas Now is a platform for expanded performance by the global majority. It was founded in 2021 by artists Rieko Whitfield, Paola Estrella, and Lulu Wang, while they were studying Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) MA at the RCA. They create curated events such as workshops, panel discussions, museum lates and nightlife. Their community celebrates cross-diasporic identities and champions artists of colour.

Front row (left to right): Diasporas Now team Paola Estrella, Rieko Whitfield, Lulu Wang. Back rows (left to right): Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24, Institute of Contemporary Arts artists: Pierre, Tony Njoku, Valerie Asiimwe Amani, ZINZILE, Shauwdii. Photograph: Yiling Zhao

Diasporas Now have put on events at South London Gallery, Reference Point, Mimosa House and Somers Gallery. An Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant funded the Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24 which took place across NN Contemporary Art, Northampton; Humber Street Gallery, Hull; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

We spoke with the Diasporas Now founders to find out how the platform started at the RCA.

Pierre, Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Photograph: Lulu Wang

Diasporas Now emerged from conversations between Rieko, Lulu and Paola at the RCA. They identified a necessity for a performance platform that could provide space for artists from the global majority to share discourse around identity at RCA.

“When we founded Diasporas Now it was a really specific time” Rieko explained. “This was just after the peak of Black Lives Matter and during the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a lot of anti-Asian violence. We were seeing in real time arts institutions reacting with these knee jerk reactions and very surface level optics.”

The platform was established to counter what they saw as tokenistic gestures from arts organisations and a lack of commitment to support and nurture artists from diverse backgrounds. As artists of colour themselves they often felt that institutions imposed their own narratives on artists’ work.

“We like to have the space to give artists to say: you can be, do, exist, in any way that you want – this is your time, your platform, your opportunity to tell your story,” Rieko explained. “There tends to be, in the art world, a discourse around a fetishisation or performance of pain when it comes to performance art from artists of colour. Of course pain is a part of that experience, but we love to create space for celebration as well – and the depth and diversity and multiplicity of existing as a person of colour, or an artist of various diasporas. We want to create that safe space for free expression outside of the colonising institutional gaze.”

Reflecting on their intentions, Paola agreed: “It’s a lot about guiding the narrative, instead of fitting into a narrative that is already being communicated. We felt a necessity of offering a space where artists coming from different diasporas and backgrounds could, through performance, guide the narrative instead of the other way around. And the platform offers that safe space for artists to do that.”

Gisou Golshani, Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24, Humber Street Gallery, Hull. Photograph: Abbie Jennings

The RCA provided the ideal environment for Diasporas Now to test out and refine the platform, in terms of the practical resources, theoretical grounding and the creative network they could draw from.

“There was some tension at the beginning from other people in our programme,” Paola explained, “because it felt at some point that we were excluding others. We had to really sit down, exchange ideas and reflect on what we were doing, and why we were doing it. We didn’t necessarily enjoy having that resistance, but it did help us reflect on what we were doing.”

“It helped make us stronger,” Rieko agreed “because we had to really put our mission statement together. Bringing global majority artists together, it's not a light, easy, simple, straightforward thing to do. It's complex, it's political, even if we don't intend to be, just our existence is political.”

Their first event was live streamed from one of the lecture theatres at the College, with a lineup of artists including current students and tutors Chooc Ly Tan and Whiskey Chow. Each artist was given ten minutes in front of the camera to do whatever they wanted. The team describe these early performances as experimental, but realise that this was part of their strength. “When you’re making work you need to test things,” Paola explained. “Things have to look messy at some point, if you’re getting outside the comfort zone.”

This approach has led to a nurturing and supportive community – with not only the practical resources, but also emotional support to enable artists to create experimental work. “For the artists that we work with, it is a challenge to create unpolished works or experimentation,” Lulu explained “It takes a lot of time and courage to showcase that in public.”

This supportive space is something they are proud to provide, as Rieko added, “I love that we can provide that space for other artists, no matter what level they are at in their career, to experiment and try new things because that’s the spirit of improvisation and performance.”

Sym Stellium, Diasporas Now UK tour 2023-24, NN Contemporary Art, Northampton. Photograph: Tara Florence

The RCA, and the CAP MA programme in particular, provided a unique place for Lulu, Rieko and Paola to meet. “Instead of trying to label you and put you into boxes, they encourage critical thinking and building a very particular identity as an artist,” Paola explained. “In that process, it was encouraged to collaborate. We were asked, what are you thinking about and who are you discussing it with?”

“The MA Contemporary Art Practice course is for weird people!” Rieko shared. “For multidisciplinary, shape-shifting, diasporic thinking, this programme was perfect. More broadly, the RCA has that open-minded, future-thinking, cross-disciplinary approach to art and creative practices. I would have been a very different artist, or felt confined as to what I could do and be seriously considered an artist, if I had studied elsewhere.”

The programme offered a nurturing environment for them to grow the platform. “We had so much support from the staff at the RCA,” Rieko recalled. “Chantal Faust, Anne Duffau, Harold Offeh: these are just some of the tutors that showed us incredible support, not just in pastoral care, but also helping us find resources to begin our platform and helping us talk through the conceptual significance of what we're doing. Without the support of some of these really incredible educators and mentors, who we continue to work with, we wouldn't be where we are today.”

They also made connections beyond the CAP programme, as Lulu reflected: “Besides the three of us working together, we also worked very closely with our friends from across the RCA. Not just from CAP, but also from Photography and Fashion.”

Shauwdii, Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Photograph: Lulu Wang

Since their first online event in 2021, Diasporas Now has grown to curate live events at the intersection of performance art, visual art, music, dance and fashion. They have recently completed a UK tour, funded by an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant. This enabled them to commission performance works at three different venues across the UK by UK-based artists of colour working across performance art, music, movement, film, and spoken word.

Over 200 artists responded to the open call for the tour, and the team enlisted the help of Harold Offeh and Michelle Williams Gamaker to select the 20 artists who were featured in their events. The tour has been a huge success with the last event in London completely selling out the ICA.

Asked what the audience might expect from a Diasporas Now event, Rieko commented: “It’s fun and joyful, but at the same time deep, intellectual and profoundly empathetic. This makes us unique.” Lulu added: “It’s something different from normal live gigs or normal live events you will see, because it is diverse. It is the combination between art and other different industries.”

Bakani Pick-Up Company, Diasporas Now UK Tour 2023-24, Humber Street Gallery, Hull. Photograph: Abbie Jennings

From the start, the team had ambitions to grow Diasporas Now beyond the RCA. There was evidently an appetite for what they were offering. “People were just coming to us, it felt like every other week we were booked for something” Rieko explained.

Their success stems, in part, from the fact they are all full time artists – Paola’s work was featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2022, Rieko has released her debut EP Regenesis through Diasporas Now, and Lulu is currently artist in residence at the Sarabande Foundation. “We’re always listening to the needs of the arts community,” Paola explained, “and we try to adapt the platform. We still have a very specific core aim, but we adapt to different necessities and trends. Moving from livestreaming to live event production, we’ve tried to keep an eye open to what artists are making or creatives in general.”

Already, in the few years Diasporas Now has been running, they have seen the artists they support grow from strength to strength. Lulu shared one example: “We’ve been working with Josh Woolford since their first performance works. We’ve seen their practice develop from being movement based into the sound work they are making now, and working with art galleries but also with fashion brands like Gucci.”

The success of the events they put on, and the individuals they support, provides one metric to measure their achievements, another is the strength of the community they have developed. Rieko reflected: “There’s this kind of misconception of a lone genius or of an artist superstar. The genius comes out of collective happenings and movements within culture. And at the core of that is community. So that's what we’re really building here. We do events, we do production, we do performance art, but what we’re really in, is the business of community building.”