Raquel
Lima &
Kiyémis
Poetry Reading & Conversation
Organized by Francesca Aiuti, ERC Starting Grant Project »Afroeurope & Cyberspace« (University of Bremen)
This event brings together poets Raquel Lima and Kiyémis for an evening of poetic performance and dialogue. The program opens with a reading of selected works by both artists, whose practices engage with Afrodiasporic histories, memory, embodiment, and resistance through language. Their voices intersect at the crossroads of poetry, performance, and political thought, offering audiences a powerful and intimate encounter with contemporary transdisciplinary writing.
Following a short break, the event continues with a round table conversation between the artists, moderated by Francesca Aiuti. This discussion will expand on the themes present in their work, including care, joy, decolonial practices, feminism, and the role of artistic expression in shaping collective imaginaries.
The event offers an opportunity to engage deeply with two distinct yet resonant artistic voices, and to reflect on poetry as a site of transformation and connection.
Kiyémis
Kiyémis is a writer, poet and Afro-feminist whose work explores joy as a political act and healing as a way of life. Winner of the 2024 Régine Deforges Prize for her debut novel Et, refleurir, she is also the author of the collection À nos humanités révoltées, the anthology Pour la joie (Les Liens qui Libèrent) and the essay Je suis votre pire cauchemar (Albin Michel), which questions beauty standards and the expectations placed on Black women. She is part of a generation of writers of African descent who connect the body, memory and care through a voice that is both radical and luminous. Invited to numerous cultural institutions in France and abroad — from the Palais de Tokyo to the Gaîté Lyrique, from the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (Bozar) to Geneva — Kiyémis develops a transdisciplinary poetic body of work, at the crossroads of literature, Black feminism and the visual arts. She also leads writing workshops that combine pleasure, transmission and the reappropriation of language, thereby extending her exploration of the creative power of women’s voices.
Raquel Lima
Raquel Lima is a poet, art educator, performer, essayist, curator and transdisciplinary artist. She has a degree in Artistic Studies and she is a PhD candidate in Post-Colonial Studies. Her research focuses on orature, slavery and Afrodiasporic movements, and she co-organized the Conference Afroeuropeans: Black In/Visibilities Contested (ISCTE, 2019), and co-edited the book Afroeuropeans: Identities, Racism, and Resistances (Routledge, 2025). She has presented her academic work at various international conferences, most notably the Conference Authoring Human Rights in West Africa and beyond: Expressions of slaveries in Literature and the Arts at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana (2023), and the Conference Decolonial Remains: Scrutinizing African Studies in Africa and the Unfinished Business of Decolonization at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria (2022). In 2022, she was invited to the Venice Biennale as a speaker at the event Loophole of Retreat, invited as keynote speaker to the opening session of the World Congress of Women in Mozambique, and invited to the event Literature Talk: Poets from Black Europe at BOZAR in Belgium. In 2023 she was invited to the 35th São Paulo Biennial, curated the Conference ‘Reformulating Authority and Authorship in the Arts’ in Lisbon, and was elected one of the 100 most influential Black personalities in Lusophony by Bantumen magazine’s annual Power List. In 2024 she was invited as a keynote speaker to the Race in Iberia Symposium at The Ohio State University. She published the poetry books Ingenuidade Inocência Ignorância and ÚLULU and co-founded The Black Union of the Arts in Portugal.
The event is part of the conference »Navigating Afro-Knowledges. Exploring Practices and Theories in Digital Diaspora Studies«, organised within the framework of theERC Starting Grant Project Afroeurope & Cyberspace (University of Bremen), by Francesca Aiuti, Julia Borst, Ximena Cervantes Englerth, Merveilles Mouloungui and Nelson Sindze Wembe.