KEREN LASME

Keren Lasme is an artist, writer, and literary curator based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

She holds an MA in African Studies, with a focus on African Philosophy, from SOAS University of London. Lasme describes herself as an aesthete and storyteller who uses art to explore the Self and translate her inner landscapes. She reclaims the dreamscape, sharing fragments of wonder, beauty, and mystery through multiple mediums including photography, writing, installations, performance, and co-learning practices.

Her work and visual language aim to elevate the spirit, and at times to soothe the mind. She is concerned with mythopoetic identity formation, mythmaking, knowledge activation, and the use of fiction, storytelling, and imagination as technologies for nurturing agency in the present and envisioning possible futures. Lasme is interested in alternative spaces for collective (un)/(re)learning, conceived as dreamscapes and playgrounds for negotiating freedom, healing, revelation, remembrance, and the reconfiguration of social imaginaries. Her research practice on African literatures draws on engaged pedagogy, collective care, and the politics of pleasure, using collective memory and imagination archived in African literary texts.

Lasme is a Fellow of the T:>Works Per°Form Open Academy, a recipient of the Prince Claus Fund and British Council Moving Narratives Mentorship Award (2024), and a Prince Claus Seed Award laureate (2021).