Keren Lasme is an artist, writer and literary curator based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She holds an MA in African Studies from SOAS University of London with a major in African Philosophy. She describes herself as an aesthete and a storyteller who uses art to explore the Self and communicate her inner landscapes. She reclaims the dreamscape and share fragments of wonder, beauty and mystery through multiple vessels like photography, writing, installations, performances, co-learning practices and more.
Her work and visual language are meant to elevate the spirit and at times, they help calm the mind. She is concerned with mythopoetic identity formation, mythmaking, knowledge activation and the use of fiction, storytelling, and the imagination as technologies to nurture our agency in the present and to envision better and possible futures. She is interested in alternative spaces for collective (un)/(re)learning as dreamscapes and playgrounds to negotiate 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 while using collective memories and imagination archived in African literary texts.
Keren is a Fellow of TWorks Per°Form Open Academy, a recipient of the Prince Claus Fund and the British Council Moving Narratives Mentorship Award (2024) as well as the Prince Claus Seed Award (2021).