Dreamers, the Conference

Sonya Lindfors (1985) is a Cameroonian – Finnish choreographer and artistic director that also works with facilitating, community organising and education. In 2013 she received a MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki.

She is the founding member and Artistic Director of UrbanApa, an inter-disciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices. UrbanApa facilitates workshops, festivals, labs, mentoring and publications among other things.

Lindfors makes her own and collaborative works such as performances, curated programs and performative actions. Her performance works have been shown and supported by Beursschouwburg, Kampnagel, Spring Utrecht, CODA – festival, Black Box Theater Oslo, Zodiak – Centre for New Dance among others. She is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Lindfors’s recent works We Should All Be Dreaming, camouflage (2021), Soft Variations Online (2020) centralise questions around Blackness and Black body politics, representation and power structures, speculative futurieties and decolonial dreaming practices. On a larger scale Lindfors’s time is divided between her own artistic work , educational work and working as the artistic director of UrbanApa. In all her positions she pursues creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, a performance, a publication or a workshop can operate as the site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.

Lindfors has been awarded with several prizes, the latest of which being the international Live art Anti Prize 2018. During the season 2017 – 2018 Lindfors was the house choreographer for Zodiak – center for new dance.

Maryan Abdulkarim is a public speaker, writer, and activist interested in themes relating to freedom. She participates actively in public discussion as a political commentator and a columnist. She collaborates regularly with choreographer Sonya Lindfors and is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale. Abdulkarim is also a founding member of the Nordic Feminist Network, including community organisers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sami regions. Abdulkarim’s and Eeva Talvitie’s book, About ten myths on feminism was published in Finnish in 2018. Her second book will be published in collaboration with photographer Uwa Iduozee. She made her debut as a screenwriter in the short film Dream Job produced by Tuffi Films. Abdulkarim received the Minna Canth prize in 2019, awarded annually to a person shaking the Finnish society.