Founded in 2014 by interdisciplinary artist Nicole Rafiki, RAI is an Oslo-based not-for-profit hybrid platform and community that centers on the experiences and needs of BIPOC+ art practitioners in Norway and the Nordics.
Since 2014, RAI has acted as curator, collective, art mediator, and producer, always challenging colonial frameworks within the Norwegian arts sphere. With particular focus on Black/African/African diasporic communities, RAI understands that while existing arts spaces can be transformed into safer spaces for marginalized and excluded peoples, this project requires clear, genuine welcome.
RAI endeavours to create the accessible from the inaccessible, without reckoning with the barrier of negotiating with inhospitable environments. To listen well and continuously to the shifting needs of the BIPOC arts community means acknowledging the liminal, and embracing the fluid.
In collaboration, RAI looks for arts professionals, institutions, and organizations that understand centering marginalized artistic voices means centering response rather than reaction, and that the impulse for curiosity, collaboration, and healing must come as naturally and needfully as breath.
In centering the thriving of BIPOC+ in the Norwegian and Nordic visual arts space, RAI is here to adapt and transform as necessary, always training our gaze on the liminal, leaning in to the flow of things, and creating the space for alternate narratives to emerge through art.
RAI chronology
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“Afrikanske Dager”, a yearly art festival centered around collaboration is held for the first time at Union scene, Drammen.
The Mayor of Drammen attends.
Participants: Sarah Camille Rasmussen, Zezé Kolstad, Miriam Nabunya, Ezinne Okparaebo, James Etokebe, Josef Yohannes and more
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In response to the migration crisis, Rafiki initiates a youth-focused photography project portraying the lives of asylum-seekers in Norway, based in Bodø. Invoking a reciprocal gaze, youth travel to Bodø, interview and photograph a young asylum seeker, and he then turns his gaze on them through the lens. A small exhibition is held at voksenopplæring in Oslo.
In collaboration with Oslo-based creators, artists, and members of the BIPOC community “Afrikanske Dager” takes place at a shelter for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum outside the city of Asker, Norway. The festival includes a photo shoot and exhibition, cooking workshops, fashion shows, an open mic, and more.
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The team involved with “Afrikanske Dager” in 2014 creates a youth-illustrated book: “Malu får nye fletter”, written by Jemimah Yombo and edited by Nicole Rafiki
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The process of creating YPPE , a coffee table book narrating the lived experiences of local and international creatives begins.
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The first YPPE issue featuring creatives T Michael and Alexander Helle of Norwegian Rain, actress Iselin Shumba, singer/songwriter Beharie, photographer Bjørn Wad and more is released
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The second issue of YPPE is released. Featuring Johannesburg based artist Benon Lutaaya, photographer turned hotel developer Bheki Dube and more
“Still Rising” , an international group exhibition is held in Oslo, Norway. Participants: Adelaide Damoah, David Obi, Delphine Diallo, Marc Posso, Afrikanista and more
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The first Good Mourning, a collective art project centering on care and healing in the BIPOC community is held in collaboration with the artist run gallery Kulturbyrået Mesén in Oslo, Norway
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The second Good Mourning is held, in collaboration with the Intercultural Museum and the Young artists association of Norway
YPPE moves online, and the first online edition is released, beginning an ongoing collaboration between OCA and RAI
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RAI site expands, Ro joins the team, and plans begin for a continuations of Good Mourning and more exciting projects.
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Plans for RAI Sessions Podcast Series begin, with support from Fritt Ord.
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FounderAn Oslo-based interdisciplinary artist whose work moves between and through multiple modalities and mediums, Rafiki employs artistic strategies that avert a western anthropological gaze. Centering shared world histories and intergenerational forms of memory and healing, Rafiki’s work offers alternative and regenerative spaces deliberately set apart from the dehumanizing logic of colonial practice.
In addition to her artistic work, Rafiki continues to build the RAI platform, and is currently an artist in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.
People of RAI
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Interim Director / CuratorRo Averin (they/she) is a writer, equity and social justice consultant and educator who centres mindfulness and intersectionality as methodologies for creating sustainable social, racial, and environmental change.
With their roots in Canada/Turtle Island, Ro now calls Northern Norway/Sápmi home.
Outside of work with RAI and UNLRN PRJCT, they can generally be found in nature, writing and editing in a variety of mediums, on a yoga mat teaching or practicing, organizing art and wellness retreats like Hearing Home, or gardening and foraging on the land she loves so deeply.