Location: Front Lawn.
Free, drop-in.

For Black History Month, IMMA Horizons and The GALPAL Collective presents Imagine Noire, a reflection of black artistry through a curation of experimental and moving artwork from Black Irish and international filmmakers. Screened on Living Canvas at IMMA from the 8–16 October, Imagine Noire is a selection of work rooted in experimentation, imagination and self-expression by Black Irish and international filmmakers.  

The Programme features three short films and one music video,The Rhythm We Know by Belfast-based filmmaker Macy Stewart, FAAJI directed by Nigerian-Irish filmmaker and curator Aisha Bolaji, Youlogy/No Ghosts by London-based moving image artist and filmmaker Darryl Daley and Hiba Elgizouli – Bidaya created by Elgizouli Sisters a Sudanese art production collective made of three sisters Hiba, Mai, and Sally Elgizouli, who were raised in an artistic family. 

About the Films

FAAJI (2023)
Aisha Bolaji, Paul Gleeson 
FAAJI (fàájì) in Yoruba means enjoyment, pleasure, comfort, or having a good time. This piece explores the peak of FAAJI, young adulthood, the blessing it is seen as to get older. How that growth can feel stunted. How your most joyous day can bring fears. We see a glimpse into a brief moment of a birthday celebration, a mother praying for her son in her native tongue. A less than enthusiastic young man turning 21. Many young people aren’t going through the same milestones, they’re not getting married, moving out, getting houses. They’re at home, they’re with their parents. They remain boys instead of men, women living in perpetual girlhood. Young people are coming of age in a world where the milestones their parents associated with adulthood are increasingly delayed or out of reach. Yet they remain deeply connected to the expectations and traditions passed down to them. FAAJI dually explores this inheritance through the physical similarities between mother and son, reflecting on the ways children carry their families in their faces, mannerisms and stories, even as they grow into lives that look very different from those of their parents. Visually, the film draws inspiration from the vibrant textile works of Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye, particularly the bold patterns, colours and intricate layering of her work, using textile as a visual language through which heritage, family and identity can be explored.

Written, Directed & Art Direction by Aisha Bolaji
Cinematography & Editing by Paul Gleeson
Conceptualised by Aisha Bolaji & Paul Gleeson
Starring Tobi & Modinat Bolaji

Bidaya
Hiba Elgizouli
Bidaya is a song about the state of both..hope and helplessness. It was written just before the revolution began in Khartoum, when many people in the city felt desperate and helpless, yet held deep faith in themselves and their land. They carried a hidden energy, buried for years, ready to change their situation completely and build a better life as a nation.

The Bidaya music video is an award-winning production created by the Elgizouli sisters (Sally, Mai, and Hiba), three sisters from Omdurman, Sudan. Through a series of shots, each representing a different theme, the video celebrates pride in Sudan’s diversity, the natural beauty of Sudanese women reflected in their hair and diverse skin tones, and the strength and creativity of women. It champions freedom of expression and rejects restrictions on creativity, using costumes and traditional attire reimagined to offer a different perspective that challenges creative limits. Deeply inspired by the sisters’ experiences as Sudanese women, the video presents a contemporary reflection of both contradictions and beauty at once.

The Rhythm We Know
Macy Stewart
The Rhythm We Know is a short experimental film concept that explores and makes the connection between girlhood and womanhood through all its simplicities and complexities. Through striking visuals paired with spoken word, this film shines a light on what it means to be a Black woman existing today. Not only acknowledging the trials and tribulations but celebrating the beauty and joy that comes with being a Black woman in all stages of her life. In just 2 minutes, the film takes the audience on a journey to a deeper understanding of the Black women we are surrounded by. A lot of the topics included in the film are universal: our skin, hair and bodies. All pieces of us that we have to learn to ultimately love and accept. From childhood to womanhood, the film will be a journey to that final destination to
loving ourselves for who we are.

From no age, we are taunted, teased and tormented by those who don’t want to see us for who we are.
What are the young women to do when they see their features are not accepted? We talk, we bond and create a unity that only we can understand to such an extent. This vulnerability and celebration is the true essence of The Rhythm We Know.

Youlogy/No Ghosts
Darryl Daley
9 minutes
Life and death in this dream-like meditation on migration, memory and inheritance. The film retraces the artist’s grandmother’s journey from Jamaica to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and her eventual return to her homeland through death. Moving between archival fragments, black-and-white imagery and imagined scenes, the film inhabits a space where memory and fantasy collapse into one another. Typographic memoirs emerge alongside a sparse percussive soundscape, while light becomes both material and narrative—revealing fleeting encounters between the living, the ancestral and the imagined.

The intimacy of the family archive is set against the wider histories of Caribbean migration and the lives built across generations on unfamiliar land. Personal memory becomes a vessel for collective experience,
carrying stories, gestures and rituals across time.The grandmother’s funeral in Jamaica introduces another temporal register. Figures in formal suits move alongside masquerading bodies, drawing on Jamaican spiritual traditions and the visual language of Junkanoo. Ceremony, performance and mourning converge within a liminal landscape where the boundaries between life and death become uncertain.

Rather than offering a fixed portrait of loss, the film imagines death as a passage: a return to ancestry, memory and possibility. Through fractured time, ritual and abstraction, it asks what remains of those who leave—and how the departed continue to inhabit the imagination of those they leave behind.

About the Artists
Aisha Bolaji is a Nigerian-Irish filmmaker, curator and participatory arts facilitator based in Dublin. They graduated from The National Film School, IADT with a specialisation in Fiction Direction and Production. To encompass Aisha’s work as a director it is fantastical, fun and colourful with a dedication to unconventional Black stories. Within their screenwriting practice Aisha creatively blends folklore, speculative fiction, and deeply human narratives. They are also co-founder of the arts and media organisation The GALPAL Collective, dedicated to community cultivation as well as celebration and support of work from underrepresented artists.  Their short film, ‘Why the Sun & Moon Live in the Sky’ premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh where Aisha was nominated for the Bingham Ray New Talent Award. It has screened at the Cork International Film Festival, Kerry International Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival and was nominated for Best Irish Short Film at the Kinsale Shark Awards and picked up Best XYZ Film at Kosice and Best First Time Director at Catalyst Film Festival. Their next film, Starlets, is Screen Ireland funded through Focus Shorts. Their feature screenplay ‘Welcome to the Plague Pit’ was selected for the Stowe Story Labs and Element Pictures Storyhouse Labs.

Elgizouli Sisters is a Sudanese art production collective of Hiba, Mai, and Sally Elgizouli, who were raised in an artistic family. Their zero-budget 2018 video Rival showed Sudanese women on screen with natural hair, while the crowdfunded Bidaya deepened their visual language. Both videos won awards at festivals in Spain, Germany, Norway, and Australia.
Hiba is a Cairo-based singer-songwriter and co-founder of Khartoum’s first all-female band, Salute Yal Bannot. She released her debut album, Moya wu Naar (Water and Fire), in 2026, blending Sudanese rhythms with modern sounds.

Mai is a director, producer, and creative director working across film, music videos, documentary, and stop-motion animation. A Cairo University sociology graduate and third assistant director on the Cannes-premiered Goodbye Julia, she is pursuing an MFA at SVA in New York.
Sally, now based in Germany, is a costume designer and creative director whose design and visual storytelling define the sisters’ look. With a master’s degree in child mental health, she has created multiple children’s projects, the latest of which is Bosha, a Sudanese heritage doll brand.
Covered by media platforms worldwide, the sisters continue their artistic dialogue across the distance and hope to bring new joint projects to life in the near future.

Macy Stewart is a Belfast-based filmmaker and photographer whose work is rooted in authentic storytelling, visual identity and representation. Of Irish and Jamaican heritage, Macy brings her own perspective and lived experience into her creative work with a commitment to creating space for diversity both in front of and behind the camera. She believes representation should be embedded throughout the filmmaking process, from the people and stories on screen to the creative teams bringing them to life.
Macy began building her career in photography at 17, developing a strong visual language and a natural instinct for capturing people, emotion and atmosphere. Over time and with her peers guidance her passion for visual storytelling naturally expanded into film which led her to discover particular love for directing in 2021.Since then, Macy has been commissioned to create work such as The Rhythm We Know for BBC / NI Screen , Silver Linings for Macmillan Cancer Support and You Only Open The Window for The Dead Rabbit NYC. Her work combines a considered visual approach with a focus on character, emotion and authenticity.After taking time away from her creative practice over the past year, Macy is now looking towards a new chapter in her career returning to directing with a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to tell stories that feel visually distinctive and meaningful.

Darryl Daley is a London-based moving image artist and filmmaker working across film projection, installation, sound, photography, and graphic design. Daley’s practice explores the intersections of Black identity and mythology within the Black Atlantic. Concerned with the aesthetics of temporality and the materiality of filmmaking, his work navigates personal and familial histories through themes of matriarchy, inheritance, spirituality, and cultural continuity anchored by the concepts of hauntology and the immaterial archive. Through a multimedia approach, his works are coded through abstraction, material assemblage, and liminal space, foregrounding nuanced discourses on Blackness and the Black body as vessels of ancestral transmission.

Panel Discussion: Thursday 15, October
Location: Lecture Room
Free, booking required. Book here.

To mark the screening of Imagine Noire, join IMMA Horizons and The GALPAL Collective on Thursday 15 October for a special panel discussion which will explore black artistry, identity and imagination. Speakers include Sekera Mohamed Besta, Ishmael Claxton, and Sandrine Uwase Ndahiro. On Thursday 15 October the screenings of these films will be shown on our Living Canvas screen from 9.30am-8.30pm.

Speaker Biographies

When describing themselves, Sekera Mohamed Besta notes, ‘Memory, imagination and observation are three elements my subconscious mind internalized as a child. A lot of my work touches on each of these aspects, and they become more powerful when I close my eyes. I operate in ‘eureka’ moments where I find myself staring hard at nothingness, and allowing it to overwhelm me, engulfing my gaze and forcing me into temporary blindness. My visual expression at first, had no potent message.

More experimentations than finished product. I was my own guinea pig at first. I modelled as my kid brother captured my frame. My work draws inspiration from entire individuals and personal pain, motivated by trauma and yearning, from my experiences as an unseen Swahili citizen. I create for African representation and exploration. I aim to remove stigmatization in the African arts through discovery, history and expansion. My work is grounded on first-hand research and creating a voice for the voiceless. I disrupt propaganda and advocate for African minorities.’

Ishmael Claxton is a New York-born, Ireland-based visual artist, photographer and curator whose interdisciplinary practice moves between photography, installation, archival research and analogue image-making. Drawing on a background spanning mathematics, art history, costume design and creative installation, Claxton approaches photography as both a visual language and a way of investigating how history, identity and power are constructed, recorded and remembered.

Living and working in Ireland for over a decade, his practice is shaped by questions of migration, race, belonging, class, visibility and cultural memory. His work often moves between the personal and the institutional, bringing lived experience into conversation with museums, archives and historical narratives. His ongoing project Dead Zoo in Blue, developed through a Photo Museum Ireland residency and in collaboration with the National Museum of Ireland, examines colonial collecting, classification and the representation of Black bodies within museum collections. His portrait project Mood Indigo continues this exploration through a growing visual archive of Black people and people of colour living and working in Ireland.

Claxton is a co-founder of ÍOVA Photography Collective, a photographer-led platform supporting and exhibiting photographic practice in Ireland. His work has been exhibited at Photo Museum Ireland, the Royal Hibernian Academy, The Library Project, Collins Barracks, the National Concert Hall, the Museum of Literature Ireland, the Hunt Museum, the Irish Georgian Society. He has participated in residencies in Ireland and internationally, including Photo Museum Ireland, Cow House, Centre for Photographic Art Santa Fe and Queens Collective.

His work has received international recognition, including a LensCulture Editors’ Pick, shortlisting for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition, and selection for Shutter Hub’s 100 Fine Art Photographers of Tomorrow. Across his practice, Claxton is interested in what happens when photography becomes more than an image: a document, an archive, an object, a memory and a way of asking who gets to be seen, remembered and represented.

Sandrine Uwase Ndahiro is a Rwandan-Irish early-career researcher focused on postcolonial literature, Black environmentalism, and contemporary Irish literature. She examines representational modes of the political economy of race and autonomy on a global scale. Sandrine is also the founder of the literary and cultural magazine, which champions ethnic minority writing in Ireland. Her public engagement efforts and interdisciplinary research approach aim to bridge academia and the creative industries to discuss important social issues, such as race and climate change, from diverse perspectives.

Location: Lecture Room
Free, booking required. Book here.

Join Dr. Ebun Joseph as she presents the documentary, Echoes of 2004, which examines the long-term impact of Ireland’s 2004 Citizenship Referendum, particularly the risk of statelessness and prolonged legal uncertainty among some Irish-born young people.  

Filmed at IMMA and through interviews with individuals directly affected, the documentary documents the lived experiences of young adults born and raised in Ireland who remain without citizenship or secure legal status, and the psychological and structural consequences that follow.  

The film brings together historical context, lived experience, and policy analysis to examine the generational consequences of the constitutional change. 

Join us on 16 October in the lecture Hall at IMMA for a screening of the documentary (approx. 45 minutes) followed by a moderated post-screening discussion with audience engagement and Q&A. 

About Speakers

Mariam Sobayo is a psychology graduate, social care worker and youth advocate based in Dublin, with a strong interest in inclusion, neurodiversity and the experiences of marginalised communities. She holds a First Class Honours MSc in Psychology and Wellbeing from Dublin City University and works with separated children seeking international protection in Ireland. Mariam is also a youth advocate with Jigsaw and has contributed to national conversations through media, research and advocacy. Her work reflects a strong commitment to supporting young people and amplifying perspectives that are often underrepresented in public conversations. 

Chichi Okoli is a care-experienced third-level student of South African and Nigerian heritage, currently studying for a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and French at the University of Limerick. Drawing on her own experience of the foster care system, Chichi is particularly interested in the experiences of children from migrant and minority backgrounds in care. She is currently researching cultural competency within wider society and the foster care system and is passionate about advocating for children and young people. Her research interests include race, racism, cultural literacy and the experiences of migrant-background children in care. She plans to pursue a Master’s in Social Work and continue research and advocacy that contributes to more culturally responsive systems in Ireland. 

Mogbeke Akinyemi is a psychology graduate with interests in social justice, community engagement and the experiences of young people and marginalised communities. She completed her psychology degree in September and is graduating in October. Mogbeke has been involved in youth and community initiatives in Dublin, including the EMERGENCE young choreographers programme and community-based educational initiatives. She has also contributed to youth-focused programmes through her involvement with the National College of Ireland. Her interests centre on social justice, inclusion and creating spaces where young people can participate, express themselves and contribute to wider conversations about society. 

 Dr Ebun Joseph is a leading Inclusion and race relations consultant, and the founder and CEO of the Institute of Antiracism and Black Studies (IABS). She serves as Ireland’s Special Rapporteur on Racial Equality and Racism and is the module coordinator and lecturer for Black Studies at University College Dublin (UCD)—a pioneering course she established in 2018 as Ireland’s first. Dr Joseph is also the founder of the African Scholars Association Ireland (AfSAI), which she chaired from 2018 to 2022. Her previous roles include Career Development Consultant at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Teaching Fellow at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and Training and Employment Officer with the EPIC programme.  An accomplished author, TV panellist, and equality activist, Dr Joseph’s research focuses on race, labour markets, and structural inequality. Her publications include Critical Race Theory and Inequality in the Labour Market (Manchester University Press, 2020); Equity in the Workplace series: Stories of Black Irish Women in Ireland (2024); Stories of Black Irish women in academia (2025), and Challenging Perceptions of Africa in Schools (Routledge, 2020).  Dr Joseph is the award-winning author of ‘Composite counter storytelling as a technique for challenging ambivalence about race and racism in the labour market in Ireland’, which received the IRJ Prize awarded to the paper adjudicated to represent the best original contribution to the journal in a given year. She is also a documentary Executive producer of ‘Equity in the Workplace’ and ’ECHOES OF 2004‘. She is the host of The DEeP Table, a live audience national platform advancing inclusive spaces through dialogue, diverse voices, and shared learning.

Dye Painting + Turbante-se: Stories and headwraps from the Afro-diaspora
Location: Studio 9
Booking required. Book here. 

This Black History Month, IMMA Horizons presents a special two-day workshop exploring the dyeing techniques, histories, and cultural significance of wax print and headwraps across the African diaspora. Across the two days, participants will have the opportunity to dye their own headwrap using 100% cotton and be guided through various headwrap styles and create clothing variations using their newly dyed scarf. 

Join us on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October for the two complementary workshops which will be facilitated by Addoley Dzegede and Thaís Muniz.  

Please note, one ticket will admit you to both workshops. 

Saturday 24 October, 12pm – 4pm
In the first of these complementary workshops, Addoley will introduce participants to the process of using thickened fibre-reactive dyes to paint vibrant colours directly onto cotton fabric headwraps. As part of the workshop, Addoley will briefly discuss the history of wax print fabrics, exploring their origins in Europe by manufacturers trying to copy Indonesian batik, as well as their popularity and significance in parts of Africa and its diaspora.  

Participants will create their own dyed headwraps, which will be left to cure overnight before being washed, dried, and ready to use for the Sunday workshop, facilitated by Thaís. 

Sunday 25 October, 12pm – 2pm 
In the second workshop, Through stories, images, and shared conversation, the Turbante-se workshop begins with an introduction to the rich and complex history of turbans and headwraps across the Afro-Atlantic diaspora, from ancient traditions to contemporary expressions. 

The session explores the cultural, spiritual, aesthetic, and political meanings of turbans and headwraps, alongside references to key figures, histories, and artistic practices within this universe. This is followed by a hands-on tutorial, where participants learn practical ways of tying their own headwraps they dyed during Saturday’s workshop. 

About the artists

Addoley Dzegede is a Ghanaian-American artist and educator from South Florida (USA). Dzegede received an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She was a 2022–2023 Fulbright Fellow to the Netherlands for Craft, where she was Artist Researcher in Residence at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. In recent years, her work has been in exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Museum of Norway, Canada gallery in New York, and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. She is one half of LAB-D, a collaborative practice with artist Lyndon Barrois Jr.  

Thaís Muniz is a visual artist working across multiple mediums to explore the intersections of inherited and acquired identities, transit, and inward love. Her practice unfolds through intimate, communal learning processes, activating spaces and engaging with the geopolitics of territories through workshops, performances, sculptures, and film. 

Since 2012, Muniz has been researching and sharing the physical and metaphysical significance of the head (Ori) in Afro-Atlantic societies. Central to this work is the ancestral practice of headwrapping, through which the artist explores how these sculpted textiles form complex, non-verbal systems of communication and symbolic meaning. Through her platform, Turbante-se, this practice embodies cultural knowledge and spiritual depth. 

Her solo exhibitions include The Kite Ballet (2026) at The Dock Arts and Rites of Care, Curse and Comfort (2024) at Sirius Arts Centre, both in Ireland. Her work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. She has held residencies at NESR Art Foundation, Angola; Cork Printmakers; and Axis Ballymun. Muniz holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin, Ireland. 

Crafting the Counterstory: A zine-making workshop and exploration of the Black history of zines
Location: Matheson Creativity Hub
Free, booking required. Book here

Closing off our Black History Month with a zine-making workshop and exploration of the Black history of zines. 

In this workshop, participants are invited to explore the Black history of zines and use zine-making, collage and storytelling to reflect on our personal and collective histories, culture, heritage and achievements. 

Using prompts, participants who attend the other activities in the programme will have the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned.