Ashara Ekundayo

Ashara Ekundayo is a queer, Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian, arts organizer, and consultant whose creative practice is rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study and creation of Black archives, site-responsive ceremony, and artist-based strategies such as screenprinting, zine-making, installations, and altar-making that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora.

She is the founder of the philanthropic organization Artist As First Responder, which serves as a platform to support creatives working at the intersection of design, technology and activism to heal communities and save lives. She is currently the principal at AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC where she places artists and cultural production as essential in equitable design practices, real estate development, and movement building. She is also a co-founder of Black [Space] Residency and director of The Black Curators Lab—studio-based artist residencies celebrating the dynamic imagination of Black creatives.

She has served as a Fellow with the U.S. Dept. of State Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, Institute For The Future, and Auburn Seminary in NYC, and has sat on several advisory boards and held artist/curatorial residencies at many institutions both in the Bay Area art scene and beyond. In 2023 she will join the Muholi Art Institute in Cape Town South Africa as the inaugural Curatorial Research Fellow in collaboration with photographer and humanitarian Sir Zanele Muholi. She lives and works between the San Francisco Bay Area and her hometown of Detroit, MI.