Former Somerset House Studios resident

Asmaa Jama

Asmaa Jama is a Somali artist + poet and filmmaker based in England. Their work is interested in myth, movement and migration, predominantly through poetry and moving image.

Somerset House Studios
New Wing

Asmaa Jama is a Somali artist + poet and filmmaker based in England. Asmaa has been commended for the Brunel African Poetry Prize, shortlisted for the Wasafiri Writing Prize, the New Poets Prize and James Berry Poetry prize and longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. Asmaa’s a Cave Canem 2021 Fellow. Asmaa has been published in places like Poetry Review, The Good Journal, Ambit, Ballast and Magma. In theatre, Asmaa has written for and performs in Dorothee Munyaneza's Mailles, and has written for Raodouan Mrziga's Akal and Libya. Their first film work was Before We Disappear (2021), an interactive moving image piece commissioned by BBC Art, followed by The Season of Burning Things (2021), made in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed commissioned by the Bristol Old Vic (2021) and Except this time nothing returns from the ashes (2022), commissioned by Spike Island. Their work has also been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and Theatre Neumarkt’s 100 Ways to Say We Programme (2021). And was the official selection of Blackstar Film Festival and Aesthetica Film Festival ( 2022). They are also a FLAMIN fellow ( 2022).

 

Research and working, on a moving image film looking at badgal cermony, water and myth from the South of Somalia. Involving archival research, oral histories, from coastal regions and the Indian Ocean. Looking at stories around, mercreatures / poem-maps / rituals, and finding ways to critically thinking about certain traditions.

Also a series of drawings / paintings / poems.