Grada Kilomba is a Portuguese interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Berlin. Her work draws on memory, trauma, race, gender, and the decolonisation of knowledge and narrative: ’who can speak?’ ‘what can we speak about?’ and ‘what happens when we speak?’ Are three constant questions in Kilomba’s body of work. She has been exhibiting and performing her work internationally at renown venues, such as Documenta 14 in Kassel, 32. Bienal de São Paulo 2016, Rauma Biennal Balticum 2016, Art Basel, Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin, Palace of Arts in Belo Horizonte, among many others.

She is best known for her subversive writing and her unconventional use of artistic practices, in which she ‘gives body, voice and image to her own writings’, and brings texts into performance – using a variety of formats from video installations, to staged readings, to performances, text collage, and sound installations. In her work, Kilomba intentionally creates a hybrid space between the academic and artistic languages, and storytelling is central to her decolonial practices. In 2011, she was awarded as one of “The Most Inspirational Black Women in Europe” by the Black Woman in Europe (BWIE), and in 2013, she was named a “Woman of Excellence” by the Sonne Magazine. Since 2017, the artist is represented by the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa.