an [ im ] material space rooted in Iüanakaéra [MARTINIQUE] functioning as an artistic and cultural research lab engaging togetherness and liberatory pedagogy
We aim to collectively contribute to the sustainability of the material and immaterial heritage of socially and culturally engaged individuals, collectives, communities, thinkers, researchers and artists through embracing a confluence of a multitude of knowledge systems. Occupying the dual function as an educator and a timeless learner, Nianiba manifests itself as a tangible and immaterial space that creates liberal-experimental and creative learning experiences, offering to individuals a diverse array of possibilities to explore their individuality through the collective. Nianiba is a volunteer-based collective sustained by grants applications and community support. Indeed, our work is a labour of love and we move at the pace of our own roots, honoring the rhythm of our capacity as we cultivate these shared spaces and collective possibilities.
According to oral history, Nianiba is the ancestral capital of the Mali Empire, where Sundiata Keita was born, raised and later became the emperor. In Senegal, and widely in Alkebulan, the story of Sundiata is narrated as an important historical moment and an example to wisdom, resilience, optimism, prosperity and communality. Indeed, Niani the village became Nianiba, and the city rise is in direct corellation with Sundiata growth, as a figure and as a person; from an ostracized chilhood, to the reflected bravery to unite the Mandinka people and genuinely establish a diverse, sustainable, magical and strong in mind and spirit empire, making Niani(ba) the heart of a properous civilization.
Reading recommendation, Sundiata : An epic of old Mali by Djibril Tamsir Niane ( 1965 )
Adama Keïta
( she / her ) Founder and Curator of Programs
Adama Keïta is an Indo-Guadeloupean, Martinican and Senegalese curator, writer, educator, experimental movie maker and researcher raised in Iüanakaéra (Martinique). She graduated from a Master's degree in Critical Studies at Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Her thesis approaches Martinican creole , or Palé Matinitjé, as a multi-layered practice that creates tools for liberation, enabling spatial re-appropriation, reclaiming Afro-Martinican presence, and emphasizing cultural representation. In her thesis, Martinican creole is explored as a tool for resistance in correlation with the concept of linguistic cannibalism within musico-choreographic practices such as bèlè.
In April 2024, Adama Keïta has been a guest teacher at the Fine Art School of Paris, and more specifically for Julien Creuzet’s students. Since 2025 she’s part of the international committee of the Black Civilization Museum in Dakar (Sénégal).
She is interested and involved in education in different forms and finds nuances with her research practice with active involvement in collective/societal-driven projects. Keïta’s work is mostly informed by Caribbean and African thinking, intersectional afrocentric canon and non-westerns forms of pedagogy. She draws her curatorial practice; which blends research, historical phenomena with art and pedagogy; as a way to (re)claim black presence and narratives in (pre) modernity.
From a curatorial spectrum, she specializes in sound, architecture, sculpture, time-based art, educational spaces and performance art. Also, when it comes to writing, her practice is at the intersections of surrealism and responsiveness. Her published writings include texts, monographs and essays for : Johanna Mirabel, Minia Biabiany, Lucas Erin, Mehdi Gorbuz, FRAC Auvergne, Imane Farès Gallery, Bakwa Magazines (...) . She’s been Awarded for her various research-projects by Het Cultuur Fonds, Bekker La Bastide, AFK Amsterdam and more cently the Aimé Césaire Foundation. She is timelessly resting and blossoming between Dakar and Iüanakaéra (Martinique).
( she / her ) Founder and Curator of Programs
Adama Keïta is an Indo-Guadeloupean, Martinican and Senegalese curator, writer, educator, experimental movie maker and researcher raised in Iüanakaéra (Martinique). She graduated from a Master's degree in Critical Studies at Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Her thesis approaches Martinican creole , or Palé Matinitjé, as a multi-layered practice that creates tools for liberation, enabling spatial re-appropriation, reclaiming Afro-Martinican presence, and emphasizing cultural representation. In her thesis, Martinican creole is explored as a tool for resistance in correlation with the concept of linguistic cannibalism within musico-choreographic practices such as bèlè.
In April 2024, Adama Keïta has been a guest teacher at the Fine Art School of Paris, and more specifically for Julien Creuzet’s students. Since 2025 she’s part of the international committee of the Black Civilization Museum in Dakar (Sénégal).
She is interested and involved in education in different forms and finds nuances with her research practice with active involvement in collective/societal-driven projects. Keïta’s work is mostly informed by Caribbean and African thinking, intersectional afrocentric canon and non-westerns forms of pedagogy. She draws her curatorial practice; which blends research, historical phenomena with art and pedagogy; as a way to (re)claim black presence and narratives in (pre) modernity.
From a curatorial spectrum, she specializes in sound, architecture, sculpture, time-based art, educational spaces and performance art. Also, when it comes to writing, her practice is at the intersections of surrealism and responsiveness. Her published writings include texts, monographs and essays for : Johanna Mirabel, Minia Biabiany, Lucas Erin, Mehdi Gorbuz, FRAC Auvergne, Imane Farès Gallery, Bakwa Magazines (...) . She’s been Awarded for her various research-projects by Het Cultuur Fonds, Bekker La Bastide, AFK Amsterdam and more cently the Aimé Césaire Foundation. She is timelessly resting and blossoming between Dakar and Iüanakaéra (Martinique).
Henrique J. Paris
( he / him ) Spatial Practices
( he / him ) Spatial Practices
Henrique J. Paris is an Angolan artist-researcher, graduated in Philosophy and currently completing a postgraduate degree in Architecture at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. His artistic practice dissects philosophical, scenographic, and architectural frameworks, examining enacted modes of power, moral codes, anticolonial praxis and Christian discipleship. J. Paris has explored these themes through image-making, multimedia installations, sound-oriented performance and cultural production; as tools of contestation, re-memory, and testimony.
His ongoing research explores choreographies of knowledge (re)production, and since his 2019 solo exhibition Home Is Where The Body Isn’t. he has focused on historiographic practices, evolving semantics of belonging and reinstitution.
Previous projects include Proyecto de Movilidad Panamá-Angola-Portugal with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) Panama, Álbuns de Família at the Padrão dos Descobrimentos in Lisbon, Body as Testimony with Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), Field Notes with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Family Lines with the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin.
( she / they ) Programs Coordinator and Liaison
Noëlle Maltet is a Martinican and Swiss student/researcher based in Switzerland, they completed a degree in Art History and Media Studies; with a focus on the Black Atlantic and anticolonial practices. They’re interested in (re)grasping of meanings through poetic transgressions (perceiving both the material and what transcends it), entanglements of the world, and the creation of spaces for empathy within them. They go to the forest often and are beginning to try at sustainable vegetable and fruit growing and harvesting.
With Fabienne Schoch and Jérôme Spira as collective '<3' Noëlle is organizing performances related to sound, understanding sound and listening practices as tools to be together and work against systemic oppression, primarily working with those who are structurally discriminated against and for grounding their voices.
Recently, they have been engaged in organizing the screening of Alain Kassanda's film Coconut Head Generation with Jérôme Spira as 'adozenroses', in the presence of Kassanda, followed by a discussion in Basel; where they plan to continue with further film screenings and discussions.
( she/her) Digital Archivist and Researcher
Deanna Nelson-Mckie is a Jamaican researcher, multidisciplinary artist and creator of Visions of Blackness - earning a degree in Textile Design from Central Saint Martins. Deanna’s focus within her research and artistic work is in pursuing the history of the black diaspora - specifically the history of the Caribbean. As well as the rarer global history, connections, ancient practices of the black diaspora as well as black diasporic / scholar theory.
Visions of Blackness is an archival site showcasing multiple resources and archives of black subject matters such as: African and Caribbean history, black art, African and Caribbean language, black presence in Europe as well as essays, pdf books, physical packages, research services and more.
( she/her ) Curator of Programs
Amouraé Bhola-Chin is a researcher and self-taught curator of Grenadian, Bajan, and Jamaican heritage holding a BA in History with Creative Writing, currently completing a sociological degree at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Driven by a long-time interest in re-memory, family archives, and place, Amouraé's practice navigates the politics of identities (of landscapes and people) in the afterlives of slavery via assemblage. Through programming, facilitation, creative practice, and writing, she works to re-present colonial entanglements, exploring the fragmentations resulting from absences and erasure in the diasporic imagination. In doing so, her curatorial practice responds to slow, care-oriented ways of thinking, looking to intergenerational dialogue and homeplaces as sites of affect.
Amouraé was commissioned as the Guest Curator for International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition 2025 in collaboration with Royal Museums Greenwich. Her archival research and poetry was showcased in The London Archives' year-long 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition (2023-24) as part of her work with Mapping Black London, who acted as Lead Partner for the show. Her arts-based research has featured in displays, as well as exhibits at the V&A Museum (2023), MAIA (2024), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (2025), and Architecture Fringe (2025).
© Nianiba, 2026
Website by Denise Santos