FRESH Festival
Jan 7, 2019 thru Jan 24, 2019
NAKA hosts Deaf Culture - Accessibility + Equity
with Antoine Hunter + Ayisha Knight-Shaw
Ki in 3D
Deaf culture has been historically overlooked, colonized and oppressed. Ki in 3D explores the life energy and presentation of Deaf culture to break through those barriers and spread awareness to society. Three Deaf performers: Ayisha Knight-Shaw, Antoine Hunter and Zahna Simon will be sharing their art through the visual language-American Sign Language also juxtaposed as a three dimensional language experience.
Performances and discussion with the artists who will be making a new collaborative work:
Ayisha Knight-Shaw
Antoine Hunter & Zahna Simon
A Bay Area native, Antoine Hunter is an award-winning internationally known African-American Deaf choreographer, dancer, instructor, speaker and Deaf advocate who performed throughout the Bay Area and the world including Europe, Africa and South America.
Ayisha Knight-Shaw is a Deaf multimedia artist, poet, educator and Reiki Master Teacher. The daughter of a White Jewish mother and Black Cherokee father, she was raised by her mother in an ethnically diverse community of poets, painters, sculptors, photographers and storytellers who taught her that creating and sharing art is as much a political act as a thing of beauty. As a Deaf photographer, she loves to focus on hands, eyes, facial expressions, and quirky subjects not typically seen in mainstream media. Her interests in photography began at age 13, and has evolved over the years. Shaped by her life as a Deaf woman in California, Washington D.C, MA, as well as visits to Cuba, Mexico City, and Oaxaca have given her an opportunity to create a tapestry of many cultures in her work. Past solo and shared photo exhibits have been showcased at Java Joes Café, The Meeting Place, Very Special Arts Boston, Club Passim, Boston Public Library, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Salem Access TV, Espresso Royale Café, Two Dogs Working, Galant Gallery, North Shore Career Center, Deaf Expo, Disability Expo, Maine Deaf Expo, and Dorian’s in Provincetown, MA.
A San Francisco native and Deaf from birth, Ms Zahna Simon is a professional dancer, chemist, avid health nutritionist, researcher, ASL performance consultant, Deaf advocate and Deaf interpreter. She received her BS in Chemistry and a BFA in Dance Performance. She is a former chemist by day at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and dancer by night at various Dance companies in San Diego including being featured in KPBS TV and Radio special "Deaf Dancer Performs in Trolley Dances. Ms Zahna is the Assistant Director for both Urban Jazz Dance Company and the Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival under Antoine Hunter, Founder and Director and a full time office manager at a small Fiduciary Office in San Francisco.