Lucía Mbomío is a television reporter of radio and press in Spain who has recorded in more than 30 countries.

She has also written two books, “Those who dared” and “Hija del camino”, the latter is in the process of becoming a series for Netflix and the former, a documentary.

Last year I met Lucia in Madrid, Spain to discuss her work.

Some topics we cover include:

• Black Excellence
• R&R
• Tapping in to vulnerability in creative work

You can view Part I of the conversation below. Part II will be available in the coming weeks.

-Adobuere E.

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Two major highlights of 2023

• Launching Black & Worldly
• Attending Art Basel Miami

Art Basel Miami 2023

I did my best to research black artists featured at Art Basel Miami 23’ and use my Type A abilities to organize the art fair map when I arrived. But alas, the fair is HUGE and I couldn’t find all of them.

Here are a few

• Ndidi Emefiele
• Kehinde Wiley
• Adrienne Elise Tarver
• Jean-Michel Basquiat
• Nina Chanel Abney
• Titus Kaphar
• Reginald O’Neal
• Dozie Kanu
• Hugo McCloud
• Alioune Diagne
• Joe Overstreet
• Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
• Arvie Smith
• Rick Lowe
• Ebony G. Patterson
• Whitfield Lovell
• Howardena Pindell
• Wangechi Mutu
• Amoako Boafo
• Sanaa Gateja
• Lavar Munroe
• Devin N. Morris
• Nickola Pottinger
• Texas Isaiah
• Azza El Siddique
• Maxwell Alexandre
• Alvaro Barrington
• Blessing Ngobeni
• Mary Lovelace O’Neal
• Kandis Williams
• Marc Padeu
• Lloyd Foster
• Mickalene Thomas
• Ja’Tovia Gary
• Eric N. Mack
• Jacob Lawrence
• Ed Bereal- Elizabeth Leach
• Vivian Browne
• Faith Ringold
• Tyler Balloon
• Fulton Leroy Washington

Another highlight of attending the fair was sitting in on the Conversations live event featuring Chance the Rapper. If you aren’t familiar with the work he’s doing in collaboration with global black artists, I highly recommend checking that out.

Black & Worldly has a new Tik Tok page too!

What I’m looking forward to in 2024:

• Connecting with new artists in the U.S. & countries I haven’t visited yet
• Growing Black & Worldly’s audience 
• Writing more articles for Substack 
• Visiting more global art fairs similar to Art Basel & Art Basel in other countries

Check back soon for more updates & check our socials for content like new conversations with artists etc.

Instagram

Tik Tok

Til next trip!

Adobuere E.

With the supportive cushion of the Berklee College of Music network, Erin, a native of Chicago, made her way through Madrid, Valencia and now Barcelona; finding community with like minded musicians and building a strong professional career for herself. 

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Erin is no novice in her professional worlds. She is a skilled interdisciplinary artist and certified Identity & Belonging coach with many years of experience. Erin can tell you what it means to search for value and community in the different music circles of Spain; how merely showing up won’t guarantee you admittance into those circles. Your own trial and error is required, along with a combination of patience, stick-to-itiveness and courage. 

Courage is an important factor here. Not everyone can move to a new country, far from their mother tongue and native teachings ready to re-commit themselves to their goals, year after year. Now after eleven years in Spain, Erin has cultivated a vibrant personal and professional life for herself in Spain. She can also switch in conversation from English to Spanish to Catalan and back again, seemingly effortlessly. Erin’s courage has paid off and she attributes some of this gumption to her ever unfolding understanding of neurodivergence. “The more that I’ve learned about neurodivergence and ways in which not having the formal diagnosis as a child may have limited me, I have to think about ways in which it also probably gave me wings. Some unidentified facet of my own neurodivergence is complete lack of spatial awareness in realms of fear”.

Another hurdle that comes with trying to “make it” as an artist in a foreign country is the challenge of finding a space to live authentically within your own culture and art disciplines; all the while hoping when new communities come to translate your work, it won’t become caricature. 

People other than the original artist will always put art work through their own lens to try and connect. So, learning how to authentically show up and participate in each community seems to be a skill that one must cultivate. Erin says there is a scene for everyone if you do some digging (specific to Madrid). And perhaps if you can’t find it, then you make your own. 

Everyone doesn’t find their way eventually. Erin explains, “The majority of, specifically black Americans, come to Spain and shrink into their own shell and people just don’t know who they are for awhile. They just stop speaking up about this or that…so you just withdraw and then people wanna put definitions on why you withdraw”. 

When I first met Erin after her performance at the Jamboree music club in Barcelona, I could tell she was in her element (well, one of them).  Her stunning voice and flute playing was easily the most captivating part of that night’s musical performance. I couldn’t have been the only audience member who felt this way. 

Erin’s commitment to living with authenticity is inspiring and surely, the communities she contributes to are much better for it.  

Erin recently launched For We: A Multidisciplinary Memoir Project. “The project documents a Black woman’s journey from growing up between the South Side and the surrounding suburbs of Chicago, to a fateful move abroad to Spain to discover her calling as a storyteller and community-builder through music, language and writing.”  The project is currently holding a fundraiser on Go Fund Me at https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-we-project. 

You can follow Erin’s instagram pages for updates: @erincorinedoesthings & @holamagnolia.identityworks 

Earlier this year I sat down with Erin to discuss her work. You can view the conversation below.

For all other Black & Worldly content, please follow our IG page:@blackandworldly 

After realizing that being a lawyer was not connecting to her values in the way she had hoped it would, Myriam turned to filmmaking and screenwriting, work that she once only considered as a side hustle. 

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Born and raised in Niger, and now living in France, Myriam was often told she didn’t look like a lawyer, but that she did look very much like an artist. Perhaps everyone knew something she hadn’t quite tapped into yet. 

Myriam’s journey into the arts has gone from curating talent shows for emerging artists in Paris, creating Culture Loft; a non profit association focusing on urban arts and diversity, graduating from Parisian filmmaking school Kourtrajmé, to her most recent work as writer and director of her short film Octagon. 

Octagon is a fictional film inspired by Myriam’s friend Djihene Abdelillah, a French North African world champion of grappling, a side of MMA (mixed martial arts). Myriam believed that her friend’s story was important and Djihene wanted to practice acting, so first they set boundaries around how to best share the story and then got to work. 

Played by Djihene, Octagon follows the main character Siham (which means arrow in Arabic) as she navigates the misogynistic world of MMA, in hopes of becoming a champion, all the while suffering from endometriosis.

Endometriosis has been classified as an invisible handicap. It is a chronic disease associated with severe, life-impacting pain during periods, sexual intercourse, bowel movements and/or urination, chronic pelvic pain, abdominal bloating, nausea, fatigue, and sometimes depression, anxiety, and infertility…There is currently no known cure (World Health Organization, 2023).  

Now that she has released the Octagon teaser into the world, Myriam wants to travel to the United States to interview promoters, fighters and others in the MMA industry, in hopes of nourishing the story.  

Creating value is top priority in Myriam’s new media arts career with stories like Octagon; stories that center around strong women and invisible handicaps, both things that she feels are important to highlight.

Speaking of strong (and incredibly talented) women, Myriam wants to take a page from great showrunners and directors like Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes, and Issa Rae who have created some of the most iconic, entertaining tv/film work in the past decade. It is not lost on her that there aren’t currently any French equivalents to the aforementioned black female directors, so Myriam intends to become one.

She looks up to these media moguls, but Myriam is also fearful of getting too formatted by following the usual directing manuals and what everyone else has already done. She wants to develop her already skillful writing practice, to be above average and through that resolve; find her distinct voice by making work that truly represents her. 

Although she may be out of the corporate world, now embracing storytelling and social justice, it feels important to note that Myriam doesn’t fully reject her past life as a lawyer. She says it has helped her to have discipline in writing. 

Taking that hard pivot in her career was an important step for Myriam so that she could explore more of what she truly feels passionate about. I, for one, am very excited to see what she does next.

-Adobuere E.

You can follow Myriam’s instagram page for updates: @myriam_cultureloft & to check out the teaser for Octagon. Her second instagram page is: @mixfactoryparis

Earlier this year I met Myriam in Paris to discuss her work. You can view the conversation below.

For all other Black & Worldly content, please follow our IG page: @blackandworldly 

Marina Santo wants to help you heal, through physical movement and specifically with dance. In her early years, training as a dancer, Marina was taught to compete and to compare. The limiting ideas of what modern dance should be didn’t leave her much room to feel authenticity within her life as a dancer. 

Now, after a long career of working with various communities throughout Spain (and otherwise), Marina has the space, means and financial support to direct her own project Más Allá de la Piel. The project which translates to ‘Beyond the Skin’ in English, is a tribute to racialized people who generally lack representation in Madrid, Spain. 

Marina has devoted her time, artistic passion and love of education to teaching dance in working class neighborhoods to those who are not dancers by trade. When she first started, she noticed that the older women in her classes had not only spent their lives feeling repressed in their bodies but had also put much of their energy towards mere survival and nothing more. Their dreams for anything including having an art career were diminished by oppressive conditioning. “If you can’t have pleasure with your own body, how are you going to dream? How are you going to follow your passion? Which passion? To pay the bills?” Marina asks. 

The world has evolved and perhaps things have gotten better with time. But Marina understands successfully pursuing a career in art is still no easy feat. Having a successful career in the arts is a privileged position that requires major financial support. It isn’t a coincidence that contemporary dance is very white, Marina reflects. If we are to have a conversation about representation and access in the art world, then we also have to talk about class structures as well. 

While Marina is the creator of Más Allá de la Piel and had the tough task of choosing four individuals for the project’s final presentation, she still sees herself as merely a facilitator of the magic that happens within the rehearsal room. She even hesitates to name the participants, “Movers, dancers, I don’t know…” she says.

One thing is for certain. This project is an exciting moment in Marina’s life as an artist. Never before has she had this kind of project support available to her, with the financial backing to be able to pay the project’s participants as well. The opportunity to create more representation for racialized communities of Madrid is an important one. Marina leans into it with eagerness and focus. 

In one corner of the rehearsal room for Más Allá de la Piel there is a small table with a few important items: Marina’s phone connected to the speaker for playing the music that guides the group, a lit candle carefully placed on a flower patterned fabric that has been folded into a neat square in the center of the table. The fabric also holds a pink lighter and a lone stick of palo santo incense. These items are simple and intentional; exuding care into the room. A care you can feel when you first meet Marina; she smiles easily, her energy is lightweight but steady. She facilitates the group within the rehearsal room but she does not bombard the participants with a rigid end goal. She allows them to search, look, breathe, freely wander and play, guided by the safe protection of her voice in the background. “Buen viaje!”, she says as she starts a new song on her playlist. “Have a good trip”.  She wants to meet everyone in the room where they are, to be in conversation and facilitate a mutual meeting point that feels not like an end but a fluid opening. 

Marina continues to have performances of Más Allá de la Piel throughout Madrid. Follow her Instagram page @soymarinasanto for updates.

Earlier this year I sat down with Marina to discuss her work. You can view the conversation here.

For all other Black & Worldly content, please follow our IG page: @blackandworldly