Studio A4 | Amina Seid Tahir & Adam Seid Tahir
Adam Seid Tahir (left) & Amina Seid Tahir (right). Photo by Sharrat Cherry
RESIDENCY: 28 July – 17 August 2025
Swedish-Eritrean artists and choreographers Amina Seid Tahir & Adam Seid Tahir are undergoing a production residency in Studio A4. They will research and produce a new body of work for a major institutional solo exhibition opening at Botkyrka Konsthall in 2025, called to excavate the sun. The show is based on their performance, several attempts at braiding my way home, which was created in 2021, exploring the concept of home from a queer and Afro-Nordic perspective.
When you have roots in multiple countries, and when family is a broader concept than biological family, what does home then mean? Through several attempts at braiding my way home, the Tahirs developed a redefinition of home as a verb. Home is made actively—an action, a state of being, an occurrence—rather than a term based on physical assets and ownership.
Over the years, they have developed strategies for creating a sense of home in an Afro-Nordic landscape through choreography, movement and sound. These strategies include braiding and weaving hair as an archival ritual and a movement score that transforms one’s skeletal structure according to one’s imagination. Their new exhibition launching in the Botkyrka Municipality—with elements that will become further mutable during a proceeding group show at Primary in Nottingham—will continue to work with the theme of home, but connected explicitly to the experience of darkness during the winter months in the Nordic region.
During the darkest months, people often spend more time alone indoors, becoming increasingly isolated from communal spaces and their communities. The Tahirs are curious to explore strategies for strengthening collectivity and emphasising the value of community in the darkness. How do we gather in the dark? For the exhibition, to excavate the sun (2026), they want to build a fictional world where the sun is located under the ground. It’s a world where one must work together to unearth the day, every day, where light and warmth cannot exist without collectivity.
Producers: Johnson & Bergsmark
Residency Curator (Primary): Jade Foster
The curator for this residency is expanding on their notion of ‘curatorial frequency’—looking at liveness in an exhibition context through their collaboration and sharing of practice with the artists.
Curatorial frequency is a way of articulating the physicality of curatorial practice when working with time-based media, including interdisciplinary approaches to dance and movement, performance art and sound, and discursive programming; this includes energy exchanges, transmission, movement and pace (literally and metaphorically). Through a residency format, this project expands on the idea that exhibitions are a live practice and considers how artists can be supported to enhance the interdependence between contemporary dance and visual art in the gallery.
Amina Seid Tahir & Adam Seid Tahir’s residency is part of Studio A4, a residency programme offering an uncommon opportunity for artists, particularly those based internationally, to conduct research in a studio, receive long-term curatorial support, develop new work in Nottingham, and work amongst resident artists at Primary.
Artist Biographies:
Amina Seid Tahir (she/her) is a Swedish/Eritrean artist working interdisciplinarily with choreography, installation, sound and social work. She works with imagination as a tool for black queer resistance and repair. Braiding together her interests in ancestral knowledge, oral traditions and myths, creating immersive fictional universes. These interests currently intersect through crafting watery practices of homemaking as well as sonic practices of resting. Taking shapes into rituals, lullabies, dream portals and spells. Seid Tahir has presented work in contexts including: Kunstenfestivaldesarts (BE), MDT (SE), Kampnagel Summer Festival (DE), Rakete Festival @ Tanzquartier (AT), New Sh*t @ Dansehallerne (DK), Emergentia (CH), Batard (BE), Botkyrka Konsthall (SE) and My Wild Flag (SE). Her work is grounded in community and would not be possible without the conversations or collaborations with her communities, including people as: Adam Seid Tahir, Ailin Mirlashari, Mini Davarasl, Rebecca Beyene, Aditi Jaganathan, Lina Alarabi, Nora Seid Tahir, Sara Rad, Dina Said and many many more.
Adam Seid Tahir (they/them) is a choreographer and creative technologist. Their two roles involve crafting performative work and designing/developing websites. These practices also merge and expand into writing texts, making video installations, 3D animation and crafting sensor-based instruments. Adam uses speculative imagination as a tool of resistance and centers their work around creating loud and immersive black queer fiction. They are interested in mythological figures, daydreaming and crafting affective machines. These interests often intersect through water, where they take the shape of sirens, waterfalls and submerged transatlantic communication cables. They have presented their work in contexts including: Kunstenfestivaldesarts (BE), MDT (SE), Kampnagel Summer Festival (DE), Rakete Festival @ Tanzquartier (AT), Emergentia (CH), Batard (BE) and My Wild Flag (SE). They have worked with other artists including: Amina Seid Tahir, Lydia Östberg Diakité and Meleat Fredriksson.