Spike Island is delighted to announce Asmaa Jama as the recipient of Spike Island Digital Commission for South West-based Artists. Jama will produce a new digital commission that will be presented on Spike Island’s website in autumn 2022.

Asmaa Jama is a Somali artist and poet based in Bristol. They are the co-founder of Dhaqan Collective, a feminist art collective of Somali women, centring the voices of women and elders, and privileging co-creation and collaboration. In 2021, Jama was shortlisted for the Brunel African Poetry Prize and the Wasafiri Writing Prize, and longlisted to the National Poetry Competition. Jama is a Cave Canem 2021 Fellow.

Jama’s work has been published in magazines and journals such as Poetry Review, The Good Journal, Ambit, Ballast and Magma and translated into French, German, Portuguese, Somali, Spanish and Swahili. Their writing has been commissioned by Arnolfini (Bristol), Hayward Gallery (London) and Ifa gallery (Brussels). As a film director, Asmaa was commissioned by BBC Arts to make the interactive film Before We Disappear (2021), and by Bristol Old Vic to make The Season of Burning Things (2021), which was screened at the 17^th Venice Biennale of Architecture (2021), as part of 100 Ways to say We. Both films were made with costume designer Gouled Ahmed, as part of an ongoing creative collaboration.