Johanne Affricot is an Italian-Haitian-Ghanaian independent cultural operator and curator, born and raised in Rome. She is the founder and artistic director of boutique media platform GRIOTmag and nomadic space SPAZIO GRIOT which—powered by an eponymous collective—platforms multidisciplinary experimentation, exploration and discussion through arts and culture. Driven by the need to create a space of representation that amplifies underrepresented and marginalised voices in the Italian and international artistic and socio-cultural landscape, she founded GRIOT in 2015. She is also a member of the GRIOT Collective, alongside writer, artist and music producer Celine Angbeletchy, known by the stage name of EHUA, and Eric Otieno Sumba, a writer, social theorist and critic.
She curated and realized:
- the short documentary series: The Expats. The Untold Stories of Black Italians Abroad (2016-2017) and Motherland > (2017 - present)—English;
- 2017, public program: Sangue Misto (Mixed blood): Sound, Identity, Representation, within the Jazz:Re:Found Festival (Turin);
- 2018-2019, Mirrors (as artistic director), a contemporary dance and video art performance designed for the Italia, Culture, Africa program of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (Rome, Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, Dakar);
- 2019, site specific reading performance and video-installation at a market hall in Rome: (Memorie) In Ascolto (Listening Memories) (1 – 2).
- 2020, online exhibition Der Greif: Guest Room: Johanne Affricot
- Affricot is one of the ten women selected by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs to represent Italian culture, creativity, and language around the world, and was featured in the video series Portraits of women on the online portal “Italiana” in 2021.
She wrote for Afropunk, Vice Italia and Artribune.
