TUNDE ADEFIOYE

Adeshola Adetunde Adefioye - you can call him Tunde – was born in Los Angeles (CA) as the son of a Nigerian father and an African-American mother. He ends up in Belgium in 2007 to start a PhD in chemo-informatics at the university of Leuven.

Besides that, Tunde loses his heart to poetry, spoken word and slam. In Leuven, he founds a poetry group with local and international students. Together, their aim is to make young people with limited access warm to culture and literature. In 2009, the organisation Urban Woorden emerges from this group - a success story that is awarded the Cultural Prize for cultural education of the Flemish Government in 2013.

In April 2016, Tunde starts working as a city dramaturge and member of the artistic team of KVS, under the direction of Michael De Cock. As a dramaturge, he is involved in Sachli Gholamalizads’ performances (Not) My Paradise and Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, he assists in SLOW #01 and #02, and, together with his colleague Kristin Rogghe, he takes on the dramaturgy for Malcolm X, a play by Jr.cE.sAr.

In 2017, Tunde, in collaboration with the Warrior Poets, curates Beyond the Binary: an evening programme dealing with the intersection between queer identity, ethnicity and gender. And in the season 2018-2019, he is one of the founders of the successful participatory project Seniorenslam: a series of workshops for seniors from different retirement homes in and around Brussels and Leuven, who perform a fantastic evening full of slam poetry and spoken word together - in collaboration with Artforum/Urban Woorden and coordinated by the slam poet Ms Elli.

Since 2017, Tunde gives lectures and speeches, a.o. a series of guest lectures for LUCA Leuven, a keynote speech at the plenary meeting op de plenaire meeting of IETM 2018 in Porto and a keynote at the Wales Arts International Conference. In season 2019-2020, Tunde will guide SLOW#05 Queer Courage, together with the artists of Haven for Artists from Lebanon and their artistic director Dayna Ash.

PHOTOS (high-res)   
(high-res images which you can use free of charge with attribution)

Performances by Tunde Adefioye