Black femme futurity

Soraya Jean-Louis is a Haitian-born, Harlem and Brooklyn-raised mixed-media queer womanist artist conjurer and healer currently living and loving in New Orleans. Her deep love of Black women and families, motherhood, nature, wildcrafting, Black Feminist Futurisms, comics/graphic novels and the African Diaspora are central themes in her work. Soraya’s work as an organizer, mentor, counselor, doula, teaching artist, and medical anthropologist focusing on women’s health and African folklore strengthen her commitment to resisting oppression and facilitating healing through imaginative creative/art activism.

Soraya has participated in several group exhibits in various New Orleans cultural institutions including: Mckenna Museum of African American Art, New Orleans African American Museum, The JuJu Bag, Antenna Gallery, The Jazz and Heritage Gallery, and a solo show at Café Rose NiCaud and Backatown Coffee Parlor. Her works have been used in zines, books, and promotional materials such as M Archive: After the End of the World by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs; Secret Rivers: Domestic Violence Zine; Near Kin: A collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler; Mixed Company, a collection of literary fiction and visual art; and was the poster creator for Audre Lorde Days at Tulane, 2013–2017.

Soraya is the co-founder of Wildseeds: New Orleans Octavia Butler Emergent Strategy Collective. Wildseeds’s work, steeped in Black feminist traditions of survival and healing, engages Octavia Butler and other speculative/sci-fi and fantastical authors as resources for social change. She is currently working with various community organizations, sharing her skills as a dedicated and seasoned teaching artist and facilitating her own series of creative playshops while enjoying her beautiful family. Soraya is constantly imagining and creating new work and was awarded the Alternate Roots Visual Scholars grant in 2014. Most recently, Soraya was the creative facilitator, curator, and contributing artist for one of the largest public art exhibitions in New Orleans, Wildseeds “Sacred Space” at ExhibitBE, and co-organizer of the inaugural Black Futures Fest: A Celebration of the Black Fantastic in New Orleans, 2015.

Soraya’s Social Media: Visit the growing creative healin’ archives page on Instagram at: ancestralalchemyarts or request to follow her private page @ancestralthickums