Candice Nembhard

Candice Nembhard (okcandice) is a writer, artist-curator, poet and musician between Birmingham and Berlin.

“Some of the questions and ideas I’m asking of the visual arts sector currently include: how can we eradicate the need for diversity and inclusion roles, instead holding to account those maintaining the working pyramid structure that often excludes Black/Global Majority and disabled candidates from senior roles? How do we foster, finance and support long-term alternate routes into visual arts and curatorial practice other than art school? How do we create more project spaces and equitable ownership of buildings and lands to ensure curators and artists alike have access to discursive and creative spaces? Where are the spaces for Black curators to create and produce exhibitions/research outside of race and diversity programmes?”

Their multi-disciplinary practice is explained as «i’m working on it», exploring methodologies of grief, love, queering sound, and oration in West Indian cultures through the production and preservation of archival materials.  

Candice is a co-founding member of the collective poet & prophetess and founder of the queer film series ALL FRUITS RIPE. They previously worked as a co-producer for The R.A.P Party Berlin. They currently maintain the digital project okcandice archive, host the experimental broadcast Bedtime Stories on Cashmere Radio and audio/research project Must Be The Music on Refuge Worldwide. 

Curatorial projects include Blood & Fire: Our Journey Through Vanley Burke’s History, Soho House Birmingham (2022), Portals, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2021) and okcandice archive (2012—) alongside creative commissions for Birmingham Museums Trust, British Council Germany, BOZAR Brussels, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Film and Video Umbrella, Hebbel Am Ufer Theatre, Kunstverein Hamburg, Literarisches Colloquium, and Savvy Contemporary.

Image by Katrina Singleton