About Kiing Curry –
Black Liberation, Ancestral Healing, and Decolonized Care
Water, Memory, and Ancestral Tech(know)logy
Water is memory. Water is ancient tech(know)logy.
I am the vessel—water flows within me—and my work is Reverse Osmo(cis): the undoing of empire, patriarchal colonialism, all the “isms” and phobias, and the white imagination imposed on African queer bodies—ultimately restoring all African bodies.
My artistic practice interrogates performance as a tool of dominant culture. Across acting, writing, directing, design, modeling, and visual art, I return the work to water ancestrally. Through me, it moves to the cloud and back down to The Watering W(hole)—a cycle of return, restoration, and homecoming.
Initiation by Water
Water has always marked my life.
Born with water in my lungs, my first days were spent in an incubator, tethered to machines, learning to breathe.
This was my first initiation as a child of Mami Wata.
My mother—knowingly or not—offered me to Mami Wata for safe passage, navigating ancestral fear of water. Colonizers contorted nature to meet their needs, but the tech(know)logy of water and earth remembered. The truth remains.
Restoring African Queer Embodiment
My work disrupts and heals ancestrally. It restores the embodied truth of a body, a thing, a people.
In Black queer America, the s(hell) we are taught to crave is manipulated by white power, cultural clout, and theft. Hollow, shiny, disconnected from memory. But touch the sand, feel the waves, and Mami Wata whispers: we have been here before. It is time to wake up.
African bodies have always been inherently quee(a)r in the face of imposed order. Nature is rarely linear. We are the earth’s original children—lines are for those without belonging. We belong. We have never been alone.
A Practice of Healing and Return
This work trains the body to turn inward during fear and crisis. It welcomes fractured selves, returning them to the w(hole). Ancestors and spirit transform “original sin” into fertile soil, oceans, and cosmos within us.
My life’s work restores African bodies to fullness, shedding the s(hells) survival required under colonial and anti-Black systems. Beneath those shells, protected by water, an ancestral flower blooms.
Foundational texts guiding my practice include The Spirit of Intimacy by Sobonfu Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Malidoma Patrice Somé, and Riotous Deathscapes by Hugo Ka Canham. Along with the Afrofuturism works of Octavia E. Butler, N.K. Jemisen, and Nnedi Okorafor.
My lens is a trans praxis because I seek to encounter what exists outside of binary constructs—not just another side of the same coin, but a new one entirely.
Community begins within—through intention, care, trial, error, and devotion.
I work with plant wellness, ritual, and fungi as technologies of healing and memory restoration. We are the tech(know)ology. I am the technology. Water moves through me—and now, it is time to return home.
Home feels impossible only because we were taught to forget it.
To be African. To be Black. To be inherently quee(a)r.
We dissolve colonial lines and restore community, care, and sovereignty.
About Kiing Curry
Kiing Curry is a multidisciplinary Afrikan artist, educator, and designer with over 20 years of experience across theatre, film, visual art, design, technology, and embodiment practices. Their work centers Black liberation, ancestral memory, and decolonized care.
Curry has collaborated with NPR, HuffPost, Bad Queers Podcast, Black Beauty School, Good Dye Young, Eloquii (Black Creators Project), and more.
They engage decolonized Afro hair practice, plant wellness, and jewelry design (Bead & Cowrie) as tools of sovereignty and protection—returning Black bodies to communal care and ancestral power.
In Summer 2026, Kiing Curry and their partner Siir Cole will launch The Lab: an innovative incubator exploring embodiment, community-building, restorative justice, and collective care.
