Meet the three artivists we can't wait to celebrate at this year's awards.
Trinity City Arts is thrilled to announce that we will honor Chakula Cha Jua, Ausettua Amor Amenkum and Walt Sandifer III with 2024 Trinity City Arts Artivist Awards.
L-R: Chakula Cha Jua, Ausettua Amor Amenkum, Walt Sandifer III
We created these awards to honor local artivism superheroes-- artists who use their art to fight for justice, celebrate community, and empower Louisianans to create the healthy world we want to live in.
The Artivism Awards will be presented on October 17th at Beanlandia from 6-9pm as part of a celebration that includes music by The Dusky Waters Band and food from some fabulous New Orleans restaurants. Please join us in this celebration by purchasing a ticket here!
Chakula Cha Jua is a legendary New Orleans actor, director, producer and theater educator. He began his theater career with the Free Southern Theater in the 1970s, and soon after created the Chakula Cha Jua Theater Company, which produced dozens of new and classic works by Black playwrights - including Ritual Murder by Tom Dent, We are the Suns (poetry by the Free Southern Theater), It Happened at the Hummingbird Lounge by Chakula Cha Jua and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. The Chakula Cha Jua created a dynamic community space for Black actors, theater designers and audience members for more than 30 years. Chakula has been honored with many awards, including the Mayor’s Arts Award, the Angola 3 Determination Award and the Big Chief Donald Harrison Excellence in Teaching Award.
Ausettua Amor Amenkum is a cultural advocate and educator, professor of African and Hip-Hop dance at Tulane University, Big Queen of the Washitaw Nation Black Masking Indians, Director of Kumbuka African Drum & Dance Collective, Vegan Chef of Soul Sisters, Acting President of New Orleans Black Mardi Gras Indian Cooperative, and Co-Chair of the Save Our Souls Coalition. For more than 20 years, she engaged incarcerated women with performance and spiritual arts for 20 years as Co-Director of the LCIW (Louisiana Correctional Institution for Women) Drama Club with Kathy Randels. Currently Ausettua is Co-Director of The Graduates, a formerly incarcerated women performance group. As Rauschenberg Fellows Arts as Activism Fellows (2016), The Graduates produced the Life Quilt, which featured 107 beaded names of women serving life sentences in Louisiana in 2016.
Walt Sandifer III is the Spy Boy of the Beautiful Creole Apache is a second-generation Masking Indian born into the Creole Wild West tribe in 1996. His father, Walter Sandifer Jr., also known as Big Chief Beautiful, masked as a Spy Boy for the Creole Wild West for over 20 years and introduced Walter to the sewing techniques when he was 11 years old. For the past 15 years, Walt has designed his Spy Boy suits to represent Louisiana’s sacred waterways. Spy Boy Walter has performed onstage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival numerous times, holds beading classes for youth, and teaches Masking drumming rhythms in local schools to preserve the unique culture and tradition of New Orleans, Louisiana.
We are incredibly honored to celebrate these fiercely talented culture bearers. Last year's party, which honored Denise Frazier, Antoine Pierce and Ayo Scott, was filled with love and inspiration. Please join us at this year’s event!
Get your ticket for this year's Artivist Awards here, and join us in honoring these incredible artivists. We can't wait to celebrate with you!
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