Sonya Lindfors

Sonya Lindfors (1985) is a Cameroonian – Finnish choreographer and artistic director that also works with facilitating, community organizing and education. In 2013 she received a MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki.  

She is the founding member and Artistic Director of UrbanApa, an inter-disciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices. UrbanApa facilitates  workshops, festivals, labs, mentoring and publications among other things.

Lindfors makes her own and collaborative works such as performances, curated programs and performative actions. Her performance works have been shown and supported by Beursschouwburg, Kampnagel, Spring Utrecht, CODA – festival, Black Box Theater Oslo, Zodiak – Centre for New Dance among others. She is a member of Miracle Workers Collective that represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Lindfors’s recent works We Should All Be Dreaming, camouflage (2021), Soft Variations Online (2020) centralize questions around Blackness and Black body politics, representation and power structures, speculative futurieties and decolonial dreaming practices. On a larger scale Lindfors’s time is divided between her own artistic work , educational work and working as the artistic director of UrbanApa. In all her positions she pursues creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, a performance, a publication or a workshop can operate as the site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.

Lindfors has been awarded with several prizes, the latest of which being the international Live art Anti Prize 2018. During the season 2017 – 2018 Lindfors was the house choreographer for Zodiak – center for new dance.