Gasp, Growl, Grunt, Sign, Yawn

Performances and spoken word with Rashed Aqrabawi, Olivia Douglass and Raymond E. Slacker.

Through readings and performance, this event will bring together writers and performers whose practice engages with language, memory and lived experience.

Exploring themes that permeate Karimah Ashadu’s ongoing exhibition, Tendered, at Camden Art Centre – including labour, masculinity, intimacy, migration and belonging – the event will create an intimate dialogue between voice, body and the social worlds that shape them.

Co-organised by Cat Feliciano.

Rashed Aqrabawi is a writer living in London. His work has been published in BOMB, The Poetry Review, the Los Angeles Review and more. He is the winner of the 2024 BOMB Poetry Prize. He was born in Amman.

Olivia Douglass is a British-Nigerian writer, poet and artist. They are the winner of The Guardian and 4th Estate 4thWrite Prize 2022 with their short story Ink. They are the author of two poetry pamphlets, Unruly Blood (2024, Little Betty Press) and Slow Tongue (2018). Olivia debuted their poetic performance project Ordinary Dreams at the Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall in 2024, and they were shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize 2020. A Barbican Young Poets alumni, their writing has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Montez Press, National Poetry Library, bathmagg, and Nothing Personal, MacGuffin. Olivia have exhibited work internationally at galleries and institutions including Galleria Duarte Sequeira (Portugal), Passa Porta Festival (Brussels), Nogueras Blanchard Gallery (Madrid) and Kunsthall Stavanger (Norway). Olivia has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford, and is currently working on their debut novel.

Raymond E. Slacker is a writer and editor working across fiction, theory, and drama. His work has appeared in various arts publications including Frieze and Observer(NY). He runs queer bookshop and small press Stretch Books, which hosts the reading series G String Theory. Slacker also works in editorial at an independent Black press and will, in the spring, complete his Masters of Research in Art Theory & Philosophy at Central Saint Martins.

Cat Feliciano is a British-Portuguese writer and artist who works between performance, text, video and photography, with special focus on the relationships between these forms. Her practice acutely mines the intimate, physical and psychological experience of loss in her narrative-based work. With presentation at Notes.Journal, Mimosa House, One In The Other Camden Art Centre, The British Museum, Subtexts and G-String Theory. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen Mary University London.