Woki N. Massaquoi.
I am Vai Kpa Mende.
My social practice traverses photography, painting, movement, and performance. Grounded in identity, sacred lineage, memory, and collective care, I explore Black life across time and spaces. Through these mediums, I tell stories that honor my ancestral roots, beauty, and the cultural continuities of the African diaspora.
My journey as a self-taught photographer began in 2008, when my father gifted me my first compact camera. Photography quickly became a vessel for understanding myself, community, and history. After reconsidering a move to California, I deepened my creative development by interning with Mobolaji Dawodu as an assistant fashion stylist and with Xango Republic. I later trained in the Meisner technique under Melvin Williams, performing at the Producers Club in NYC with Theater for a New Generation. My artistic practice also extends to dance, having toured nationally and internationally with Grammy-nominated Malian vocalist Awa Sangho for The Festival International Nuits d'Afrique, and to my painting exhibited in a group show with #DayOnesArt at Flux Factory in Queens, NY. I was also awarded the Black Utopian Fellowship, which supported the expansion of my interdisciplinary practice.
Since refocusing on photography in 2015, with a nudge from a master photographer, I photographed the first Sierra Leone Diaspora Investment Conference, which was an opportunity to connect my passion in a global diasporic exchange.
My art is an offering that honors the past, holds the present tenderly, and imagines a future sustained by communal care.