Barak adé Soleil

Barak ade Soleil looking toward his shoulder and dancing with his arms lifted and bent at about shoulder height and in black and white
Visiting Artist

Barak adé Soleil (he/they) has been part of the contemporary art scene since 1991. A progressive artist whose work speaks to the expanse of Blackness as it intersects with disability, neurodiversity and queerness, adé Soleil moves fluidly between creating, curating and supporting performance and visual art. adé Soleil is founder of D UNDERBELLY, an interdisciplinary network of artists of color, and recipient of the prestigious Katherine Dunham Choreography Award, given by New York’s AUDELCO for Excellence in Black Theatre. Other acknowledgements for creative work include a 3Arts Foundation Award (2016), a 3Arts Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2017) and Art Matters Foundation Award (2017 and 2020). Presentations include “from here to there” for the 2018 exhibition Chicago Disability Activism, Arts and Design: 1970s to Today at Gallery 400 at University of Illinois Chicago and a series of movements for both the 2018 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto, and VAE Raleigh’s Everyday series at Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North Carolina. At 205 Hudson Street Gallery, New York, the work “markings” premiered as part of the 2019 group exhibition Refiguring The Future. 

Internationally, adé Soleil has served as inaugural faculty for the 2021 Wildseed Centre for Arts & Activism Fellowship in Toronto; developed creative communal work at Montréal Arts Interculturels; co-curated The TALK for the Prismatic Arts Festival in Ottawa; and presented at the UK symposium New Possibilities for Performance in Birmingham, UK. Currently, adé Soleil is the inaugural Embodied Thinker in Residence for Candoco Dance Company in London, and mentors for the PEERS exchange program through Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.

Photo by Erika DuFour