‍ Image: Nectar by Xaviera Simmons (cropped).

Who decides what stories from the Black Nordic experience are worth preserving? Who has the authority to collect, interpret and narrate Black Nordic history? And what does it mean to build archives that centre Black voices, perspectives and epistemologies rather than simply adding them to existing structures?

This panel brings together Black archivists, scholars and community organisers from Sweden and Norway who are actively constructing new infrastructures for Black Nordic memory. They are: Rosel Jackson Stern, co-editor of Black Archives Sweden’s publicationThe Family Archives; Yacouba Cisse, founder of the Afrikanere i Norge (AFRIN) archive and Dr Michelle Tisdel, Research Librarian at the National Library of Norway. Their work challenges the institutional logics that have historically excluded, marginalised or misrepresented Black lives in the Nordic region. They are not asking for inclusion in archives that were never built for them—they are building their own.

Panel: Who Owns Black Nordic History?

Setting the stage for the panel, curator Savannah Wood presents her work on Afro Archives, a project documenting over 130 years of Black Afro-American visual history and walks us through the politics, labour and ethics of building an archive of this scale - what gets preserved, what gets left out, and who gets to decide. After the panel, artist Xaviera Simmons unpacks her artistic approaches to working with archival material and the questions that emerge when historical documents enter contemporary discourse. Her talk considers the risks and rewards of creating anew in the present.

Date: 12 November 2026
Time: 17:00-20:00

Venue:
Helsinki Central Library Oodi
Töölönlahdenkatu 4
00100 Helsinki, Finland

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  • Yacouba Cisse is the founder of AFRIN Archives based in Norway. It is a specialised historical archive project dedicated to documenting the history and experiences of people of African descent, particularly focusing on the African diaspora in Norway and the broader Nordic region.

  • Rosel Jackson Stern is a writer, editor and painter based in Stockholm. Their artistic practice puts spirits onto canvas using black archival images from Sweden and beyond, exhibiting at leading arts institutions. 

    They have been working as a journalist since 2019, publishing stories, features and editorial content with the Guardian, gal-dem and the Gay Times. Rosel is passionate about using creativity to imagine new worlds through ancestral lineage.

  • Savannah Wood is an artist and the Executive Director of Afro Charities, Inc. Afro Charities stewards the archives of the 133-year-old AFRO American Newspapers — a business Savannah's great-great-grandparents founded in 1892. Since 2019, Wood has shepherded Afro Charities through a period of historic growth, and in early 2027, the organization will open the Martha E. Murphy Research Institute in Baltimore — a public research center dedicated to the AFRO's extensive archives. Like four generations before her, Savannah lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing and preserving Black histories.

  • Xaviera Simmons’ critically acclaimed sweeping art practice includes photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text, installation and performance. She is also an esteemed writer, lecturer and editor. Her work engages the formal histories of art through her studio's expansive use of materials. The work’s themes are often rooted in both aesthetic and formal inquiries and in the construction of landscape, language and image.

    Image: Jasmine Clarke

  • Dr Michelle Tisdel holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University (2006). Her research interests include cultural policy, heritage production, museums, material culture, and Afro-Cuban religions, among others. Tisdel resides in Oslo, Norway and has worked as a research librarian at the National Library of Norway since 2008. She was a member of the academic committee for cultural heritage preservation of Arts Council Norway (2009-2011) and has been a board member of the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History since 2008.