News
Nayla Naoufal, new Artistic Director
We are therefore very happy to introduce you to Nayla Naoufal, who will have the heavy task of succeeding Khosro Berahmandi as artistic director of Festival Accès Asie. Nayla has already taken office this week and is operating a slow handover with Khosro ahead of his official departure in February.
Welcome home Nayla!
« Combining political engagement and poetry. Amplifying the voices and the experiences of artists from the Asian continent and its diaspora. Emphasizing listening, conversations and exchange. Caring for. Hosting. Connecting. This is the fantastic mandate of the organization I am very happily joining as an artistic director: Festival Accès Asie, so-called Canada’s longest continuously running festival that celebrates the practice of artists coming from Asia, from the shores of the Mediterranean to Japan and the Philippines, from Kazakhstan and Russia to India. »
– Nayla Naoufal
Born in Beirut, Nayla has worked as a journalist, art critic, cultural worker, administrator, researcher and teacher. She is particularly interested in justice, antiracism and decolonization in the arts sector. Nayla holds a PhD in environmental science (UQAM, 2012) and has collaborated with Indigenous and racialized artists in Canada, Lebanon, Norway, and other parts of the world, and artists and collectives working with environmental concepts-practices. Among others, Nayla was a program officer at the Canada Council for the Arts and, before that, in charge of artist support programs at the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels). She has published articles in diverse newspapers and magazines such as esse, Mouvement, Le Devoir, revue de théâtre Jeu, Black Box Teater publication (in Norway), Theater der Zeit (in Germany), and more.) She has collaborated with a diversity of organisations in the arts (FTA, Onishka productions, International theater festival in Oslo, Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault, Gallery Leonard Bina Ellen, Espace Go, etc.)
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