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wãni LeFrère
wãni LeFrère is a Congolese-New Zealander writer, visual storyteller as well as an award-winning performance artist and poet. wãni spent his formative years as an athlete most known for playing basketball. He picked up a pen, a mic and a camera at 22 as a way to kill time after sustaining an injury that left him away from the court for over a year, but after discovering his deep affinity to the Arts, he has not looked back since. His first solo performance work was nominated for two Greenroom Awards in 2017, winning best performance. In the same year, he also exhibited his first visual works for RACE at the Wyndham Gallery, won a Grand Slam for Poetry his first year competing, as well as exhibited his first photographic solo work in Footscray. Ever since, wãni has gone on to win the Victorian Poetry Slam; coached the first ever Australia Poetry Slam team in Chicago; won the 2019 Wyndham Art Prize for his video work; the Arts House Evolution Award for his theatre work ‘jana’; and most recently he became the national champion at the Australian Poetry Slam competition in Sydney. As a first-generation Congolese-New Zealander, wãni grew up with a deep interest in social structures, identity as well as collective Bla(c)k healing. His body of work is illustrative of his commitment to his pursuit of vital questions pertaining to Africans, Blackness and the re-imagination of spaces. He received his master’s in Arts and Community Practice (Honours) at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Monash University. wãni along with Pauline Vetuna co-founded ‘Let’s Talk’, an ongoing media, art and conversation project exploring anti-Bla(c)kness in the Oceanic region and its complex intersections with other forms of systemic oppressions. He was also instrumental in organizing ‘we must stand together’, a justice forum in Melbourne in response to the crisis surrounding the African communities and the so-called ‘African Gangs’ by bringing together NGOs, community legal centres, social service organizations as well as community members and activists. He is currently based in Melbourne.