Student profile

Ra'anaa Yaminah Ekundayo

Faculty

Program

Ra’anaa Yaminah Ekundayo is a Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, QC)-based emerging multimedia visual activist scholar. Their work explores the intersection of art and activism, particularly contemplating the entanglement of Black identity, community, and futurity. Co-founder and Chair of Black Lives Matter Sudbury, Ra’anaa strives to actively decolonize every facet of their life, supporting calls to defund the police, abolish the prison industrial complex, and for liberation in our lifetime.

A cultural curator, Ra’anaa works with various communities and mediums, exploring radical love, self-care, and joy as an act of resistance and means of liberation. Most recently, they curated Love is the Antidote (Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism, 2024) and Effervescence (Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, 2025). Since 2018, they have worked alongside Up Here: Urban Arts Festival, supporting the works of national and international installation and mural artists. Ra’anaa’s written work is featured in A Thousand Tiny Awakenings (Latitude 46, 2025), Queer Country Crossroads (Caitlin Press, 2025), and as co-editor of Free to Be More: Creative Activism in the Era of Black Lives Matter (University of Regina Press, 2026).

They produced the award-winning short documentary, Collective Resistance (2023), and are a co-creative lead, writer, and actor for the forthcoming short film, Can You Feel It Now (2025). Ra’anaa was a 2022 STEPS Public Art CreateSpace Artist-in-Residence, a 2022-23 Barry Pashak Social Justice Graduate Fellow, and a 2023-24 Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism Black Arts Fellow. They hold a master’s degree in architecture and are currently pursuing their SSHRC-funded doctorate in art history at Concordia University, exploring the emergence of Black activist public art in N’Swakamok (Sudbury, ON). A LEGO lover and world-builder at heart, Ra’anaa believes in accessible art that dreams, disrupts, and invites us all to imagine new worlds.

We’re not free until we’re all free.

Working Thesis Title: Black (Up) Rising: The Legacy of Afro Diasporic Arts in N’Swakamok

Supervisors: Dr. Balbir Singh & Dr. Joana Joachim

Research Interests:

Art & Activism
Black Studies
Afrofuturism
Public Art
Architectural Design
Socio-Political Arts

Teaching:

Winter 2023 - ARCH-2036EL: Art & Architecture in Canada, McEwen School of Architecture, Sudbury, ON

Teaching Assistantship:

Fall 2022 - ARTH 379: Postcolonial Theory in Art History, Dr. Reilly Bishop-Stall

Research Assistantship:

Fall 2023-Present - Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware (McMaster University), The Art of Black Activism: Black Cultural Politics in Northern Turtle Island 2020-Present
Fall 2021-Spring 2022 - Dr. Alice Jim, Afrofuturism & Black Lives Matter Project (ABLM)

Publications:

Ekundayo, Ra’anaa Yaminah, Syrus Marcus Ware, and d’bi young anitafrika, Ed’s. Free to Be More: Creative Activism in the Era of Black Lives Matter.Regina, SK: University of Regina Press, Forthcoming 2026.
Ekundayo, Ra’anaa Yaminah. “The City I Call Home.” In Queer Country Crossroads, edited by Mabe Kyle. Qualicum Beach, BC: Caitlin Press, Forthcoming 2025.
Ekundayo, Ra’anaa Yaminah. “28 Days of Compassion” and “The Dragon.” Poems. In A Thousand Tiny Awakenings: An Anthology, edited by Connor Lafortune and Lindsay Mathew. Sudbury, ON: Latitude 46 Publishing, April 2025.
Ekundayo (credited Brown), Ra’anaa. [Untitled] Reviewed Work: “As We Rise: Photogrpahy from the Black Atlantic: Selections from the Wedge Collection” by Teju Cole, Liz Ikiriko, Mark Sealy, et al. RACAR - salt. For the presentation of Black diasporic visual histories 47, no. 2 (2022): 117-119.
Ekundayo (credited Yaminah), Ra’anaa. “The Mirror.” Poem. In Open Hearts: Community-Arts Zine. Vol. 1. Sudbury (ON): 2022.

Conferences:

“Beyond Burnout: Rest Resistance and Radical Boundaries.” “Femme” Bodies in Academia: Politics, Productivity, and Period Justice Symposium, Independent Concordia University Student Conference. Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, QC), March 24, 2025.
“Unaddressed Identities: Navigating Socio-Political Intersections in Architectural Education.” Care, Restoration, and Redress in the Built Environment, Society for the Study of Architecture (SSAC). Canadian Architecture in the Classroom, Panel Discussion. May 23, 2024.
“Afro-Renaissance: The Rise of Black Activist Public Art in N’Swakamok.” Reframe, Reclaim, Resist, Art History Graduate Student Association (AHGSA) Conference. RESIST, Panel Discussion. February 17, 2024.
“Radical Contemporary Visual Culture.” Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC). Afrofuturism, Black Geographies, and Storytelling in Black Artistic Scholarship, Panel Discussion. October 20, 2023.
“Decolonizing, Dismantling, and Demystifying Design.” The Canadian Architecture Forums on Education, The Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture. Panel Discussion. May 27, 2022.

Exhibitions:

Home is Where? Effervescence - Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, N’Swakamok (Sudbury, ON), 2025.
Chrysalis, Love is the Antidote - Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism, Tkaronto (Toronto, ON), 2024
elemental, Looking In / Looking Out - FOFA Gallery, Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, QC), Les courants - Armand-Bombardier Park, Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, QC), Projet: Projections - Galerie de Nouvel-Ontario, N’Swakamok (Sudbury, ON), 2023

Website: