STANDING IN THE CRACKS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES 

We are deeply excited to welcome Ainslee Alem Robson  as a resident writer-director, media artist and cook at SAVVY Contemporary. Ainslees’s residency is the sixth within our  project Standing in the Cracks of Multiple Histories, which investigates the contours of the history of the United States as well as the hegemonic narratives that form and uphold it. Inviting a constellation of voices that emerge from its ruptures, Ainslee will join us to exchange around her practice.

Ainslee Alem Robson is an Ethiopian-American writer-director, media artist and cook who crafts emancipatory narratives and counterimaginings harnessing film, game engine technology, food, memory and archives as her ingredients. Refusing temporal linearity, Ainslee’s work speaks to the liminal spaces between Africa and its diasporas. Scrutinizing sites of erasure within hegemonic discourse, she aims to deconstruct hierarchies and colonial legacies. She crafts characters, worlds, and meals that center flavor, agency, complexity, and resistance. Robson has exhibited her film installation “Ferenj” in the “Guests From the Future” category at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Lesley Lokko. Amongst other art spaces her commissions and collaborations have been exhibited by MoMA, the New York Times, Ars Electronica, and Vellum LA. Her debut non-fiction work Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR (2020) premiered at Tribeca and was showcased at film festivals internationally. She has guest lectured at universities around the world including UCLA, the GSA in Johannesburg, MIT, Cornell, UCSD, NYU, and ZhDK. Robson is a former Sundance "Art of Practice" Fellow (2021), Sundance Humanities Sustainability Fellow (2022–23), co-recipient of the IDA Pare Lorentz grant and BPM PitchBlack grant. She participated in the 2025 cohort of Sankofa Film Institute’s “Around the Fire” screenwriting and directing lab led by Haile Gerima.