Artist's Bio

Nerima Makhondo (Xe/They), also known as ApodaSpark, is an any-media performance artist whose goal is to restore us to our Essential self in order to achieve a liberated future.

Rooted in their Banyala lineage from Western Kenya, Makhondo draws from East African performance traditions as living archives and portals of rememory (Toni Morrison). Merging ancestral knowledge with contemporary experience, xe's practice seeks to repair the fractures in self and community caused by colonialism's weapons: capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and cultural imperialism.

Makhondo's body of work functions as a living grimoire for self reclamation. They approach creation as ritual and research, a technology of living: a process of remembering the self, communing with ancestry, and pursuing freedom. Each medium acts as a talisman that activates fragments of memory toward restoration. Their work spans theatre performance, music, video work and digital collage.

Xe has shared this practice through the Creative Advocacy Practicum under the Creative Action Institute, facilitating youth performance projects across Kenya and Tanzania, and co-founding the Queer African Network, a digital home for queer Africans across the continent and diaspora. Both initiatives embody Makhondo's vision of liberation as something we live, make, and remember, together.

Currently, Makhondo is undertaking research in Bunyala, gathering oral histories and learning their mother tongue to deepen the ancestral grounding that shapes their work. Alongside this foundational work, they are developing 'Ap0d4l4r3,' an Afrofuturist visual EP that interrogates capitalism and reimagines our value beyond capital.