BIO: Sandy Harry Ceesay (he/they) is a Swedish-Gambian interdisciplinary artists, writer and curator. Central to their artistic inquiry is the exploration of identity, memory, marginalization, and power, often approached through a queer and decolonial lens.

Originally graduating from Amsterdams University of the Arts as a dancer in 2020, their artistic practice has expanded to include several different mediums such as performance, painting, drawing, video and text. In 2022 they debuted with their first novel Kärlekens Exil (Love Exiled) with Albert Bonniers Förlag. They are currently working on their second novel, amongst other projects.

Towards a blazing sun


Day holds Night
holds Day again,

Night breaks Day.
Shadow appears out of light.

Day is not night, so where does the
shadow come from?

Here it is cold, we do not need
the past to tell us

our path forward. Light will guide us
Day knows its way around

this scorched earth. Fire only hurts when the flames
are not home. Does Night feel the stinging of light

every shadow cast by its body?

Then it was light,
Day again

and we are here.

...

After the day spent with Adam and their team in the studio, having seen an excerpt of their new work Dawn previous week, I type the words: Skinfaxi and Hrimfaxi in my search engine, having first confused the spelling, being led by one of google’s suggestions; I’m quickly led to the Wikipedia page on Norse mythology, which tells me they are the horses of the Gods Dagr (Day) and Nótt (Night) within the Norse cosmology. And their names meaning: Shining mane and Frost mane. Skinfaxi’s job is to pull the chariot across the sky, guiding the sun over the earth, while Hrimfaxi brings the much awaited cloak of night.

...

Already as I entered the studio where I saw the first excerpt, around 20 minutes of what came to be the full work that premiered in MDT (Stockholm, Sweden) on May 15th this year, and is now touring Europe. The presence of these horses and their potential power were swirling around the air, bodies of light, bodies of flesh and shadow all in one. Seid Tahir's practice, and in extension their work(s), carries the potential for transformation, not only of the body of the performer, but also the bodies of the viewers. Having worked with costume designer Isabelle Edi and their team on the furry knee-high Stay-up-hooves and pleated, dark denim miniskirt with matching halter top—they transform, physically with each crawling step, into the visually stunning creature able to harness the strength and resilience of each of the two horses, to create a new figuration; one that is neither light nor dark, day nor night, something in between.

...

The title Dawn relates to the specific moment of transformation, from night into morning, or first light. On our walk around Skeppsholmen, in preparation for this text, Adam told me about the specific cosmology that believes in a hand, or a God, that commands the sun. In Norse mythology it is the horses that work for the Gods, but in Seid Tahir's work, in this moment between night and day, Dawn is imagined as a
moment of break from the task of carrying the world on ones shoulder. Effectively giving way for new meaning production, imagery, poetry (with the help of light designer Jonathan Winbo, dramaturge Lydia Östberg Diakité, and sound designer
Tati Au Miel). By breaking the dynamics of labour and efficiency, letting the newly transformed creature rest, crawl, drool and dream, Seid Tahir allows for the hybrid’s own form to come into being, shielding this new life from the sometimes dark, sometimes overwhelmingly bright world. Inviting it to be seen and more importantly, experienced, by the viewers.

...

By activating the legend of these mythological horses, Seid Tahir not only re-imagines part of their own ancestry geographically specific to the Nordics, but also etches their own stories into the present, transforming the archive and stating as a queer person of Afro-Nordic descent: We are here, and these are our stories, look at their brilliance.