Niema Lightseed

Visit Artist Website

Niema “Lightseed” Wilson (she/her) is a poet and priestess of life dedicated to inviting personal and collective transformation. Niema belongs to art, to the tall trees and still-wild rivers, to the dandelion, lavender, and salmon. She belongs to the wisdom of the healing body, and to a liberated, creative, and interconnected future. She is originally from the lands of the Neshnabé people in what is now called Chicago, Illinois. Since 2013 she has been a grateful guest in the lands of the Tsinook, Multnomah, and Kalapuya people in so-called Portland, OR. Niema's paintings are intuitive and intentional, weaving prayers for healing into colorful abstract expressionist and magical realism visions, with an eye towards compelling composition and color harmony. An artist since childhood (BFA Theatre Performance, Roosevelt University, 2002) and a healing professional since 2004 (Hatha Yoga Teaching, Temple of Kriya Yoga, 2004; Massage Therapy, East West College of the Healing Arts, 2017), she writes and performs medicinal poetry, offers therapeutic bodywork and creativity coaching, teaches about the role of somatic awareness in the liberation process, creates community ceremonies, explores the relationship between gravity and social justice, and seeks the marrow of life through a variety of meditative and creative disciplines. She has created and taught a number of signature transformation processes, including forms of writing-as-healing-art called Medicinal Poetry and Disarming Our Language. As an animist, fat, neurodivergent, queer, Black cis-woman navigating the intersection of multiple forms of oppression while determinedly seeking the joy that is our true nature and living as art, she strives to be guided by the wisdom of her womanist ancestors to create spaces where the oppressive structures we have inherited can be transmuted and the work of seeing, accepting, and celebrating the fullness of the Earthling experience is possible.