Shylah Hamilton-Touré

I am an artist and a strategist. I build decolonial systems. I make experimental films for people who love films and want to see art made by a Black woman who decenters colonialism in the work. I design video games that teach Black and Brown youth to code. And I co-founded and direct the Jambalaya Center for Ancient Mysteries and Sacred Arts in Guerneville, California — five acres of land, a 501(c)(3), governance built from scratch. The Center opened in March 2026.

Publishing and exhibiting under Shylah Hamilton, Shylah Pacheco Hamilton, and Shy Pacheco Hamilton. Shylah Hamilton-Touré since 2024.

My creative and scholarly practice is transdisciplinary. It spans experimental film, found footage assemblage, AI-generated imagery, ritual performance, installation, and 3D video game design. My intellectual foundation is anchored in Robert Farris Thompson's Flash of the Spirit, D. Scot Miller's Afrosurreal Manifesto, and the Afrosurrealist methodology further developed by Nettrice Gaskins and Kahlil Joseph.

I have been published in Sternberg Press, Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, and The Society for the Study of Southern Literature. My films have screened at DOK Leipzig, DMZ Docs, and It's All True. I have been a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Political Power Fellow and have held scholarly intensives in Brazil and Barcelona.

I teach at California College of the Arts and chaired the Critical Ethnic Studies program from Fall 2018 through Fall 2026 — the only Critical Ethnic Studies program housed in an art and design institution in the United States. Under that leadership: a 98% first-year retention rate, a 100% faculty promotion rate, the launch of a college-wide minor, and the expansion of the curriculum into a cross-divisional program. I am currently preparing for tenure review.

My work at the Jambalaya Center is a spirit-governed, land-rooted research and praxis site for African diasporic sacred traditions and Yoruba cosmology. I hold Aborisha lineage under Chief Iyanifa Luisah Teish. The Center holds four festivals a year on five acres in Guerneville and functions as an alternative institutional architecture for scholarly production and spatial justice ritual work across the African diaspora. For Center inquiries, write to info@jambalayacenter.org.

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