Sonya Lindfors is a Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and the founder and artistic director of
the UrbanApa community. She has a diverse dance background ranging from contemporary dance to street dance. Lindfors also works as a facilitator, community organizer and educator.
She received her MA in choreography from the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2013. Lindfors is a founding member and the artistic director of UrbanApa, an interdisciplinary and counter-hegemonic arts community that provides a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices. UrbanApa organizes workshops, festivals, labs, mentoring and publications, among other initiatives.
Lindfors creates both her own and collaborative projects, including performances, curated programs and performative actions. Her works have been presented and supported by venues and festivals such as Beursschouwburg, Kampnagel, Spring Utrecht, CODA Festival, Black Box Theater Oslo and Zodiak – Centre for New Dance. She is also a member of the Miracle Workers Collective, which represented Finland at the 58th Venice Art Biennale.
Her recent works include Living in Color / In Living Color (2025), One Drop (2023), something like this (2023) and camouflage (2021). These works center themes such as Blackness and Black body politics, representation and power structures, speculative futurities and decolonial dreaming practices. More broadly, Lindfors divides her time between her own artistic work, teaching, and her role as UrbanApa’s artistic director. In all her positions, she aims to build and facilitate anti-racist and feminist platforms—spaces where a festival, performance, publication or workshop can function as a site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.
Lindfors has been recognized with several awards, including the Finnish State Award for Public
Information (2022) and the international Live Art Anti Prize (2018).
www.sonyalindfors.com