Lydia Östberg Diakité is an interdisciplinary artist working across choreography, performance, video, text, and installation. Her practice engages with intuitive knowledge alongside historical and contemporary understandings of power dynamics and politics of representation. Expressed through layered performative strategies, gestures, and imagery, their work explores the spaces between different understandings of bodies, focusing on what a body can hold and its potential for transformation. Based in Copenhagen, Diakité graduated from the Danish National School of Performing Arts in Dance and Choreography in 2017. Their work has been presented in a range of institutional and independent contexts, including Moderna Museet (Sthlm), Nikolaj Kunsthal (Cph) Berlinbiennalen 11 (Berlin), Impulstanz (Vienna), MDT (Stockholm) and Dansehallerne (Cph) and Arsenic (Lsn) among others. In 2024, Diakité received Ung Dansk Fotografi, Fotografisk Center (Copenhagen) and in 2021, received the Impulstanz Young Choreographer Award for Fiebre, a collaborative work with Tamara Alegre and Marie Ursin and have the recent years been recipient from The Danish and The Swedish Arts Foundation’s working grants. Collaboration is central to Diakité’s practice. They have worked with artists including BamBam Frost, Adam Seid Tahir, Anita Beikpour, Dina El Kaisy Freimuth, and Emilie Gregersen. In 2019, together with Emilie Gregersen, they co-founded Dance Cooperative, an artist-run studio and platform for dance and choreography in Copenhagen, now maintained by a collective of 12 artists.
