The Witch’s Flight

Kenya K. Stevens is a relationship expert, love coach, bestselling author, and co-founder of Progressive Love Academy, an educational and coaching platform dedicated to reimagining how we love, communicate, and build lasting relationships.

A graduate of Howard University, where she earned a degree in Education and Child Psychology, Kenya has spent decades exploring the intersections of human behavior, emotional communication, spirituality, and intimate partnership. She is the founder of Progressive Love Academy, a global initiative offering relationship education, coaching, and professional training.

At the heart of Kenya’s work is the philosophy of Progressive Love: a vision of relationships that holds freedom and commitment, individual sovereignty and community, in meaningful conversation with one another. Through her work, she challenges conventional assumptions about marriage, monogamy, gender, and partnership, inviting people to examine inherited relationship models and consider new possibilities for intimacy and connection.

On this episode, we explore what it means to imagine love otherwise—and what becomes possible when we begin questioning the relationship structures we have inherited.

In this episode we enter the vibrant after-hours world of Downtown Los Angeles for a conversation about DTLA Art Night and the possibilities that emerge when art, nightlife, and community converge. We hear from Art Night Director Sidney Brocious about her vision for creating spaces of cultural exchange, followed by a live conversation with multidisciplinary artist Ziv Sade, whose practice explores identity, queerness, intimacy, beauty, and self-expression. Together, the conversations invite us to consider art as a portal into the elsewhere and otherwise—spaces beyond prescribed ways of seeing, where imagination, visibility, connection, and joy can take shape.

Sidney Brocious is a Los Angeles-based creative and cultural producer whose background in nightlife has shaped her understanding of gathering, community, and the power of creating spaces for cultural exchange. As Director of DTLA Art Night, she brings that sensibility into the arts, connecting galleries, artists, and audiences across Downtown Los Angeles for an evening of exhibitions, discovery, and creative connection. Her work sits at the intersection of nightlife, art, and community, inviting us to experience the city—and contemporary art—through a more social, expansive, and after-dark lens. This Friday on The Witch’s Flight, Sidney joins us to talk about her vision for Art Night, the artists and spaces that make it possible, and the possibilities that emerge when art, community, and the city converge.

Ziv Sade is an internationally exhibited, self-taught photographer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice spans portraiture, fashion, editorial, commercial image-making, and mixed media. Beginning his career in Tel Aviv and later expanding his practice to Los Angeles, Sade has spent more than two decades exploring the space between the personal and the public, the intimate and the spectacular. His work centers identity, queerness, beauty, and self-expression, often transforming photography through tactile materials and sculptural interventions. In many ways, Sade’s practice inhabits what I think of as the elsewhere and otherwise: creating visual spaces where people can exist beyond prescribed ways of seeing, and where fantasy, intimacy, visibility, and joy become forms of possibility. Sade is currently one of the artists featured in DTLA Art Night, with his work exhibited at the Braly Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles.

In this episode, we are in conversation with artist:Victor Chinedu

Victor is a Lagos-born, Los Angeles-based artist known for his contemporary portraiture that delves into themes of memory, intimacy, identity, and the Black cultural experience. His work employs saturated color, layered texture, and emotionally charged compositions to merge autobiographical narratives with broader cultural reflections, reconstructing personal and collective histories.

On this episode, we are joined by Kenya K. Stevens who is a relationship expert, love coach, bestselling author, and co-founder of Progressive Love Academy. She explores what it means to imagine love otherwise—and what becomes possible when we begin questioning the relationship structures we have inherited.

Kenya K. Stevens is a relationship expert, love coach, bestselling author, and co-founder of Progressive Love Academy, an educational and coaching platform dedicated to reimagining how we love, communicate, and build lasting relationships.

A graduate of Howard University, where she earned a degree in Education and Child Psychology, Kenya has spent decades exploring the intersections of human behavior, emotional communication, spirituality, and intimate partnership. She is the founder of Progressive Love Academy, a global initiative offering relationship education, coaching, and professional training.

At the heart of Kenya’s work is the philosophy of Progressive Love: a vision of relationships that holds freedom and commitment, individual sovereignty and community, in meaningful conversation with one another. Through her work, she challenges conventional assumptions about marriage, monogamy, gender, and partnership, inviting people to examine inherited relationship models and consider new possibilities for intimacy and connection.

For this episode, I will be interviewing two artists: Martese Mixon and Chinedu Victor.

In the first hour, we will be in conversation with Chinedu Victor, who is a Lagos-born, Los Angeles-based artist known for his contemporary portraiture that delves into themes of memory, intimacy, identity, and the Black cultural experience. His work employs saturated color, layered texture, and emotionally charged compositions to merge autobiographical narratives with broader cultural reflections, reconstructing personal and collective histories.

In the second hour, we speak to Martese Mixon who is a Los Angeles–based contemporary artist and founder of Teseworld. His paintings blend bold color, symbolism, and storytelling to explore themes of identity, resilience, culture, and transformation. Inspired by personal experiences and untold moments throughout Black history, Mixon creates work that encourages reflection, sparks conversation, and reminds viewers that growth often begins in the moments that challenge us most. Each piece is an invitation to look deeper—not only at the canvas, but at ourselves.

On this episode we enter the vibrant after-hours world of Downtown Los Angeles for a conversation about DTLA Art Night and the possibilities that emerge when art, nightlife, and community converge. We hear from Art Night Director Sidney Brocious about her vision for creating spaces of cultural exchange, followed by a live conversation with multidisciplinary artist Ziv Sade, whose practice explores identity, queerness, intimacy, beauty, and self-expression. Together, the conversations invite us to consider art as a portal into the elsewhere and otherwise—spaces beyond prescribed ways of seeing, where imagination, visibility, connection, and joy can take shape.

Sidney Brocious is a Los Angeles-based creative and cultural producer whose background in nightlife has shaped her understanding of gathering, community, and the power of creating spaces for cultural exchange. As Director of DTLA Art Night, she brings that sensibility into the arts, connecting galleries, artists, and audiences across Downtown Los Angeles for an evening of exhibitions, discovery, and creative connection. Her work sits at the intersection of nightlife, art, and community, inviting us to experience the city—and contemporary art—through a more social, expansive, and after-dark lens. This Friday on The Witch’s Flight, Sidney joins us to talk about her vision for Art Night, the artists and spaces that make it possible, and the possibilities that emerge when art, community, and the city converge.

Ziv Sade is an internationally exhibited, self-taught photographer, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice spans portraiture, fashion, editorial, commercial image-making, and mixed media. Beginning his career in Tel Aviv and later expanding his practice to Los Angeles, Sade has spent more than two decades exploring the space between the personal and the public, the intimate and the spectacular. His work centers identity, queerness, beauty, and self-expression, often transforming photography through tactile materials and sculptural interventions. In many ways, Sade’s practice inhabits what I think of as the elsewhere and otherwise: creating visual spaces where people can exist beyond prescribed ways of seeing, and where fantasy, intimacy, visibility, and joy become forms of possibility. Sade is currently one of the artists featured in DTLA Art Night, with his work exhibited at the Braly Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles.

In this episode, I interview multidisciplinary artist Chinedu Victor who is a Lagos-born, Los Angeles-based artist known for his contemporary portraiture that delves into themes of memory, intimacy, identity, and the Black cultural experience. His work employs saturated color, layered texture, and emotionally charged compositions to merge autobiographical narratives with broader cultural reflections, reconstructing personal and collective histories.

Some artists seem to choose their medium, while for others, art feels like something they discover was already inside them. Our guest Chinedu Victor Uyaelunmo's relationship with art began instinctively. At just three years old, he was mesmerized by the paintings of a neighbor’s grandfather, and by seven, drawing had become his natural language—a way of creating characters, imagining worlds and making sense of what he saw around him.

But his path to becoming an artist wasn’t linear. At fourteen, Chinedu moved from Lagos to the United States on a basketball scholarship. Basketball became his focus, while art quietly remained beside him. An injury eventually redirected him toward digital art, and then, in college, seeing another Nigerian athlete balance basketball and painting gave him the permission to imagine that life for himself. He eventually left basketball to commit fully to painting, earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art, and developed a contemporary portrait practice centered on emotion, intimacy, Black identity and visibility. Through vibrant color, thick texture and expansive canvases, his work becomes a way of preserving personal narratives and honoring stories that are often overlooked.

In this episode of The Witch’s Flight, Dr. Zama Dube sits down with Abuja-born, Los Angeles-based artist, producer, and sound engineer Cheekychizzy for a conversation that moves beyond the global success of Afrobeats to explore the philosophies that shape his creative practice. Together, they trace his journey from Nigeria to Los Angeles, reflecting on the evolution of his career, the cultural responsibility of creating music across continents, and his concept of “Confucius music”—an artistic approach rooted in storytelling, emotional depth, and meaning.

The conversation also explores the spiritual undercurrents woven throughout Cheekychizzy’s work, from the role of prayer, family, and faith in songs like No Worry to the symbolism embedded within his sonic choices. Dr. Dube and Cheekychizzy discuss artistic brotherhood, his collaborations with artists including D’Banj and Burna Boy, the importance of humility in an industry often driven by competition, and the evolving global language of African music. Anchored by his latest single, Wah Wah, this episode offers an intimate portrait of an artist whose work reminds us that rhythm can carry not only movement, but memory, philosophy, and hope.

On this week’s episode of The Witch’s Flight, Zama Dube sits down with British-Nigerian artist Shae Universe for an intimate conversation on migration, creativity, vulnerability, and becoming. 

Shae Universe is a singer, songwriter, and sonic storyteller whose music moves fluidly between alternative R&B, soul, jazz, and atmospheric electronic textures. Fresh off her move from London to Los Angeles, Shae reflects on diasporic identity, emotional reinvention, and the inherited interior worlds carried by children of African migration.

Moving between music, memory, spirituality, and Black womanhood, the conversation explores softness as a form of resistance, sound as emotional archive, and the complexities of intimacy in contemporary life. Together, Zama and Shae Universe reflect on longing, belonging, sensuality, and the emotional textures that shape Black diasporic artistic practice.

On this episode, we explore Black creative practice across sound and screen—tracing how music, film, and storytelling operate as sites of memory, resistance, and imagination. From creative process to political commitment, this conversation reflects on what it means to make work in dialogue with Black histories while shaping bold, liberated futures.

Kwabbie (Kelvin “Kwabbie” Oppong) is a Los Angeles–based actor, musical artist, and screenwriter. A first-generation Ghanaian American raised in the Bronx, his creative perspective is shaped by diaspora, performance, and selfhood.

Social media became an outlet for Kwabbie to express his humor, personality, and point of view. What started as a space for self-expression quickly grew into a platform where his voice resonated widely, sparking cultural moments and creator-led trends rooted in authenticity rather than performance for the algorithm. His online presence has served not as the destination, but as a foundation for deeper creative work across mediums.

As a screenwriter, Kwabbie’s writing often speaks to spirituality, morality, generational trauma, and the questions that surface in our twenties and thirties as we navigate adulthood. He writes primarily in psychological horror and dramedy, using genre to explore fear, faith, intimacy, and the internal conflicts that shape our choices. His stories are character-driven, culturally grounded, and emotionally precise.

Musically, Kwabbie is a direct reflection of his upbringing between worlds. Raised on R&B and highlife, he creates music that lives in that duality where R&B leans introspective and emotionally raw, while Afrobeats brings warmth, rhythm, and a more upbeat, vibey energy. Together, these sounds form a full portrait of his artistry: reflective, joyful, and deeply human.

Jonathan Aubrie Lewis is an award-winning filmmaker who has been a professional director and writer for the past ten years.

His most recent film, “Sojourn,” (Vimeo Staff Pick) is an intimate exploration of Black male identity. It has screened at the Atlanta Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Raindance, Holly Shorts and most notably, The National Museum of African American History & Culture, a part of the Smithsonian African American Film Festival. “Sojourn,” also participated in Amazon Prime’s “All Voices Film Festival and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

In 2020, Jonathan was selected to pitch new projects to a wide range of industry producers at Tribeca Film Festival’s “Tribeca N.O.W. Creators Market.” Jonathan has also had success in the commercial world as well, directing four short documentaries for Target and Black Love Inc., called HBCU Love.

His work has been featured in Rolling Stones, DIY Magazine, THE LINE of BEST FIT and several other online publications. He has crafted visuals for Grammy nominee, Serpentwithfeet, 5x Grammy Award winner Lalah Hathaway and several other recording artists.

In Jonathan’s spare time, he also does a great deal of volunteer work in Altadena, California where he was raised, where he serves as a youth counselor at his father’s church. Most recently he traveled to Eswatini in South Africa where he helped build playgrounds at a preschool, served hot meals and distributed medicine to those in need.

At Jonathan’s core, he is rooted in the stripped-down raw fundamentals of storytelling; always stimulating the mind of the viewer- challenging them to step beyond their boundaries into his visual escapade. Because of this personal mandate, he has developed a reputation of creating bold visuals, interlaced with thought provoking story. Jonathan is currently in pre-production on his next film: A sci-fi, dance, experimental film entitled, “We Are THE BEAT: An Odyssey Home.”