Spoken Word Artist, Dancer, Model (she/her)
Meet Aaliyahh Love
Aaliyahh Love is a Jamaican-born and raised dancer, model, and spoken word creator who is known for her pieces on rising social justice issues. Aaliyahh writes about personal experiences, like mental health issues and her experiences in her home country, Jamaica. She is passionate about making a change and impact in the community and world by creating attention to rising social justice issues to effect change.
Influenced by the death of her grandfather, Aaliyahh realized the change her voice made in her family and that she could impact the world too.
In high school, Aaliyahh became more engulfed in her artistic side by writing and performing her spoken word pieces on her growing Youtube channel and Instagram. Aaliyahh presently performs on her YouTube channel, Instagram, and various Toronto-based community events. She recently directed and produced her second poetry film titled "School Yards to Prison Walls’’ intended to create awareness of the school-to-prison pipeline system.
She hopes to heal the world through her art by making an impact and raising awareness about social inequalities. By sharing her stories, she also hopes to build healthy and politically empowered communities and provide a voice for the voiceless.
Aaliyahh’s passion for change-making gave her the courage to start, and it fuels the drive she needs to continue.
"From School Yards To Prison Walls"
Spoken Word Poem & Video By Aaliyahh Love — Artist Statement [EXCERPT]
For five years, my work has been surrounded around rising social justice issues that have profoundly impacted my community and myself. In this society, there is stigma and fear surrounding specific topics like racism, classism, sexism, feminism, misogyny and other social justice issues and inequalities. Yet, there is something special about a poet speaking from and sharing their experiences. If you then deliver as you intended to, you begin to move into a space of visioning, confrontation, realization, progress and change. My goal as an artist is to continuously place my audience in a position where they want to make a change.
My piece titled "From Schoolyards To Prison Walls" is an example of the kind of social justice issue that is disregarded. It comments on the school-to-prison pipeline system in Canada. It is a system designed to target minority students from educational success and towards incarceration, particularly African Canadian students residing in marginalized communities. The main inspiration behind my piece was my experience of being racially profiled by my school guidance counsellor when I first came to Canada.
