Artist, scholar, strategist, diviner. Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Jambalaya Center of Ancient Mysteries & Sacred Arts, and Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies at California College of the Arts. I build decolonial systems — in films, in games, on five acres of land in Guerneville, and in classrooms.
Published as Shylah Hamilton, Shylah Pacheco Hamilton, and Shy Pacheco Hamilton. Shylah Hamilton-Touré since 2024.
At the Jambalaya Center Shylah serves as Oludari of Egbe Egungun — carrying the ancestral work of the Ile, stewarding relationships with the dead who guide the living, and holding the framework for the Center's Egungun rituals across the seasonal calendar. Egungun is where Shylah's scholarship, art, and ritual practice converge: ancestor reverence as pedagogy, as method, as institutional foundation.
Shylah is Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies at California College of the Arts, where she has taught for over a decade. From Fall 2018 through Fall 2026 she chaired the program — the only Critical Ethnic Studies program housed in an art and design institution in the United States. Under her leadership, the program achieved a 98% first-year retention rate, a 100% faculty promotion rate, launched a college-wide minor, and expanded into a cross-divisional program.
Courses she has developed and taught include The Art of Divination; Conjure! Sacred Art Practices of the African Diaspora; Haunting the Machine (Decolonial AI Studio); Tryin' to Get Free; Grasping at the Root; How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse; and Bang Bang: Global Gang Culture.
Her scholarship has appeared in Sternberg Press, Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, and the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Her films have screened at DOK Leipzig, DMZ Docs, and It's All True. She has been a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Political Power Fellow and has held scholarly intensives in Brazil and Barcelona.
Shylah's creative practice is transdisciplinary. It spans experimental film, found footage assemblage, AI-generated imagery, ritual performance, installation, and 3D video game design. Her intellectual foundation is anchored in Robert Farris Thompson's Flash of the Spirit, D. Scot Miller's Afrosurreal Manifesto, and the Afrosurrealist methodology developed by Nettrice Gaskins and Kahlil Joseph.
Three recent bodies of work:
Shylah co-founded the Jambalaya Center in spiritual partnership with her godmother, Chief Iyanifa Yeye Luisah Teish. As Executive Director she carries the day-to-day institutional stewardship of the Center — the land campaign, the governance architecture, the funding pipeline, the seven-school curriculum, the four annual festivals, and the seven-generation horizon that shapes every decision.
The Center opened in March 2026 as a California 501(c)(3) religious congregation rooted in Yoruba Ifá, Egungun, and Akan Sankofa traditions. It sits on five acres of unceded Pomo and Coast Miwok territory in Guerneville, where Yeye lives on the land and where the Ile holds its ceremonial life. In Shylah's own framing on her site: the Center is a spirit-governed, land-rooted research and praxis site for African diasporic sacred traditions and Yoruba cosmology — an alternative institutional architecture for scholarly production and spatial justice ritual work across the African diaspora.
Alongside her institutional stewardship, Shylah teaches at the Ile — leading classes in divination and sacred art within the Center's seven-school curriculum. Her teaching at the Center is a direct extension of her practice: the divinatory technologies that inform her Spatial Justice Ritual Archive, the sacred art traditions she carries in Egungun and in film, brought into pedagogical form for Center members and the next generation of practitioners.
Shylah is based between Oakland and Guerneville, California, on unceded Ohlone and Pomo/Coast Miwok territory. Her degrees are a BFA from California College of the Arts, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MA from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She works in English, Spanish, Louisiana Creole, Haitian Creole, and conversational Yoruba.
Her affiliations extend beyond CCA and the Jambalaya Center to The Hidden Genius Project, AICAD, and the Edwidge Danticat Society. Her practice moves across African Diaspora Ritual Performance, Film Production, Immersive Technologies, Decolonial Art & Design Pedagogy, and Afrosurrealism.
“I build decolonial systems.”
— Shylah Hamilton-Touré
Shylah maintains her scholarly and creative practice at shyhamilton.com, where her films, publications, and courses live. Hear more about her work on the Black Studies Podcast. For Jambalaya Center inquiries, write to info@jambalayacenter.org.
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