LEA S. CELIK
Lea Sultan Celik Sommerseth Shaw ISIK
Writer · Philologist · Filmmaker · Composer · Creative Director- Publisher- Philanthropist Former Member and Candidate for Liberal Democrats & Independent Candidate for Evergreens political part project
Some of Lea's publications postponed/withdrawn from Independent Publication and seeking Naturalisation with Official Representing Country to Launch Officially
Tupac and the Echoes from The Motherland , Cargo Culture Brick Lane Music, LCSS INC 2020
Book · Music, cultural history and African consciousness
Published by Cargo Culture
Cobain: The Bhagavad Gita Cargo Cultuere, Brick Lane Music LCSS INC 2020
Literary and philosophical project
The Light is Eternal, Prayers on Screen Tarkovsky & Bergman LCSS INC 2022
Cinema · Theology · Philosophy
X. Malcolm X LCSS INC 2024
Literary and cultural project
Yasar Kemal and the Tales of Anatolia LCSS INC 2026
Literature · Anatolian cultural history
Marcello Di Fellini LCSS INC 2024
Cinema · Memoir · Cultural history
New Found Land — A Film Trilogy 2022
Film project
Cargo Culture LCSS INC 2024
Independent music and cultural venture established in Brick Lane, London, in 2016
Jazz Africa / Latin 2024 Cargo Culture LCSS INC
Original music and cross-cultural composition projects exploring jazz, African and Latin musical traditions and cinematic sound.
Biography
Lea Sultan Celik Sommerseth Shaw ISIK is an independent published writer, composer and philanthropist who works under her personal name as her pen name. Born on the Mediterranean Aegean coast, she grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, where her extended family has been based for generations and forms part of her connection to Swedish history. Her origins stretch from Anatolia and Mesopotamia, including the Native Kurds of Mesopotamia, to the Russian peninsula. Lea is multilingual and fluent in Scandinavian languages.
Lea emigrated from Sweden decades ago and has worked independently in London through her Brick Lane projects. It was in London that she had her firstborn son, William “The Scout,” a Westminster pupil. Lea is also a former Liberal Democrat member and candidate and has frequently engaged in international philanthropic work.
In 2024, Lea had scheduled the launch of a Burkina Faso Embassy initiative at her Bishopsgate office in London. Later, in 2025, she established her Hague office near the Biafra Embassy, where she drafted the status-quo project Mesopotamia in Exile Central Africa, an NGO initiative dedicated to her Native Kurdish origins and to the development of a Charter City project intended to provide shelter for people affected by conflict and displacement.
Lea researches philosophy, theology, Abrahamic traditions and Buddhist thought. Her work frequently focuses on the preservation of nature and on Indigenous, Native and other historically oppressed or less privileged communities.
Through her interdisciplinary creative practice—from dictating a book and composing music to cinema and poetry—ideas often emerge from historical or philosophical research. Rather than treating writing, music and moving image as separate practices, Lea approaches them as interconnected forms of narrative.
Her recent research has increasingly investigated the territory between cinematic theology, sound dramaturgy, textual archaeology and philology, particularly the ways in which ancient texts and spiritual traditions can be reinterpreted through contemporary literature, sound and moving image.
This dialogue is particularly visible in projects such as Cobain: The Bhagavad Gita and The Light Is Eternal: Prayers on Screen — Tarkovsky & Bergman, which place apparently distant cultural figures, texts and artistic traditions in conversation with one another.
Cinema occupies a central position in Lea's work. Her writing and filmmaking draw upon the poetic and philosophical possibilities of the moving image, with recurring interests in memory, naturalism, sacred interiority and European auteur cinema. The cinematic worlds associated with Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini form important reference points within this research.
Her autobiographical project Marcello Di Fellini connects these cinematic interests with memories of growing up in Sweden, her later studies and work in film, and her relationship with European cultural life. Autobiography similarly runs throughout much of her literary and artistic output: place, family, exile, cultural inheritance and personal history frequently become starting points for wider investigations of civilisation and identity.
Music & Composition
Alongside her writing and filmmaking, Lea works independently in composition and music for the moving image. Her musical interests range from cinematic composition and experimental sound to jazz and intercultural musical forms. Through Brick Lane Cargo Culture, established in Brick Lane, London, in 2016, she developed independent music and cultural projects connected with musicians and creative communities in London and Los Angeles.
Her Jazz Africa and Latin projects explore relationships between jazz, African and Latin musical traditions and cinematic composition. Across these projects, rhythm, atmosphere and cultural memory function as narrative materials rather than simply as musical accompaniment.
This approach increasingly connects with Lea's research into sonic sculpture and cinematic theology: the possibility that sound can function architecturally within a film or literary environment, creating spaces of memory, ritual and psychological interiority.
Writing & Publishing
Lea's literary work crosses biography, cultural criticism, philosophy, music writing, history and experimental nonfiction, her 2025 book Tupac and the Echoes from the Motherland, published through Cargo Culture, repositions Tupac Shakur within a broader African cultural and political consciousness, examining his symbolism, political inheritance and continuing international resonance.
Her wider writing includes projects concerned with Malcolm X, Kurt Cobain, Yaşar Kemal, Sanskrit, Anatolian history, and the intersections between Buddhism, Abrahamic traditions, cinema and philosophy.
Recurring throughout these works is an interest in individuals who exist between cultures or artistic categories—the musician as philosopher, the filmmaker as theologian and the writer as historical witness.
Lea is also the author and creator of children's literature projects, including the Celtic Scouts universe, extending her practice into illustrated storytelling, cultural heritage and imaginative literature for younger readers.
Art, Film & Creative Direction
Before consolidating her independent publishing and composition work, Lea pursued studies and creative activity spanning science, biomedicine, fine art, cultural and gallery management, children's literature and film.
Her creative practice subsequently developed across London and continental Europe, including projects associated with Brick Lane, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Gothenburg and other cultural environments that recur throughout her writing.
As a creative director, she develops the visual identities surrounding her books, films, publishing projects and cultural ventures. Typography, editorial design, photography, self-portraiture, book design and cinematic imagery are consequently treated as extensions of the underlying work rather than simply as promotional material.
LCSS INC
Established in Brick Lane in 2016, LCSS INC has functioned as the principal independent platform through which Lea develops her creative and intellectual work. The platform encompasses publishing, literature, film, music, creative direction, cultural research and interdisciplinary projects.
Lea maintains an intentionally independent model in which writing, editing, composition, visual direction and publication remain connected within a single creative practice.
Her projects have consequently developed less as a conventional catalogue divided into separate artistic disciplines and more as an expanding personal archive—books leading to films, films leading to music, and music returning to literature.
Philanthropy
Philanthropy forms an important dimension of Lea's wider independent work. Her projects have engaged with questions of displacement, cultural preservation, Indigenous and Native heritage, conflict-affected communities and the protection of people whose histories or identities have been marginalised.
Her philanthropic interests intersect with her literary, cultural and research practice, particularly where questions of human dignity, cultural inheritance, migration, statelessness and the preservation of communities arise.
Research
An increasingly important part of Lea' work concerns textual archaeology: reading ancient manuscripts, languages, religious traditions and cultural artefacts not solely as historical objects but as living creative material.
Her research brings together philosophy, theology, anthropology, linguistics, literature, cinema and sound. Particular attention is given to the transmission of stories and ideas across geographical and linguistic boundaries—from Mesopotamia and Anatolia to the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, Britain and the wider world.
This method underpins what Lea describes as an investigation of the threshold between ancient manuscript studies, sonic sculpture and cinematic theology.
Selected Publication
Lea Celik Sommerseth Shaw
Tupac and the Echoes from The Motherland
Cargo Culture, 2025
ISBN 9781739461225
LEA S. CELIK
Writer · Composer · Filmmaker · Publisher · Creative Director
LCSS INC © 2026