2023 fellows
Elena’s work weaves together many mediums and intentions including textiles, performance, sculpture, social practice, arts education, self-publishing, community building and collaborations. Current projects include researching and embodying lichen as a means towards increasing interspecies and intersectional care, and designing and sewing custom quilts and clothing. Elena's work has been supported by grants from California Arts Council, Arts Connection, the MRH Fund and the Center for Cultural Innovation, and she has attended residencies at Real Time and Space (forthcoming), the Lucas Artist Residency Program, Carrizozo AIR and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. In 2022, Elena founded two artist-run alternative art spaces in Joshua Tree, including The Firehouse (@thefirehousejt) and Sun Spot (@sun___spot). Elena received a BA in Art from UCLA in 2016.
Yvette Serrano is a multidisciplinary artist from Santa Fe, NM. She earned her BFA in Communication Design from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and is currently an MFA candidate at Arizona State University. Her work draws references from the Southwest and speaks on the systems of power, policies, and violence that continue to displace people, force migration, and challenge our relationship with the land.
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Fía Benitez is a research-driven artist and educator. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence, with exhibitions at NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include the catalog Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics, artist book and catalog re:connections, anthology water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía is a 2021 Getty PST Research Assistant and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow. They hold degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.
Kailasa Aqeel is a creative advisor working and organizing in DC. She serves as a community connector, helping people bring their visions to life by providing creative solutions and logistical support to small businesses, organizations, entrepreneurs, and some of the most brilliant creators of this time. Kailasa is passionate about bringing power back to the community by making information and quality resources accessible to all. Her efforts and collaborations are very much driven by her personal responsibilities as a mother, a dedicated artist, an advocate for wellness, and a community builder.
Astrid Kaemmerling, is a german-born artist, researcher, educator, and arts administrator based in Asheville, NC. Her work spans the genres of visual, performance, and media art and strives to connect place memories of the past, such as collected travel experiences, with a critical exploration of specific neighborhoods and selected urban and rural places. Kaemmerling has been exhibited internationally in Germany, Italy, Korea, and the United States. . She is the founder of The Walk Discourse, a social practice art project, educational platform, and research laboratory that provides room for exchanges about public space. The program sets out to playfully and critically engage participants to study the urban and rural fabric.
Leila Tamari’s artistic practice currently explores belonging through relationship to place, identity, institutional critique, and money. Leila founded This Place Works (TPW) - her creative home and consultancy - to freely flow between different partnerships and kinds of work. She takes on various roles from artist coach, cultural strategist/advisor, organizational healer/facilitator, and more. Leila’s professional experience spans organizing, engagement, public art, cultural production, and wealth redistribution. She aspires to cultivate a culture of care; so love, play, and collaboration are essential ingredients in her creative endeavors.
Born and raised in Washington Heights, New York City, as a young kid, DISTER found his way as a graffiti writer and club dancer. Culture doesn't have a role in his work, it is his work. It has remained a constant throughout his career as a professional dancer, visual artist, muralist and founder of I LOVE MY HOOD – an international collective of creatives and activists dedicated to the greater good through Hip Hop. DISTER ‘s work is an extension of the graffiti he grew up around & participated in as a kid but like Hip Hop culture has continued to evolve as he experiments always creating graphic, vivid imagery and typography that is authentic and connected to the culture.
Oluwaseun Babalola is a DOC NYC 2022 40 Under 40 Honoree and Emmy-nominated filmmaker and television producer. Her work includes Black History in Two Minutes (or so) with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell (CNN), Africa Everywhere (The Africa Channel), Streets of Dreams (CNBC), and feature documentary films, Trichster, the Emmy-nominated Picture A Scientist (PBS, Netflix), and most recently, Emmy-nominated Frederick Douglass In Five Speeches (HBO). Oluwaseun is also the founder of KOSINIMA, Inc., a nonprofit organization created to support Black filmmakers with career-building resources. This includes creating the KOSINIMA Short Film Grant and www.sojuafrica.com, a media platform that uses documentary film and photography to celebrate African youth culture.
Kerry Warren (she/her/hers) is a Biracial New York based Actor and Teaching Artist. She recently accepted the position of Co-Executive Director of the Teaching Artists Guild (TAG). She is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she received The President Polisi Prize for Artist as Citizen. She has taught with Harlem Children’s Zone, Lincoln Center Education, G!RLBEHEARD, People’s Theatre Project, the 52nd Street Project, among many others. She has performed on Broadway, Off Broadway, and regionally. Her theatrical credits include Broadway: The River with Hugh Jackman Off Broadway: Life Sucks (Theatre Row); This Is How It Ends (59E59); Much Ado About Nothing Mobile Unit (The Public Theater) Television: Broad City, New Amsterdam, Law & Order SVU.
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Monika Guerra (she/they) is a Mexican-American contemporary artist born in Southern California and raised in Southern New Mexico. Guerra's studio practice explores and creates different planes of existence through painting and photography, where she constantly questions and searches for the unknown of our universe. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Certificate in Business & Entrepreneurship from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2022. Her most recent achievements have included working as an Artistic Development & Production Intern at Meow Wolf and exhibiting at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM.
Natalia Villanueva Linares is a French + Peruvian international artist graduated with honors from Beaux Arts, fine art school of Paris. She currently lives in Chicago and works between South + North America and Europe. Her work has been shown in two major exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Paris, Sala Miro Quesada Garland in Peru, the Collège de Bernardins (Paris). She collaborates with galleries located in Ecuador, France and Peru. Natalia is a cultural worker and an alternative space supporter. She founded the magazine Ukayzine, created to promote international cultural exchanges through the visual Arts.
Eugenio Salas (Canada/Mexico, b.1976. Mexico City) is a self-taught artist based in Lënapehòkink, the ancestral homelands of the Lenape people, also known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His practice involves disrupting social roles and dynamics through collaborative process-based projects carried out autonomously and within institutions. The resulting participatory performative actions employ sculpture, media, print, live actions, and cooking. He is currently working with immigrant Latinx cooks, waste laborers, food producers and grassroots journalists in Philadelphia on a participatory project to develop sculptures for cooking out of waste called Fogones – Weast Feast.
Brydie O’Connor (she/her) is a Kansas-bred, NY based filmmaker. Her work focuses on women-driven and queer stories, and has screened at festivals such as Outfest, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and DOC NYC along with galleries and The Museum of Modern Art. Her film LOVE, BARBARA (2021) won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Short at Outfest 2022, and she is currently working on her debut feature documentary. Much of her work is inspired by archival histories and her upbringing in the Midwest.
Melanie Holm is a soprano and dancer reframing standard opera repertory through a female-driven lens. Upcoming projects include premiering choreographed arias with WaxWorks at Williamsburg Art Nexus and Fertile Ground at GreenSpace. Melanie is an Assistant Teaching Artist at the Mark Morris Dance Center, and is a Work/Study Intern with Alexandra Beller/Dances. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (BM/Voice with a Dance Minor) and Arizona State University (DMA/Voice & MM/Opera Performance), where her research focused on using Gaga Movement Language and Bartenieff Fundamentals to help singers develop deeper kinesthetic connections to their vocal technique.
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Kelsey O. Daniels is an artist organizer baddie scholar from Southeast San Diego and internationally ranked poet (Stonewall International Poetry Slam, Black Arts Matter, and Womxn of the World) and most recently was the opening act for rupi kaur. She founded and hosts Check, Please: an open mic experiment, a venue that aims to imagine what a creative community that prioritizes connection over perfection could look like. She is also curating a creative universe called Black Dream Experiment that explores Black dreaming as a collective ancestral, wellness, and liberation practice. Her work also appears in VAST Press and Button Poetry.
Junauda Petrus is a writer, a soul sweetener, runaway witch, and performance artist of Black-Caribbean descent, born and working on unceded Dakota land in Minneapolis. Her literary and performance work center around pleasure, wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, shimmer, sweetness and liberation. Her first YA novel, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them received a Coretta Scott King Award. Her writing can be found in the anthologies, Queer Voices, How I Resist and Pleasure Activism and the forthcoming, Tasting Light, a young adult science fiction anthology. She is co-founder of Free Black Dirt, an experimental arts collective. She is a Jerome 2021-2022 Artist Fellow in Literature. She is currently working on her second novel Black Circus, as well as Impact Theory, an 80’s queer, dinosaur puppet show and adapting her first book into a feature film.
Ebony Blanding is a writer/director from Atlanta, Georgia whose work seeks to tell stories about Black girls and women coming-of-age on their own terms. She draws from her southern roots to create original interpretations of gothic tales, Black folklore and afro-futurism within grounded and supernatural settings. Blanding has helmed branded content, documentaries for major artists, and multiple award-winning short films, including Levitate, streaming at Atlanta International Airport. Her commissioned period piece, Georgia Voting Rights is playing in the state's capitol. Co-founder of art film house, House of June, Blanding has presented films at educational institutions including Spelman College, Emory University and John H. Hopkins University. Her work has screened at Atlanta Film Society, Capetown International Film Festival, SXSW, among others.
Kayla Briët is a filmmaker and composer exploring themes of belonging in multiple mediums of storytelling. She is the director of Smoke That Travels (2016), an award-winning short film that immerses viewers in her Prairie Band Potawatomi heritage. She has scored "Dear Georgina," a follow up to the Emmy award-winning film DAWNLAND (2018). Her work has been exhibited by MoMA, PBS, SXSW and her film has been archived by the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. She was a 2018 MacArthur Foundation x Sundance New Frontier Fellow, 2017 TED Fellow, Found Sound China Music Diplomacy Fellow, and MIT Chamber Scholar, among other distinctions. As a 2022 Asian Cultural Council Fellow she will research expressions of asian and indigenous futurisms as well as truth and reconciliatory practices in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and beyond. Through storytelling and convergence across communities, she aims to illustrate multi-cultural perspectives, amplify untold stories, and shine light on the indigenous and diaspora communities she grew up in.
Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans installation, 2D, performance, and sculpture. Her projects explore ideas of home, memory and cultural identity. Cano Villalobos has exhibited in venues including Bridge Projects, POSITIONS Art Fair, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum, Maryland Institute College of Art, The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, among many others. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, and The Chicago Reader, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship, and has been awarded grants from multiple organizations including the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, the Gottlieb, Puffin, Frey, and Chenven Foundations, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Cano Villalobos is represented by Lafontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI, Mu Gallery in Chicago and drj art projects in Berlin. She works in Grand Rapids, MI.
Summer McCorkle is a visual artist working with still and moving images. Her artwork has been shown at The National Portrait Gallery in London, the Bronx Museum, Wave Hill and Smack Mellon in New York, along with various other venues in Guadalajara, London, St. Petersburg and the U.S. She has been an artist-in-residence at Montello Foundation in Nevada, the Arteles Creative Center in Finland, Wave Hill and Residency Unlimited in New York, the Arctic Circle residency (on a ship on the Arctic Sea) and a two time MacDowell Fellow. She also took part in the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum. Her cinematography work on various films has been seen at Sundance, Art Basel Switzerland, Yvon Lambert Gallery-Paris and various other venues in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Hunter College and a BA in Photography from San Francisco State University. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she now calls Brooklyn, New York home.
Randi Renate was born ‘en caul,’ intact inside the amniotic sac, in San Antonio, TX. Her scientific background in biology and oceanography informs her current artistic research. Operating across installation, sculpture, sound and video, Randi’s artwork choreographs bodies within a sculptural framework to investigate how the ‘micro’ of the individual weaves into the ‘macro’ of the collective whole. Randi received a BFA in Studio Art and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014 and moved to Berlin where she maintained a studio and artist-run project space, TRACE. She is a 2020 MFA graduate of the Sculpture Department at the Yale School of Art. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships including Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NY, Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, NY, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE, Santa Fe Art Institute in Santa Fe, NM, and Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.
Jessica Mueller is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Jessica’s work provides visibility for experiences of motherhood that are less than glamorous, shows the absurdity and value in the domestic mundane within actions of care and service, and offers a space for collective thinking. Jessica is a faculty member in the Design Department at the American Academy of Art. Since 2004, she has been a teaching artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), working in Chicago Public Schools. Jessica holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective and MotherArt: Revisited. She exhibits locally and nationally, and her work is part of the permanent collections at the School of the Art Institute’s Flaxman Library, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts, and the Library of Congress. Jessica is a recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) 2019 Heart of Gold Award and is a 3Arts 2021 Make A Wave grantee.
Amy Ritter grew up in Eastern, PA in the rural town of Orefield. For the past 7 years she’s documented mobile home parks (over 50 sites in over 17 states, and interviewed residents. She’s created and exhibited work influenced by these archives built on her own personal history growing up in a double-wide trailer. She’s continuing to visit mobile home parks throughout the east coast, systematically archiving with overarching questions around the American Dream, specifically the myth of social mobility and the stigma around affordable housing. Ritter has shown her work nationally and internationally for over a decade. She’s been awarded numerous residencies and fellowships; selected honors include Fine Arts Work Center, MA (2016), Skowhegan, ME (2016), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace, NY (2017), a fellowship at Yaddo, NY (2020), an Engaging Artist Fellowship at More Art, NY (2021), and most recently received a fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery, NY (2022); among others.
April Banks is an LA based artist and creative strategist with deep ancestral roots in Virginia. Her hybrid practice sits intentionally between image, place, and experience. Recent works from encaustic to steel sculpture time travel through historical archives and memories, questioning what we think we know of the past and how it informs our cultural systems and future identities. In February 2021, Banks completed a permanent public art sculpture, A Resurrection in Four Stanzas in Santa Monica, CA, commemorating a former Black community erased by eminent domain. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally and is in the Getty Museum and private collections. Banks received a Bachelor of Architecture from Hampton University and a Master of Science in Environmental Design from the Art Center College of Design
Jeremy Guyton is an alchemist, dreamer, instigator, director, multidisciplinary maker, scholar, and teaching artist. Raised in Los Angeles, he first learned to tell stories through exploring the movement vocabularies of krump and jerk on elementary playgrounds. He received his BA in Theatre & Performance Studies from Georgetown University and, in 2012, landed in New Orleans and immersed in the culture and vocabulary of second-line footwork and bounce while working at the intersection of arts and advocacy as Youth Programs Director at Dancing Grounds. He recently received an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Florida State University. Credits include: Solange Knowles, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Kesha McKey, Leyla McCallah and Kiyoko McCrae, Maya Taylor, KM Dance Project, Junebug Productions, B.U.K.U. Dance Krewe, and Goat in the Road Productions.
Alayna N. Pernell (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator from Heflin, Alabama. In May 2019, she graduated from The University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography and a minor in African American Studies. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2021. She is currently the Associate Lecture of Photography and Imaging at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Milwaukee, WI.
Lisbeth White is writer and ritualist living on S’klallam and Chimacum lands of the Coastal Salish on the Olympic Peninsula. Her writing has appeared in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Rumpus, Kweli, Apogee, Green Mountains Review, EcoTheo, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. As a healer and ritualist, she has been a facilitator of community-based healing justice workshops for social justice organizations nationwide. She is co-editor of the anthology Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power, forthcoming from North Atlantic Books in Spring of 2023. Her debut poetry collection, American Sycamore, winner of the 2022 Perugia Press poetry prize is out now. You can find her digitally at www.lisbethwrites.com or on Instagram: @earthmaven.
As an artist of trans experience who grew up in the Philippines, my struggle and journey to America in order to access a safe medical transition is what ignited the dream to create my artistic works. Fueled by my passion to share my experience, I have been moving toward creating works that exhibit trans bodies, and also using my own body and experience as part of the work. My work is focused on drawings, paintings, photography, and, more recently, sculpture and digital art, presented through performance involving my body. I started this project in order to actively challenge the landscape of art and help my community to be able to uplift trans and non-binary people of color, while also celebrating my Filipino heritage. My work "Impressionique I'' placed as first runner up for the 2022 Stonewall Painting Contest. I most recently was a recipient of a grant from Creatives Rebuild NY which has allowed me to begin the “Metransverse” project.
Ahavani Mullen is a visual artist who constructs paintings, sculptures and installations as portals to other realms of consciousness via energetically-charged paint. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Tusen Takk Foundation, the Macedonia Institute, Vermont Studio Center and Hypatia Trust. Other honors include awards from James Rondeau, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and grants from 3Arts, Chicago DCASE, the Illinois Arts Council, and NYFA.
Grace Anderson is a writer, network weaver, dreamer, and strategist working at the intersection of racial, healing, and environmental justice. She is guided by Walida Imarisha’s push to sculpt reality from her dreams, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional framework, bell hook’s revolutionary love, and Nina Simone’s lyrics. She uses several different modalities to uplift and sustain the networks, dreams, and joy of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the environmental space and beyond.
Alfredo Aguilar is the author of On This Side of the Desert (Kent State University Press 2020), selected by Natalie Diaz for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. He is a recipient of 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Frost Place. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Born and raised in North County San Diego, he currently resides in Central Texas
Catherine E. McKinley, a Fulbright Scholar and winner of numerous distinctions for her writing and curatorial work, is author of four critically acclaimed books, most recently The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women (Bloomsbury, 2021). An exploration of Africa's photographic history, fashion, trade history, and African women's selfhood, the book features works from The McKinley Collection, a personal archive representing African photographies from 1870 to the present. Works from The McKinley Collection have been shown in Galleries in New York City and Africa, including the 1.54 African Art Fair in Marrakech.The African Lookbook establishes a tradition with McKinley's two of her prior books, where history and personal narrative blend seamlessly to recount epic journeys both psychic and psychical that lead us to what's precious and elusive. McKinley has taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.
Rad Pereira (they/them) is a queer (im)migrant artist and cultural worker building consciousness between healing justice, system change, reindigenization and queer futures based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn) and Haudenosaunee territory (northern Hudson Valley). Their work in performance, education and social practice has been experienced on stages, screens, stoops and sidewalks all over Turtle Island through the support of many communities, institutions, and groups. Their book Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance, 1965-2020, By Those Who Lived It is available through New Village Press. They are building a Native led food sovereignty project called Iron Path Farms.
Ella Jacobson is a cultural critic and writer originally from interior Alaska. Her writing has appeared in Slate, The Drift, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Review of Books blog, High Country News, and Real Life, among other publications. Much of her work explores how people metabolize their exposures to violence and death. She holds a masters in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, and she is the recipient of residencies and support from Edith Wharton House, Straw Dog Writers Guild, Monson Arts, I-Park Foundation, Good Hart, and the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust Foundation. She is a former New York University Abu Dhabi Fellow in Writing. You can find her on Twitter @_ellajacobson.
Yasmine Ameli is an Iranian American poet and essayist based outside Boston. She holds a BA in English from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Virginia Tech. She has received support from Poets and Writers, Reese’s Book Club, MASS MoCA, the Edith Wharton House, the Straw Dog Writers Guild, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Roshan Institute for Persian Studies. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Sun, Ploughshares, Narrative, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing through the Loft Literary Center, Grub Street, and Hugo House as well as works independently as a holistic writing coach.
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Author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (UpSet Press 2019), Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a poet, interdisciplinary artist and recovering social justice lawyer. Her poetry can be found in numerous anthologies, including Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Olive Branch Press, 2005), Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak (Beacon Press, 2005) and Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence (Seal Press, 2008). Sham-e-Ali is the recipient of the Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship.
2023 speakers
Elaine Grogan Luttrull is the founder of Minerva Financial Arts, a company that builds financial literacy in creative individuals and organizations through education and coaching. Her work focuses on empowerment above all else, connecting financial decisions with creative goals. She serves just over 1,000 people per year through workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions. Hosts of Elaine’s workshops and master classes have included the Kennedy Center’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management (now based at the University of Maryland), the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Foundation Center, the Arts & Business Council of New York, Americans for the Arts, the Ohio Art League, the Ohio Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Council, the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Rhode Island School of Design, among many others.
Naomi Lilly is the founder and CEO of NAL Media, a company dedicated to improving representation and opportunities for marginalized groups within the media industry. Located in New York, Naomi has had experience at Viacom, Live Nation Entertainment, Radio One, LinkedIn, Forbes Tate Partners, and Depop. Naomi is currently enrolled in a dual degree MBA/MA program in Communications at Johns Hopkins University and was a participant in the Class of '22 Techstars Music program. Lilly hopes to use these experiences to create an inclusive and engaging environment within entertainment.
Sheetal Prajapati is an educator, artist and advisor. Currently she works as an arts advisor through her agency Lohar Projects, focusing on public engagement, artist projects, organizational planning and professional development. She serves on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in the MFA Fine Arts program and is the Board Chair of Art and Feminism. Previously, Sheetal spent fifteen years developing public programming, outreach, and artist-centered initiatives at organizations including Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Sheetal speaks about art and practice, public engagement, and pedagogy across the country in cultural spaces including Residency Unlimited, The Museum of Modern Art, The High Line, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Creative Time, and University of North Carolina Greensboro amongst others. As an artist, she has held residencies at Wassaic Project (New York), Pocoapoco (Mexico), Strange Foundation (New York), Elsewhere Museum (North Carolina) and Arquetopia Foundation (Mexico).
As a field advisor, Sheetal has served on review and selection panels for artist grants, residencies and fellowships at organizations like The Laundromat Project, Apex Art, The Joyce Foundation, Pew Center for the Arts and Heritage, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts amongst others. Through her agency Lohar Projects, she has worked with clients including Times Square Arts, Grounds for Sculpture, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Eyebeam Center for Technology. Part of her agency's work also includes developing and leading professional development seminars for artists at places like Creative Capital, KODA, and The Joan Mitchell Center. Sheetal received an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Northwestern University in History and Gender Studies. For more, visit sheetalprajapati.com.
Brandee Caoba is an artist, curator, and visual activist. Her curatorial practice introduces narratives that prompt dialogue on social change, raise political consciousness, and propose alternate ways of seeing and thinking. Her studio practice explores primal being, the collective unconscious, absence, shadow and the transformative power of masks and mythologies. As curator at SITE Santa Fe she has organized an extensive run of exhibitions over the past eight years, working with national and internationalto address issues of climate disruption, global displacement, privatized prison systems, and feminism.
Paddy Johnson is the founder of VVrkshop, an online platform that helps artists get the shows, residencies and grants of their dreams. She is the editor of the forthcoming book Impractical Spaces, the founding editor of the contemporary art blog Art F City (2005-2018), and co-founder of the Queens public art program PARADE (2018-2019). As the first recipient of the Arts Writers Grant for blogging in 2008, and a two-time nominee for Best Critic at the Rob Pruitt Awards in 2009 and 2010, Johnson is a recognized writer and online talent. She won the Village Voice Web Award for best Art Blog in 2010 and in 2011. In 2014, she was the subject of a VICE profile. Johnson has contributed to The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Economist, CNN, VICE, Gizmodo, Observer, Frieze Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Art Newspaper, and Hyperallergic. She was a columnist for Artnet, The L Magazine, and Art in America. Lecturing across the country, Johnson’s talks take place at venues such as Yale, The Chicago Art Institute, Rutgers, Columbia University, The Museum of Fort Worth, the De La Cruz Foundation and the SXSW conference. She teaches new media art and writing at Parsons and NJCU. She lives in New York with her partner.
2022 fellows
Malanya Graham is a painter, cultural worker, and native New Yorker of Jamaican descent. Their art shares genderqueer narratives of connection, separation, and transformation. By creating, Malanya continually answers the question, “How can we be present in our lives right now?” Guided by memories and dreams, they believe that creativity, courage, and imagination is vital to the future of Black queer and trans people. They are the Coordinator of Public Programs and Community Engagement at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Inyang is a fine art photographer. She is a 2021 Nasher Artist Grant recipient and 2021 Juanita J. Craft Artist-in-Residence. Additionally, she has participated in talks and exhibitions throughout the United States. Common themes in her work include exploring identity through culture and transformation.
Mimi Bai is a sculptor born in Xi'an, China, and living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her practice encompasses objects, film, drawing, printmaking, and installation. Using the imagery of ghosts and camouflage, Bai’s work engages with ideas of labor, assimilation, invisibility/hyper-visibility, and survival as both a lived reality and fantasy. She is currently in post-production on her first short film, 'Hide and See.' IG @meemeebye
Mor Cohen is an award-winning Israeli actress and filmmaker. As an immigrant creative living in the United States, her work naturally revolves around the concept of identity and explores the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles our generation faces as the fragile infrastructure of society crumbles under our feet. Her work has been exhibited around the world and is meant to inspire thought and reflection while bringing injustice to the surface and poking holes in outdated systems. She believes that progress is inevitable and artists are here to make sure it is beautiful and just.
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Anel I. Flores is a contemporary Chicana/x Lesbiana/x artist, author and metalsmith. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Literature in 1998, her Master of Fine Arts in 2004 from Goddard College in Plainsfield, VT and studied metal smithing in San Miguel de Allende, GTO, MEX. Her literary, visual art and speaking work has been widely acknowledged with awards, appearances, lectures, exhibitions, and publications.
Carissa Samaniego is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in New Mexico (USA). Her artwork explores the intersection of place and identity through family traditions, generational knowledge, cultural ephemera, and land-based history. She works internationally with recent projects at Galerie Katovy-Klenova (Czech Republic), Kidwelly Industrial Museum (Wales), Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), Union Hall (CO), and Texas State Galleries (TX).
Eli Farinango is a Kichwa artist and visual storyteller, born in Kichwa territory (Quito, Ecuador) and raised in Turtle Island (Canada). Through her practice she explores the vastness and beauty of the healing journey while making intentional space to reclaim ancestral memory through the image. She is a graduate of the International Center of Photography, recipient of the Photographers Without Borders & Sony Scholarship, Jan Mulder scholarship (ICP), and a 2021 Women Photograph Grantee.
Floco Torres is a Hip-Hop Musician, 1/2 of the Hip-Hop duo Free Black!, Producer & Community Outreach Director. Torres' career took flight in 2011 when he received a $25,000 grant to produce the '10,000 Hours EP' w/ Grammy Nominated Producer/Percussionist Steve Moretti. Additionally, his song 'Cherry Street' went on to win 6 ADDY awards and a Mosaic award for diversity. Since his debut release 'Another World' in 2006, he has played shows with Gym Class Heroes, Chester French, Slick Rick, Raekwon, KRS-One, Black Moon, Black Milk, Desiigner, and Amine.
Arao Ameny is a writer and poet from Lira, Lango region, Northern Uganda. She is currently a Biography Writer and Editor at the Poetry Foundation. She has an MFA in Fiction Writing from U. of Baltimore, an MA in Journalism from Indiana University, and a BA in Political Science from U. of Indianapolis. Her poem “Home is a Woman” won The Southern Review’s 2020 James Olney Award; she was also a finalist for the UK-based 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and nominated for the 2021 Best New Poets.
Malena Dayen is an Argentinian opera singer and director. In 2020 she won the 1st Prize in Catapult Opera’s competition for innovation in opera and The Late Walk, a new opera commissioned by the Decameron Opera Coalition she directed for Bare opera has been inducted into The Library of Congress's Performing Arts COVID-19 Response Collection. Malena co-created The Presence of Odradek, a new experimental operatic work performed live online in May 2020.
Xirin is an Iranian, New-York based multidisciplinary artist whose work studies the tensions embodied within normative romance, emphasizing the ways idealistic notions of attachment cause pain. In her work (composed of performance, painting, video, and installation), she frequently uses the form of the duet to explore how larger social power structures locate themselves within intimate relationships and to investigate what it means to love men as a feminist within patriarchy. Recently, Xirin has performed at CUE Art Foundation, A.I.R. Gallery, the Jewish Museum, Knockdown Center, and Pioneer Works.
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Jelisa Jay Robinson is a Black American playwright from Houston, Texas. Her plays have been performed in Houston, Austin, New York, Chicago, Creede and San Marcos. She is a semifinalist for the Bucharest Inside the Beltway Virtual Residency (2021), and a finalist for La Mansion Baldwin Writers Residency in France (2020).
Rich Johnson is a performing artist, social entrepreneur, and creative technologist with a passion for synthesizing information and ideas into creative action, and bringing the arts to all. He is currently based in Barcelona, Spain and co-founded Centrifuge Arts, an interdisciplinary arts company creating film, theatre and mixed reality inspired by science.
Abinadi Meza is a Latinx-Indigenous (Wixárika) experimental filmmaker and sound artist based in Austin, Texas. Meza studied art, creative writing, and architecture; he makes experimental films, pirate radio, paintings/drawings, installations, and performances.
Zoey Watson is a writer, artist and zinester based in the Phoenix metro area. She recently launched Writing Club for Writers, a virtual group writing practice for anyone who wants to write, but isn’t.
Tanika I. Williams is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women’s use of movement, mothering and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdoms of ecology, spirituality and liberation. Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School and MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. Williams has been awarded residencies at New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, and BRIC and featured on 99.5 WBAI; and in Art in Odd Places; Creative Time; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC, among others.
Emília Duarte is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Mozambique-Maputo, born in Moscow-Russia; childhood and adolescence lived in Italy-Rome and it’s there where she gained love for art and beauty. Her art is the expression of the beauty of things in her surroundings - the built environment-Black Women in their daily lives, relationships and emotions. Emilia Duarte holds a degree in organizational psychology, a bachelor's degree in clinical psychology, a degree in journalism and has a background in fashion design.
L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer whose Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets-nominated work has been published in Tin House Online, Poet Lore, the minnesota review, Women of Appalachia Project’s anthology, Women Speak: Volume 6, and elsewhere. She won the Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Alumni Award, and is a 2021 Rattle Poetry Finalist. She earned a MFA in Poetry at Indiana University, where she served as Nonfiction Editor of the Indiana Review, and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where she was a Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Moore Fellow.
As a FUBU creative, Eboni is a storyteller driven to build a platform for communities of color by any means necessary. Recently completing her MFA in Documentary Production and Studies at the U. of North Texas, Eboni continues to diversify her portfolio with award-winning audio documentary, Good Soil, Good Souls: The Story of Bonton Farms, and is currently in the development phase of her community storytelling mobile app, West Dallas AR. As the new Engagement Manager at Black Public Media, Eboni is dedicated to building bridges of resources for her fellow BIPOC creatives.
Born and raised in New York City, Sonia Louise Davis is a visual artist, writer and performer. Her newest book, “slow and soft and righteous, improvising at the end of the world (and how we make a new one)” 2021, was published by Co—Conspirator Press, a publishing platform that operates out of the Feminist Center for Creative Work in Los Angeles. An honors graduate of Wesleyan University and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Sonia lives and works in Harlem. (Photo credit: Naima Green, 2021)
Bianca Janine Pettis is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked as a professional actress, playwright, visual artist, performance artist and sound artist. She holds a BA in Theatre from Antioch College, an MFA in Fine Art from the U, of MN and is currently pursuing an MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices at the CA Institute of the Arts. As part of the sound art duo Beatrix*Jar, she has toured the country leading hands-on Circuit Bending Workshops paired with live sound collage performances and events they call “Audio Playgrounds” inspired by Improvisational Theater and the Fluxus Art Movement.
Laura Drey is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Houston, TX. She weaves textiles in use in the commerce and farming industry—polypropylene sacking, burlap, and twist ties—into the strands of expansive narratives that explore themes of labor and movement, geography, government, race, class, and economics. Awards include a grant from The Warhol Foundation's Idea Fund Spark Grant for her performance reading project, Unsettled Space—by way of crops, and a nominated residency for 2021, Artist on Site with Asia Society Texas. IG: @Lauradreyart
Jennifer Perrine is the author of four award-winning books of poetry: Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their recent poems, stories, and essays appear in New Letters, The Seventh Wave Magazine, JuxtaProse, The Rumpus, Buckman Journal, and The Gay & Lesbian Review. Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon, where they co-host the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, teach creative writing to youth and adults, and serve as a diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) consultant.
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Greg Ballenger is a Diné artist from Gallup, NM. He utilizes paint, clay, concrete, fiber, and performance to express his culture and perspective. He is currently based in Santa Fe, NM.
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Sarah Sao Mai Habib is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and cultural worker. Her work engages the interaction between place, space, body, and the constructed borders within & between them. Most recently, Habib is focused on reawakening earth based wisdom & ritual as means for reparations on multiple scales. ig: @retrovoyance
Tina Chavera, a Mexican-American artist based in Denver, Colorado, draws on her native ancestral heritage to channel healing through a specialized crochet technique that binds natural fibers together. She holds an MFA at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, NY where she interned with Caledonia Curry (Swoon). She has had solo exhibitions in Brooklyn, NY and Denver with her stencil work featured in the pilot episode for the series Broad City. www.instagram.com/clearlycrocheted
Eriko Tsogo is an artist, curator, educator and DACA recipient born on the steppes of Mongolia – she is represented by Tappan Collective in Los Angeles and Saatchi in New York. Eriko has worked as the Creative Director at the Mongolian Culture and Heritage Center of Colorado where she founded and continues to run the “International Yurt Art Residency Program”. Eriko has exhibited at the Contemporary Mongolian Art Biennial: Innovating Tradition, Superfine Art Fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Saatchi's The Other Art Fairs. Her interactive installation “Mongovoo” debuted at Meow Wolf, Denver in 2021.
Daya Stanley is a visual artist from Chicago, Il, creating artistic works focused on reimagining the mundane as vibrant and flowing narratives. Her work has been a part of the Boston InPUBLIC Festival and Colorado Chautauqua's Art In The Park Wildfire Protection and Recovery Project.
Melika Dave is a multi-media artist and organizer working within the realms of painting, audio, poetry, and design. Melika is a 2021 Still Standing Artist in Residence and the founder of the emerging artist community Public Fruit.
Taylor Jackson is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Houston, Texas who focuses primarily on portrait illustration and 2D animation. Their artwork has been featured in galleries at Texas Southern University and Houston Community College.
i am a transdisciplinary healing artist, who swims in sonics, somatics, and psychedelics, in search of soul soothing. by virtue of music, movement, and medicinal magic, we make for multidimensional adventures that activate all five senses (and more !) to evoke euphoria in those we touch. together we integrate practices to guide our own art-making modes and methods for connection with self, one another, mother earth, and the pure source of creation.
Annie Y. Saldaña is a photographer and arts administrator with a BA in Graphics Arts from the U. of Puerto Rico and an MFA in Photography from Miami International University of Art and Design. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Puerto Rico, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Germany, attended various arts administrator and leadership programs and has received artist grants to further pursue creative projects. In addition to being a photographer, Saldaña has taught photography and graphic design and is currently Digitization Specialist at The General Archives of Puerto Rico.
Isabella Marie Garcia (Isa) is a writer and photographer who received her BA in English from Florida International University in 2019. She divides her time between working at LnS Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Coconut Grove, as an associate / artist liaison and as a freelance arts and culture writer whose written for publications such as The Miami New Times, The Art Newspaper, and So To Speak: A feminist journal of language and art. Her work incorporates both an internal and external form of psychogeography, keen on investigating sexuality, the queer experience, and the impact of systemic constraints on the expression of the self, @isamxrie on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter
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Hanna Wondmagegn is an Ethiopian-U.S. American currently based in North Carolina. Her work seeks to complicate narratives while uplifting story partners and viewers. She has traveled to 14 countries and across the United States, telling visual stories of the people she meets.
An Afro-Caribbean-non-binary person raised-by-their-grandmother, Francheska is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tulsa, OK. They are a fellow at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and recently received the Interchange Artist Grant by the Mid-America Arts Alliance for a project titled Ears to the Ground: An Ethnography of Material, Sound, and Conversations.
Imani Mixon was born and raised at the magnetic center of the world’s cultural compass — Detroit, Michigan. She is a long-form storyteller who is inspired by everyday griots who bear witness to their surroundings and report it back out. Equal parts urgent and essential, her multimedia work centers the experiences of Black women and independent artists.
A daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Stephanie Brown grew up in South Florida at the intersection of her Jamaican and Black American identities. Broadly her work is a reflection of her internal self/ancestral exploration. The work is a historical yet critical investigation of identity construction and implicit and explicit bias. Stephanie identifies as an interdisciplinary artist interweaving mediums to narrate a greater contextual story rooted in historical research and familial narratives that aim to empower people of color to discover themselves and take control of who they choose to be and become.
Jessa Jordan (noun) – A fearless, sarcastic,non-monogamous bisexual Black femme learning, living and loving in Philadelphia, PA, USA making ends meet as an independent model, actress,performer, writer, sexuality educator, indie event coordinator and ReproductiveJustice, Human Rights and Sex Worker’s Rights advocate. Published in the likesof Shout Your Abortion, HUSTLERMagazine, NASTYVol. 2, and SubvrtMag, she is now working on her first fiction novel, several short eroticastories, and the I’veGot A Playlist For That! podcast. Instagram | Twitter
Klaudia Kovács is an award-winning, Hungarian American immigrant Film & Theater Director. Kovács directed, produced, and wrote the story of TORN FROM THE FLAG, that participated in the Oscar competition in the "Best Documentary" category. The eight-time-award-winning picture is about the Cold War and the decline of Communism. Kovács and her work have been awarded with the Hero of the Freedom Fight Award by the President of the Republic of Hungary; a Certificate of Celebration for Contribution to Cinema, Art and Culture by the City of Los Angeles; and a project of hers was selected for AFI FEST’s Milestone Selection.
Alice Mizrachi is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York and Miami. Alice’s activist ideology is weaved into her studio, public art, and education practices. She has shown with the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and The Albright-Knox Museum; taught at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brown University, The Laundromat Project, and BRIC Arts while also being featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Architectural Digest. Alice is a graduate of Parsons School of Design. https://www.instagram.com/am_nyc/
ManMan is a taiko performance artist, genre-pushing composer, and Orff-certified educator who uplifts marginalized voices through artistic expression. Driven by their identity as a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, immigrant and a proud Hong Kong Chinese, ManMan fosters creative spaces that propergates inclusivity, celebrates cultural diversity, and builds a sustainable future for the marginalized communities worldwide.
Wi-Moto Nyoka is an award winning horror and sci-fi writer. She is the founder of Dusky Projects, creating and producing horror & sci-fi content for young adult and adult audiences. She holds a BFA in Music Theater from the University of the Arts, and an MFA for Performance & Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College.
2022 speakers
Sheetal Prajapati is an educator, artist and advisor. Currently she works as an arts advisor through her agency Lohar Projects, focusing on public engagement, artist projects, organizational planning and professional development. She serves on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in the MFA Fine Arts program and is the Board Chair of Art and Feminism. Previously, Sheetal spent fifteen years developing public programming, outreach, and artist-centered initiatives at organizations including Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Sheetal speaks about art and practice, public engagement, and pedagogy across the country in cultural spaces including Residency Unlimited, The Museum of Modern Art, The High Line, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Creative Time, and University of North Carolina Greensboro amongst others. As an artist, she has held residencies at Wassaic Project (New York), Pocoapoco (Mexico), Strange Foundation (New York), Elsewhere Museum (North Carolina) and Arquetopia Foundation (Mexico).
As a field advisor, Sheetal has served on review and selection panels for artist grants, residencies and fellowships at organizations like The Laundromat Project, Apex Art, The Joyce Foundation, Pew Center for the Arts and Heritage, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts amongst others. Through her agency Lohar Projects, she has worked with clients including Times Square Arts, Grounds for Sculpture, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Eyebeam Center for Technology. Part of her agency's work also includes developing and leading professional development seminars for artists at places like Creative Capital, KODA, and The Joan Mitchell Center. Sheetal received an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Northwestern University in History and Gender Studies. For more, visit sheetalprajapati.com.
Brandee Caoba is an artist, curator, and visual activist. Her curatorial practice introduces narratives that prompt dialogue on social change, raise political consciousness, and propose alternate ways of seeing and thinking. Her studio practice explores primal being, the collective unconscious, absence, shadow and the transformative power of masks and mythologies. As curator at SITE Santa Fe she has organized an extensive run of exhibitions over the past eight years, working with national and internationalto address issues of climate disruption, global displacement, privatized prison systems, and feminism.
Paddy Johnson is the founder of VVrkshop, an online platform that helps artists get the shows, residencies and grants of their dreams. She is the editor of the forthcoming book Impractical Spaces, the founding editor of the contemporary art blog Art F City (2005-2018), and co-founder of the Queens public art program PARADE (2018-2019). As the first recipient of the Arts Writers Grant for blogging in 2008, and a two-time nominee for Best Critic at the Rob Pruitt Awards in 2009 and 2010, Johnson is a recognized writer and online talent. She won the Village Voice Web Award for best Art Blog in 2010 and in 2011. In 2014, she was the subject of a VICE profile. Johnson has contributed to The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Economist, CNN, VICE, Gizmodo, Observer, Frieze Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Art Newspaper, and Hyperallergic. She was a columnist for Artnet, The L Magazine, and Art in America. Lecturing across the country, Johnson’s talks take place at venues such as Yale, The Chicago Art Institute, Rutgers, Columbia University, The Museum of Fort Worth, the De La Cruz Foundation and the SXSW conference. She teaches new media art and writing at Parsons and NJCU. She lives in New York with her partner.
Carolina is a Bolivian-born multi-media artist. Her artistic practice fuses video installation and oral storytelling with fiber and craft techniques. Her work traces flows of capital–cartography, maritime trade, cash crops, and industrial metals– across bodies-of-water from the perspectives of the native, gendered, and racialized bodies that move it. That is, she re-embodies capital exposing how contemporary markets insidiously hide historical oppression. Imperialism to colonialism, and now capitalism. Her installations are minted, projected, gilded, casted, woven, beaded, filmed, stepped-on, and crushed, but always spoken-for and register at various levels of action & passivity, and visibility & representation.
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Evelyn is the co-founder and COO at Ruby Money. She was previously CMO at Sunrun, Head of Design Strategy at Capital One, and a lecturer at the Stanford d.school. She also runs her teaching side-hustle, Become a Kickass Facilitator.
2021 fellows
FAYLITA (she/her/they/them) is a queer Afro-Latinx activist, writer, and interdisciplinary artist born in Gardena, CA, but raised in Central Texas. They are the former Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, a 2020-2022 Texas Touring Artist, and the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry and others. They have been awarded fellowships and residencies from Tin House, Lambda Literary, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Broadway Advocacy, and the Right of Return USA, the first fellowship designed exclusively for previously incarcerated artists. Hicks received an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University. They are represented by literary agent Annie Hwang of Ayesha Pande Literary and Pande Lecture Management.
Haydee Alonso is a multidisciplinary artist based in Juarez/El Paso. She completed her MFA in Jewelry and Metal from the Royal College of Art and earned a BFA in Metals and Sculpture from the University of Texas at El Paso.
Her work has been included in the Texas Biennial, New York City Jewelry Week, Munich Jewellery Week and has been acquired by the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts. She has exhibited in institutions such as The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, the Women’s Museum, Dallas, 516 Arts, Albuquerque and Kunsthal KAdE, Netherlands,
Currently, Haydee designs/fabricates contemporary jewelry for her brand AYAYAY! and continues to develop various conceptual bodies of work where she continues to explore creative solutions for a divided space.
Daisy Quezada Ureña is a visual artist and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Within her practice, she integrates clay and social engagement as a process of resistance and resurgence. She talks to identity and place in relation to social structures that cross imposed borders. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally: Denver Art Museum, New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Icheon Ceramics Festival, and Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. A co-founder of Present Cartographers, a collective invested in creating platforms for artists working within themes of immigration and land, they recently published Terreno: Borderland Linguistics and bosque brotante.
D.E.E.P. is an internationally-known writer, educator, activist, performer, and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Houston, Texas. Formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World, Her most recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination and was named a finalist for the 2019 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award and an honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. A German translation, under the title "Berichtenswert," is set to be released in Fall 2021 by Elif Verlag. She lives and creates in Houston, TX. For more information visit LiveLifedeep.com
Amber Doe holds a BFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a recipient of the 2021 Abbey Awards Fellowship and a recipient of 2017 and 2016 Lyman Fund Grant. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Museums, Seattle, the Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, The Irwin House Gallery, Detroit, The LeRoy Neiman Art Center, New York, Gabriel Rolt Gallery, Amsterdam, La Ira de Dios, Buenos Aires, MCLA Gallery, MA, and a solo performance exhibition at The Thief Hotel, Oslo.
Ana is a singer/songwriter and producer originally from Colombia who started her career in the Colombian heavy metal scene. After moving to Austin, TX she became interested in traditional Latin music. Since then she’s been performing locally in different acoustic ensembles. At the same time she developed her studies in music production and started working on her solo project, developing a very personal approach to her craft. She is also the cofounder of two music projects. The first is 1020 Music Lab, a company dedicated to creating music for audiovisual projects, advertising and institutional videos. And the second is RadioCasetera.com, a digital media project dedicated to creating podcasts, interviews and articles for Latin America.
Sean Paul spent 17 years in NYC building his art career while working in costume and fashion industries. His work was acquired by the Albuquerque Museum for their permanent collection and exhibition “American Jewelry of New Mexico” 2018. He won third place Best of Show at the Amarillo Art Museum’s Biennial 600: Textile + Fiber 2019. A 2020 recipient of the Fulcrum Fund and ArtistRelief.org emergency grants. Gallegos is currently studying tablet and tapestry weaving as both an evolution to his sneaker sculpture practice and a connection to his paternal lineage of New Mexican weavers. Gallegos has been an Albuquerque based artist for 9 years.
Christian Gering is a multi-media artist hailing from Katishyta (San Felipe Pueblo) and the Pi’pil people of El Salvador. His creative inspiration is linked to his passion for movement. As a professional mountain runner for Salomon, he takes his experiences of running up peaks, down arroyos, and across a variety of landscapes and translates those feelings, emotions, ideas, and visions and manifests them into the physical world. A creative in motion leaving behind imprints of imagination and inspiration.
S. Erin is an interdisciplinary poet, storyteller, and scholar. Author of Glory to All Fleeting Things, this year she is also a 2021 Jack Straw Writers Fellow and 2021 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Writer in Residence. Her other recent honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference–Rona Jaffe Foundation, Crosstown Arts, and Callaloo. Batiste is a reader for The Rumpus and her own Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net nominated poems are anthologized and appear internationally in wildness, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Puerto del Sol among other decorated journals.
Andrea was born and raised on the California coast. Urban environments rich with murals and diversity influenced her early palette and affection for community histories and social justice. After she received her BA from the University of California at Berkeley in pre-law, she was able to commit to her purpose in the arts. As a Chicana, she found home in Santa Fe - a place that values multiculturalism, multilingualism and cultural heritage. To date, she produces artwork and installations that focus on ecological relationships, and aspects of transformation. She is represented by King Galleries and uses bold mark making to proclaim her reverence for the lands and elements of the southwest.
Diego Medina Diego is from one of the original families from the historic Mesquite district, the old Pueblo for the Piro-Manso-Tiwa tribe near Las Cruces. The tribe was formed from all of the Native communities that were living together in the missions of Paso del Norte—the area between Juarez, Mexico and Las Cruces—which included a distinctive and special fusion of various Indigenous cultures that were either living in the region already, or brought to the missions, often as slaves. Diego mixes mythology with elements of prayer to create visual narratives, often accompanied by poetry, that supplant the cultural history and imagery within the present landscape. Diego has worked both as a public school teacher and as a museum educator for the past 6 years. He currently works at the Indian Arts Research Center and also designs and photographs for Shy Natives, a Native owned clothing company. instagram: @daydreamboy
Shayla is a documentary/commercial photographer, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Growing up in California, Shayla had little exposure to her Native heritage; this sparked a curiosity within her that continues to propel her work today. Her mother’s genealogical investigation was a launching pad that began her journey to establish a connection with her ancestors and their ways of living. “It can be difficult to take a vision from paper to finished project. I have the ability to help people tell their stories and providing that service is a way to share instances of beauty with the world.”
Jeremy Thomas grew up in the Midwest. In High School he participated in the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute working with renowned artists, Deloss McGraw, and Robert Zakanitch/Rahway. He holds a BFA from the College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM, where he interned with artist Tom Joyce. His inflated sculptures are included in institutions such as the Albright-Knox Gallery and the Fredrick Wiesman Art Foundation. He has produced public commissions for organizations such as the University of Arkansas, and the W C Bradley Corporation, and had solo exhibitions in places such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Munich. Jeremy is currently working on his first solo exhibition in the Republic of Korea and is represented by five galleries on three continents.
Lynnette Haozous is an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe (Chiricahua Apache), and is part Diné, and Taos Pueblo. She grew up living on all three of her tribal nations, learning a unique blend of perspectives, intersectionalities, traditions, and experiences. She works in paintings, murals, installations, community art workshops, and previously acting on stage and film. Haozous has a Bachelors of Social Work degree and often blends her social work and art through teaching. Haozous is currently exhibiting at MOCNA in Santa, Fe and the Harwood Museum in Taos. Haozous is also currently doing a year long apprenticeship, mentored by artist, muralist, Nanibah Chacon, through the Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship 2020.
Julia is a multidisciplinary artist based in Houston, TX, whose work teases profundity and absurdity from the everyday and examines the relationship between the intimate and the public. Her performances, videos, installations, and works on paper have been exhibited throughout the United States and in Latin America and Europe and her residency awards have included the Santa Fe Art Institute, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, and Lawndale Art Center. In 2019, she received a grant from the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures to co-create MantecaHTX, the nation's first online directory of Latinx creatives. In addition to being a studio artist, Barbosa Landois has also worked as a professor, exhibitions coordinator, grant writer, garden educator, and math tutor.
Jaewook is an artist, writer, amateur scientist, semi-philosopher, and sometime curator. Lee is the founder and director of Mindful Joint, an annual symposium that focuses on non-hierarchical knowledge sharing in contemporary art. Lee has participated in exhibitions, talks, performances, and screenings at Hong-Gah Museum in Taiwan, Art Sonje Center in Seoul , the Guggenheim Museum in New York, MEINBLAU Projektraum in Berlin, among others. Sculpture Magazine featured the oeuvre of Lee’s work in May 2017. Lee received MFAs from Carnegie Mellon University and the School of Visual Arts. Lee previously taught at the University of Chicago, the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and SUNY Old Westbury. Lee is an assistant professor of New Media Art at Northern Arizona University.
Arista has a BFA in photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. After completing a BFA, she attended the College of Art and Design at Lesley University where she obtained a MFA in Fine Art Photography. Since 2016, she teaches full time at the Institute of American Indian Art. She continues to work in alternative photographic processes and approaches while tackling large issues in feminine and multi-racial representation, domestic spheres and intimate relationships.
Carolina is a Bolivian-born multi-media artist. Her artistic practice fuses video installation and oral storytelling with fiber and craft techniques. Her work traces flows of capital–cartography, maritime trade, cash crops, and industrial metals– across bodies-of-water from the perspectives of the native, gendered, and racialized bodies that move it. That is, she re-embodies capital exposing how contemporary markets insidiously hide historical oppression. Imperialism to colonialism, and now capitalism. Her installations are minted, projected, gilded, casted, woven, beaded, filmed, stepped-on, and crushed, but always spoken-for and register at various levels of action & passivity, and visibility & representation.
Raised between a mother from South Korea and a father from the Bronx, Cory Feder has always found herself amongst the in between of culture, identity and language. A storyteller at heart, she uncovers the magic hidden in the mundane by reweaving threads of her experience into a fence-less dialect. This excavation takes place in various mediums from drawing and sculpture to music and animation. Existing halfway between America and Korea, Feder has been explicitly marked as “the other”. Her stories explore how one’s relationship to the other is a mirror to one’s relationship to the self. Whether it is between cities, material or the self and other, she operates from a space of perpetual transit, transforming meaning from both public mythologies and personal dreams to communicate in a form that is inclusive of all beings.
2021 speakers
Marquise Stillwell, the founder and principal of Openbox, created a company that represents a culmination of 20+ years of experience. The Openbox vision is, above all,people-centered: focused on improving the lives of people in the communities its clients serve, whether through extensive business design work; deep resources for design research and innovation; or film. Marquise also brings his passion for supporting diverse cultures and bringing positive change through his many philanthropic and creative activities, from teaching at Danish design schools—CIID in Copenhagen and the Kaos Pilot in Aarhus; to co-founding Deem Journal, a publication focused on design and social practice; and also collaborating with his Openbox colleague Petter Ringbom on films including Shield and Spear (2014) and The New Bauhaus (2019). Marquise serves as a board member for the Lowline Underground Park, Stae, Artmatr, and Urban Ocean Lab. He is also a member of the High Line Advisory Committee.
Lauren Ruffin is Fractured Atlas’s co CEO and the founder of Crux. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. In her spare time, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code, and can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.
Marla Allison is a visual artist producing artwork inspired by traditions, cultural displacement and the human experience. Originally from Laguna Pueblo, NewMexico, she is committed to participating in artist residencies that facilitatecollaborations with artists from around the world. In her words, “Through thecollaboration of artists, free thinkers and open-minded creative people, we canstrengthen each other and build greater bridges…no matter where you come fromor how you start, if you set a journey to learn, you will inspire and understand theessence of a strong human race.”Allison maintains a lifestyle committed to travel and participation in culturalexchanges that have yielded lectures, murals, illustrations, and art exhibitions.Allison has produced art in Bristol, UK; Abu Dhabi, UAE; Riyadh, in the Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia; Manama, Bahrain; Budapest, Hungary; and more locally in the USA incities such as Salem, MA, Washington DC, New York, NY, Providence, RI, Tucson andPhoenix, AZ, and New Mexico.You can find Marla’s work in Santa Fe, NM and Scottsdale, AZ at ww.kinggalleries.com, Tulsa, OK at www.lovettsgallery.com, Rain Maker Gallery in the UK at www.rainmakerart.co.uk, and the Abu Dhabi Art Hub in Abu Dhabi, UAE at www.adah.ae, or you can view more on her website www.marlaallison.com.
Jae Rhim Lee is a transdisciplinary artist, designer, and entrepreneur. She holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wellesley College and is the founder and CEO of funeral startup Coeio, Inc. In her early work as a grad student at MIT, she built systems that reworked basic human processes before turning to work on a compelling new plan for the final human process: decomposition. Her Infinity Burial Project explores the choices we face after death and how our choices reflect our denial or acceptance of death's physical implications. She's been developing a new strain of fungus, the Infinity Mushroom, that feeds on and remediates the industrial toxins we store in our bodies and convert our bodies into nutrients. She is a Creative Capital awardee, a Ted Fellow and Lecturer and Fellow at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (affectionately known as “the d.school”).
Kerri Schlottman is the Director of Institutional Advancement at Creative Capital where she manages the development department and oversees strategic initiatives and partnerships that generate investment into the creative economy. A native Detroiter, Kerri has served local, national, and international arts communities since 2000 in a variety of organizations, including ART21, Apexart, and Detroit Artists Market. She has been interviewed extensively about her arts and fundraising experiences, and has been an invited speaker at major conferences focusing on culture, technology, and education, including SXSWEdu, Games for Change, and the National Arts Education Association. Kerri holds a Master’s degree in Visual Culture from Wayne State University in Detroit and is currently a Masters of Legal Studies student at Arizona State University. She is also a published novelist, has participated in numerous performance art projects, and is a lover of documentary films.
Alicia Inez Guzmán currently lives and works in Santa Fe. Her writing focuses on Indigenous and Chicanx art practices and histories of land use in the Southwest. She has taught over the past seven years in modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the Americas at the University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, the University of Buffalo, and Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Alicia has also served as a consultant with various museums about exhibitions and collections and written several catalog essays, curated shows featuring queer artists and artists of color, as well as worked in publishing as the senior editor of New Mexico Magazine, where she regularly sought writers of color and authentic storytelling. She is a 2017 recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant for her website Tierra Firme Projects and a 2019 recipient of a Fulcrum Fund.
Elaine Grogan Luttrull, CPA-PFS, AFC® is a financial educator and the founder of Minerva Financial Arts whose work builds financial empowerment in creative individuals and organizations through workshops and one-on-one advising. Her workshops have been featured nationally by funders, state and local arts councils, and colleges and universities that serve creative individuals. Elaine teaches at the Columbus College of Art & Design, where she served as the Department Head for Business & Entrepreneurship from 2014-2018. Previously, Elaine served as the Director of Financial Analysis for The Juilliard School and in the Transaction Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young in New York. She is the author of Arts & Numbers (Agate, B2 2013), and she contributed regularly to Professional Artist magazine. She is based in Columbus, Ohio where she serves on the boards of the Short North Alliance, Healing Broken Circles, and the Lark Play Development Center.
Olivia Brown is a mixed Black femme from Tulsa, OK. She is a maker and a do-er that advocates for the arts and creativity through her practice, educational outreach, and design thinking. Olivia believes in experimenting with New Media (University of North Texas, BFA 2015) to push the boundaries of what has already been created and to address the current moment with a fitting medium. Her work explains the things she doesn't know about the world to herself and shares that learning with others. She intends for these efforts to increase human connection and understanding. Olivia currently lives and works in Santa Fe, NM as a Senior Artist with MEOW WOLF, an immersive arts company. There, she focuses on the potential of immersive installation on a large and public scale and grows her skills in collaborative art-making.