Biennial Program Participants

Sergio A. Aguillón-Mata, Mexican-American Author (Cincinnati, OH)

Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Sergio Aguillón-Mata is a Mexican-American author, and non-profit administrator. He studied Hispanic Philology in El Colegio de México and joined the Potsdam University seminar on Romance Languages with the sponsorship of the German Service of Foreign Academic Exchange., Aguillón-Mata published in Mexico the collections of fiction Quién escribe (2004), Tratado (2015), and Envés (2016). Aguillón-Mata has been a Cincinnati resident since the summer of 2012.

Jason Allen-Paisant, Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester (Manchester, UK)

Exhibition: Natural World
Member Preview Opening, Reception, & Artist Conversation for Natural World, Artist Talk by Jason Allen-Paisant

​​Jason Allen-Paisant is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. His work explores, among other things, the politics of time in Afro-diasporic politics and worldbuilding. His forthcoming monograph, Engagements with Aimé Césaire (Oxford University Press, 2023) is a philosophical study of poetry from the perspective of African metaphysics. He is the author of Thinking with Trees (Carcanet Press, 2021), winner of the Poetry category of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and of Self-Portrait as Othello (forthcoming in 2023 from Carcanet Press). His nonfiction book Scanning the Bush: Six Stories about Black Bodies in Landscape will be published in 2024 by Hutchinson Heinemann. 

Amara Antilla, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Senior Curator at Large at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH)

Curator: Baseera Khan: Weight on History

Amara Antilla is the Senior Curator at Large at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati where she has organized exhibitions and new commissions with artists including Marwa Arsanios, Hellen Ascoli, Kahlil Robert Irving, Steffani Jemison, and Nora Turato, among others. Prior to the CAC, Antilla worked at the Guggenheim Museum in New York where she focused on international contemporary art since 1960. Antilla studied art history at Tufts University; the Museum School; and Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). (Photo Credit: David Heald)

Carissa Barnard, FotoFocus Director of Curatorial Strategy (Cincinnati, OH)

Curator: Liz Roberts: Post Blonde

Carissa Barnard is the FotoFocus Cincinnati Director of Curatorial Strategy. Since joining FotoFocus in 2014, Barnard has curated several shows including Wide Angle: Photography Out of Bounds and Chris Engman: Prospect and Refuge, both featured in the FotoFocus Biennial 2018: Open Archive. She previously served as Director of Exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati from 2004 to 2013, where she organized exhibitions with leading contemporary artists and curators such as ON! Handcrafted Digital Playgrounds (2013) with OFF Festival founder Hector Ayuso, Spectacle: The Music Video (2012), and Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand (2010). Prior to that, she was Director of the Mockbee, Cincinnati’s largest alternative venue for the presentation, discussion, and celebration of contemporary art and ideas. Barnard holds a B.F.A. from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. from the University of Cincinnati DAAP, School of Art. (Photo Credit: Dale Doyle)

Ylinka Barotto, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Independent Curator (Houston, Texas)

Curator: Baseera Khan: Weight on History
Conversation with Baseera Khan and Ylinka Barotto

Ylinka Barotto is an independent curator. From 2019 to 2022, she was Associate Curator at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University where she organized exhibitions and programming with national and international artists, notably: Li E. Harris; Jasmine Hearn; Kapwani Kiwanga; Sondra Perry; Kameelah Janan Rasheed; Edra Soto; Clarissa Tossin, and Charisse Pearlina Weston, amongst others. Barotto was also involved in the expansion of Rice Public Art through acquisitions and commissions. Prior to the Moody, Barotto served as Assistant Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum where she worked on modern and postwar retrospectives and contemporary exhibitions. Barotto contributed to shaping and diversifying the Guggenheim’s permanent collection through acquisitions of emerging artists. Barotto received an M.A. in curatorial studies at Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, Italy. (Photo Credit: David Heald)

Makeda Best, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Curator: On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith
Discussion of On The Line: Documents of Risk and Faith, Keynote Lecture

Makeda Best, Ph.D., is a curator, writer and historian of photography. Best currently serves as the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums. Her exhibitions include: Time is Now – Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America (2018), Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art (2019) and Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970 (2021). She published Elevate the Masses – Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in Nineteenth Century America (Penn State University Press) in 2020. She was also co-editor of Conflict, Identity and Protest in American Art (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). Her current book projects explore the intersection between photography, gender, race, labor, and ecological issues. She has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs and journals. Best holds an M.F.A. in studio photography from the California Institute of the Arts and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. (Photo Credit: Alonso Nichols)

JEB (Joan E. Biren), Photographer, Filmmaker, and Activist (Washington, D.C.)

Exhibition: Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s
Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s

JEB (Joan E. Biren) is an internationally known artist and activist. She has been chronicling the lives of LGBTQ+ people for more than 50 years in photographs and films. In 1979, Biren self-published her first book, Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians signaling “a radical new way of seeing—moving lesbian lives from the margins to the center and reversing a history of invisibility.” It was reissued in 2021 by Anthology Editions. Her second book, Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front, was released in 1987. A retrospective exhibition of her photographic work, Queerly Visible: 1971–1991, traveled around the country for several years starting in 1997. She was awarded the commission for a site-specific installation entitled Being Seen Makes A Movement Possible that was on the façade of the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City from 2019 to 2020. Through her public speaking, JEB has actively challenged the way that we understand photographic history and speak about image-making. She has been featured in many notable publications, including The New York Times, Vogue, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. Her work is represented in many public collections including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Germany. (Photo Credit: Leigh H. Mosley)

Lizzi Bougatsos, Artist, Experimental Musician and Lyricist (Queens, NY)

Film Screening and Conversation

Lizzi Bougatsos (b.1974, Queens, NY) is an internationally recognized experimental musician, lyricist, and visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. Selected exhibitions include institutions such as The Sao Paulo Biennale, Hauser & Wirth, American Fine Arts Co., TRAMPS, The Breeder (Greece), Museo d’arts Contemporanea di Roma, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst (Oslo, Norway), White Columns, Performance Space NY, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Selected performances include “Concert for Yoko Ono, Washington and the World,“ at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and “I am here, Where are you: On Vocal Performance” at the Bergen Kunsthall. In 2014, Bougatsos performed an adaptation of John Cage’s 4’33 in conjunction with John Cage: There Will Never Be Silence, at MoMA where she symphonically melted an ice cube with her bare hands. MoMA/PS1 Records subsequently released her work, ENERGY CHANCE. In 2016, Bougatsos recorded in the original barn where Harry Bertoia fabricated his metal sculptures, and later performed the score live at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City (Atmosphere for Enjoyment: Harry Bertoia’s Environment of Sound, 2016). Bougatsos collaborated with artists such as Lonnie Holley, Kim Gordon, Rita Ackermann, Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s Ashram singers at Knockdown Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Penny Slinger and Dara Friedman among others. Bougatsos and her band Gang Gang Dance, spanning two decades now, led the 8/8/08 BOADRUM, a collaboration with the legendary band BOREDOMS where she sang with 88 drummers. Bougatsos is also the second half of punk noise outfit I.U.D. with Sadie Laska. Her work is included in the public collections of the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway and The Dikeou Collection in Denver, Colorado. (Photo Credit: Tim DeWit)

Esther Callahan, Co-Artistic Director at Arts + Rec and Independent Curator (Minneapolis, MN)

Exhibition: These Things Are Connected
Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Esther Callahan is the Co-Artistic Director at Arts + Rec, US in Minneapolis, MN, an independent curator, feminist scholar, and a practitioner of joy. Callahan wears many hats including being the 2021 Great Meadows Foundation Critic-in-Residence and Board Member at Franconia Sculpture Park and Emerging Curators Institute. She has worked as a member of the Board of Directors and Communications Officer for the African American Education and Empowerment Advisory Board, Curatorial Mentor and former Co-Director of the Emerging Curators Institute, Curatorial Affairs Fellow and co-founder of the Curatorial Advisory Committee at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Board Member and Chairman of the Board for Art Shanty Projects, Opinions Editor at City College News, multiple roles at Free Arts Minnesota, and Co-Manager of Carrotmob Minneapolis. 

Callahan received a B.A. in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies with a certificate in Social Justice Leadership from the University of Minnesota. During her time at MIA, Callahan co-curated Mapping Black Identities and Mapping Black Identities: 3 Films. More recently she co-curated Stand Up Prints at Highpoint Center for Printmaking. She has been a featured speaker, moderator, and panelist at the University of Minnesota, Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Louisville Visual Arts, University of Louisville, Undermain, and Soundwall Publications, among others. Callahan prioritizes diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in her curatorial practice. (Photo Credit: Ana Taylor Photography)

Matt Distel, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Exhibitions Director, The Carnegie (Covington, Kentucky)

Curator: These Things Are Connected
Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Matt Distel is the Exhibitions Director for The Carnegie in Covington, KY. Prior to joining The Carnegie, Distel was an Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art for the Cincinnati Art Museum, Executive Director of Visionaries + Voices and the co-founder and director of Country Club, a commercial gallery based in Cincinnati and Los Angeles. A Cincinnati native, Distel has been organizing exhibitions since 1994 with a particular focus on artists from the region. From 2003 to 2007 he was the Associate Curator with the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Distel has curated and organized numerous exhibitions and installations including projects with SIMPARCH, Kendell Geers, Guy Ben-ner, Katerina Burin, Temporary Services, The Yes Men, Beth Campbell, Alexis Rockman, Jay Bolotin, Shana Moulton, Future Retrieval, Terry Berlier, Design 99, Courttney Cooper, Ryan McGinness, Ellen Berkenblit, Edie Harper, Tom Wesselmann, and Atlas Group. (Photo Credit: Hailey Bollinger/CityBeat)

John Edmonds, Artist and Photographer (New York, NY)

Exhibition: Natural World
Member Preview Opening, Reception, & Artist Conversation for Natural World

John Edmonds (b. 1989) is an American artist and photographer who first came to public recognition with his intimate portraits of lovers, close friends, and strangers. He earned his M.F.A. in Photography from Yale University and his B.F.A. at the Corcoran School of Arts & Design. His work explores themes of identity, community, desire and belonging. Collections include: The Brooklyn Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Whitney Museum of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum of Modern Art, New York, SFMoMA, Rubell Collection, National Gallery of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, RISD Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery. Edmonds has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; and the Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Recent exhibitions of his work include Black Modernism – Africa and the Avantgarde at the Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Münster, Germany; God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at David Zwirner, New York; Ex-Africa at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, France; and The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time at the Brooklyn Museum. Edmonds has taught at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is Visiting Lecturer on Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. 

Mitch Epstein, Photographer (New York, NY)

Exhibition: On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith
Discussion of On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith

Mitch Epstein (b. 1952, Holyoke, MA) is a photographer who helped pioneer fine-art color photography in the 1970s. His photographs are in numerous major museum collections, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art; The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Tate Modern in London.

His new series, Property Rights, was exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York and  Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne in the fall of 2019 and on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include: Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2020), Museum Helmond, Netherlands (2019), Andreas Murkudis, Berlin (2017); Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (2016); Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2016-17); as well as Fondation A Stichting in Brussels (2013); Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY (2012); Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (2012); Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris (2011); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2011); and Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne (2011).

In 2013, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of Epstein’s American Power photographic series. A collaboration between Epstein and cellist Eric Friedlander, the performance combined original live music, storytelling, video, and projected photographs and archival material. Epstein and Friedlander also performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2014), and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015).

Epstein’s fourteen books include Property Rights (Steidl,2021),  Sunshine Hotel (Steidl/PPP Editions, 2019); Rocks and Clouds (Steidl, 2017); New York Arbor (Steidl, 2013); Berlin (Steidl/The American Academy in Berlin, 2011); American Power (Steidl, 2009); Mitch Epstein: Work (Steidl, 2006); Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988 (Steidl, 2005); and Family Business (Steidl, 2003), winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.

In 2020, Mitch Epstein was inducted as an Academician to the National Academy of Design. In 2011, Epstein won the Prix Pictet for American Power. Among his other awards are the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).

Epstein has worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad (2003), Mississippi Masala (1991), and Salaam Bombay! (1988). He lives with his family in New York City.

Marisa Espe, Curator (Hudson Valley, NY)
Reception and Talk for Liz Roberts: Post Blonde

Marisa Espe is a curator based in the Hudson Valley, New York. She currently works at Steven Holl Architects and ‘T’ Space Gallery (Rhinebeck, NY). She received her M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY) and B.A. in History of Art from The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH). In 2014 she co-founded MINT, an artist-run gallery, studio, and performance venue in Columbus, OH where she organized exhibitions and programs until 2017. Past appointments include September Gallery (Hudson, NY), Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), and the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH). Recent curatorial projects include an exhibition about the publication Pamphlet Architecture; a new commissioned video by artist Amanda Pohan Turner; a group exhibition featuring works by Roger Brown, Agnes Denes, and Fred Sandback; and a forthcoming blog Turtle Turtle. 

Adama Delphine Fawundu, Artist and Assistant Professor at Columbia University (Brooklyn, NY)

Exhibition: ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory
Discussion of ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist of Mende, Krim, Bamileke and Bubi descent. Her distinct visual language centers around themes of indigenization, and ancestral memory, enriches and expands the photographic canon. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora (Eye & I Incorporated, 2017). For decades, she has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her awards include the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, New York Foundation for The Arts Photography Fellowship and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant, among others. She is a 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition finalist. Fawundu was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory to participate in the 100 Years | 100 Women Project / The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium (2019–2021). Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Princeton University Museum;, Bryn Mawr College; The Petrucci Family Foundation of African American Art, Asbury, NJ; The Brooklyn Historical Society; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; The David C. Driskell Art Collection, College Park, MD; and number of private collections. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. 

Cheryl Finley, FotoFocus Guest Curator, Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History at Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)

Curator: ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory
Discussion of ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory

Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., is Inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History at Spelman College and Associate Professor, Cornell University. Committed to engaging strategic partners to transform the art and culture industry, she leads an innovative undergraduate program at the world’s largest historically Black college and university consortium in preparing the next generation of African American museum and visual arts professionals. Finley is a curator, contemporary art critic, and award-winning author noted for Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton University Press, 2018), the first in-depth study of the most famous image associated with the memory of slavery—a schematic engraving of a packed slave ship hold—and the art, architecture, poetry, and film it has inspired since its creation in Britain in 1788. Her current research projects, Black Art Futures and Mapping Art History at HBCUs, harness the power of Art History and the promise of technology to revolutionize the art industry. (Photo Credit: Gediyon Kifle)

Lola Flash, Photographer (New York, NY)

Exhibition: Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s
Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s

Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than four decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions.  An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 Kissing Doesn’t Kill poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide.

Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA, the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum and the National African American Museum of History and Culture. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective and on the board at QueerIArt.

Dara Friedman, Artist (Miami, FL and New York, NY)

Exhibition: On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith
Film Screening and Conversation

Dara Friedman is a German born artist and filmmaker working in Miami and New York. She uses everyday sights and sounds as the raw material for film and video artworks that reverberate with emotional energy. With a background in structural film and dance, Friedman’s cinema calls for a radical reduction of the medium to its most essential material properties. In place of linear storylines, her films typically portray straightforward actions and situations that unfold according to predetermined rules and guidelines. Yet for all of Friedman’s strenuous logic and discipline, her approach remains unabashedly sensual and emotive. Bearing rich imagery and a strong emphasis on bodily experience, her films generate moments of high-pitched, cathartic intensity as well as serene, even euphoric interludes.

Among her numerous solo shows are The Tiger’s Tail, San Carlo Cremona, Italy (2022); Dara Friedman: Temple Door, Harburger Kunstverein (2019); a mid-career survey Dara Friedman: Perfect Stranger, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017-2018), accompanied by a catalog raisonée published by Prestel; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit, MI (2014); Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, NC (2012); Public Art Fund New York, NY (2007); Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017); Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy (2002); Supportico Lopez, Berlin, Germany (2017); Galleria Franco Noero, Turin, Italy (2018), and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, CA (2014, 2017). Major public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; French National Collection, and Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf. Friedman is a recipient of the Rome Prize (1999) and  a Guggenheim Fellow (2019). Currently in production with Ecologist Josh Smith: River Hill, Silo City, Buffalo, University at Buffalo Arts Collaboratory, an active monumental garden and labyrinth transforming a quarter acre of brownfield with hardy pollinators and speaking to the meander of the Buffalo River.

Daniel Fuller, Independent Writer and Curator (Atlanta, GA)

Curator: These Things Are Connected
Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Daniel Fuller is an independent writer and curator. He has worked as the curator at Atlanta Contemporary, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art of Maine College of Art, co-Director of Publication Studio Portland, Senior Program Specialist at the Philadelphia Exhibition Initiative as part of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and Curator of New Media at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY. Since 2004, Fuller has curated over 175 exhibitions. These exhibitions have taken place in diverse sites such as museums, art fairs, ice fishing shacks, a swap meet, the JumboTron of a minor-league hockey stadium, public access television, the caboose of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, and on VH1’s Love & Hip Hop. 

Fuller received his B.A. in Painting from Towson University and his M.A. in Museum Studies from Syracuse University. He has written for Artforum, ARTnews, Art:21, Afterall, Art Asia Pacific, Art in America, Art Papers, The Brooklyn Rail, Burnaway, C Magazine, Crease, Frieze, Kaleidoscope, The Wine Zine, and recently wrote a 032c cover-story on Gucci Mane.

Ariel Goldberg, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Independent Writer and Curator (New York, NY)
Curator: Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s
Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s

Ariel Goldberg is a writer, curator, and photographer based in New York City. Goldberg’s books include The Estrangement Principle (Nightboat Books, 2016) and The Photographer (Roof Books, 2015), and their short-form writing has most recently appeared in Lucid Knowledge: On the Currency of the Photographic Image, Afterimage Journal, e-flux, Jewish Currents, Artforum, and Art in America. Goldberg has curated public programs for over ten years at venues including The Poetry Project and Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center. With Noam Parness they co-curated Uncanny Effects: Robert Giard’s Currents of Connection (2020) at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Their work has been supported by the New Jewish Culture Fellowship, New York Public Library Research Rooms, the Franklin Furnace Fund, and SOMA in Mexico City. They are a 2020 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for their book-in-progress on trans and queer image cultures of the late 20th century. Goldberg has taught photography, writing, and contemporary art practices at universities including Bard College, Parsons School of the Arts, The New School, and Rutgers University. (Photo credit: Diana Solís)

Cameron Granger, Artist and Filmmaker (Columbus, OH)

Curator: These Things Are Connected
Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Cameron A. Granger came up in Cleveland, OH alongside his mother, Sandra, inheriting both her love of soul music, and habit of apologizing too much. As a video artist, he uses his work as both a site for memory making and as means to strategize new ways of remembrance in our age of mass media.

His recent projects include The Get Free Telethona 24 hour livestream community fundraiser sponsored by Red Bull Arts; Pearl,a body of collaborative works with his mother at Ctrl+Shft in Oakland; and A library, for you,a traveling community library most recently housed at ikattha project space in Bombay, India. He is a 2017 alumni of the Skowhegan School for Paint & Sculpture and a current artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. 

Myra Greene, Artist and Photographer (Atlanta, GA)

Exhibition: These Things Are Connected
Artist Talk

Myra Greene currently resides in Atlanta, GA where she is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Art & Visual Culture and Director of the Photography Program at Spelman College.  Through her last bodies of artistic work, Greene utilizes the media of photography and fiber to explore representations of race and the body. At the center of her practice is a consideration of how our understanding of color is completely dependent on context – materially, culturally, and historically. Recent exhibitions including Spectrum at the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts, continues these interests, interweaving three different bodies of work that present a diverse yet unified consideration of our relationship to and interpretation of color, race, and identity.    

Named the 2021 Georgia State Fellow from South Arts, Greene’s work is in the permanent collection of The High Museum in Atlanta, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Myra Greene’s work has been featured in national exhibitions in galleries and museums including The New York Public Library, Duke Center for Documentary Studies, Williams College Museum of Art, Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and Sculpture Center in New York City. Myra Greene was born in New York City and received her B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico.

Daesha Devón Harris, Artist and Photographer (Saratoga Springs, NY)

Exhibition: Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory
Discussion of ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory  

Daesha Devón Harris is a Saratoga Springs, New York- based mixed media artist and photographer who plays an active role in her community as a youth mentor, social activist and cultural history preservationist. The gentrification of her hometown and its effect on the local Black community has played a major role in both her advocacy and artwork. Most recently Harris has been an En Foco Fellowship winner, a MDOCS Storyteller’s Institute Fellow, an Artist in Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Studios of Key West, the Yaddo Artist Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship awardee, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Photography, a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grantee and named one of the Royal Photographic Society’s Hundred Heroines. She is also an avid fisherwoman and hobbyist gardener.

David Hartt, Artist (Philadelphia, PA)
Exhibition: Natural World
Member Preview Opening, Reception, & Artist Conversation for Natural World

David Hartt (b. 1967) is a Canadian artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Recent solo exhibitions include The Histories at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; A Colored Garden at The Glass House, Connecticut; and the group exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Hartt’s work is in several public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The RISD Museum, Providence; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, David Nolan Gallery, New York and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin. (Photo Credit: Ager Carlsen)

Baseera Khan, Artist (Brooklyn, NY)

Exhibition: Baseera Khan: Weight on History
Conversation with Baseera Khan and Ylinka Barotto

Baseera Khan is a New York-based visual artist who sublimates colonial histories through performance and sculpture in order to map geographies of the future. Khan is currently working on their first museum solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2021), and opened their first solo exhibition at Simone Subal, New York (2019). They have exhibited in numerous locations such as Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Munich, Germany; Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY(2018); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2021); New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA (2020); Aspen Museum, Aspen, CO (2017); and Participant Inc., New York, NY (2017). Khan’s performance work has premiered at several locations including Whitney Museum of American Art, Queens Museum of Art, and Art POP Montreal International Music Festival. Khan recently completed a 6 week performance residency at The Kitchen NYC (2020) and was an artist in residence at Pioneer Works (2018-19), Abrons Art Center (2016–17), was an International Travel Fellow to Jerusalem/Ramallah through Apexart (2015), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014). Khan is a recipient of the UOZO Art Prize (2020), BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), which was granted by both NYSCA/NYFA and Art Matters (2018). Their works are part of several public permanent collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim, Kadist, San Francisco, the Walker Art Center, MN, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA. Khan’s work is published in 4Columns, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, and TDR Drama Review. Khan is an adjunct professor of sculpture, performance, and critical theory, and received an M.F.A. from Cornell University (2012) and a B.F.A. from the University of North Texas (2005).

“I collage distinct and often mutually exclusive cultural references to explore the conditions of alienation, displacement, assimilation, and fluidity. Against the backdrop of a crestfallen edge, my work also gestures toward humorous pop cultural references. Using visual legacies of body identities, ritual, and spiritualities I also attempt to reveal volatile subjectivities especially within capitalist-driven social environments such as the United States. Making layers in my work that fit besides, on top, in between, and underneath creates numerous projects that evoke senses of living under surveillance, in suspension, between exile and kinship. I generate installations of concealment, momentary reflections, and sanctuaries. My life’s work is dedicated to the development of my own legacy, on my own terms, with the use of fashion, photography, textiles and music, parody, sculpture and performance, I manifest my femme native-born Muslim American experience.” (Photo Credit: Wish Thanasarakhan)

Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator (New York, NY)

Curator: On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith, Tony Oursler: Crossing Neptune, Ian Strange: Disturbed Home, Ian Strange: Annex
Discussion of On The Line: Documents of Risk and Faith, Conversation with Tony Oursler and Kevin Moore

Kevin Moore, Ph.D., is the Artistic Director and Curator for FotoFocus as well as Curator of the McEvoy Collection, San Francisco, and the Host of CUNY TV’s broadcast series Twilight Talks. His recent exhibitions and publications include Elaine Mayes: Haight-Ashbury Portraits (Damiani); On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith (Contemporary Arts Center/Gnomic Book), with co-curator Makeda Best;  Ian Strange: Disturbed Home (Art Academy of Cincinnati/Damiani); Old Paris and Changing New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott (Taft Museum of Art/Yale University Press); and Mamma Andersson: Memory Banks (Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati/Damiani). He is also the author of Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980 (Cincinnati Art Museum/Hatje Cantz) and Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of an Artist (Princeton University Press). (Photo Credit: Wilson Reyes)

Jeff Orlowski-Yang, Director, Producer, and Cinematographer (Boulder, CO)

Keynote Lecture

Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski-Yang served as director, producer, and cinematographer of the Sundance Award-Winning films, Chasing Ice (2012) and Chasing Coral (2017). He is a two-time Emmy-Award winning filmmaker, and founder of the award-winning production company Exposure Labs. His latest film, The Social Dilemma (2020), premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and is now streaming on Netflix.

In 2017, after premiering at Sundance and receiving the US Documentary Award, Chasing Coral released globally on Netflix as a Netflix Original Documentary. It went on to win a Peabody award in 2018. Chasing Ice premiered at Sundance in 2012, received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Song and won an Emmy® award for Outstanding Nature Programming. Both films have received many additional awards and accolades at film festivals around the globe, including being shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Orlowski-Yang also produced and directed Chasing Coral: The VR Experience (2017), his first venture into virtual reality filming.

Orlowski-Yang founded Exposure Labs to maximize the impact of film, creating a company dedicated to both quality storytelling and powerful campaigns. For work on Chasing Ice, Exposure Labs won the 2016 BritDoc Impact Award recognizing “documentaries that have made the biggest impact on society.” Currently, the impact campaign featuring Chasing Coral is connecting the story in the film to action in communities with over 1000 screenings in more than 87 countries and the film won the 2018 the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award.

In 2017, Orlowski-Yang was the recipient of the Champions of the Earth award, the United Nation’s top honor for spreading powerful environmental messages to a global audience. In 2016 he was named the inaugural Sundance Discovery Impact Fellow for environmental filmmaking. He has traveled on tour representing the Sundance Institute, President Obama’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment of the Arts. He holds two Guinness Book World Records.

In addition to his feature film productions, Orlowski-Yang has worked with major corporations as a director and producer of online and broadcast commercial work. Orlowski directed Living with Jaguars (2018), a VICE VR production, and served as Producer on the award-winning film, Frame By Frame (2015).

Tony Oursler, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Artist (New York, NY)

Exhibition: Tony Oursler: Crossing Neptune
Conversation with Tony Oursler and Kevin Moore

Tony Oursler (b. 1957), who lives and works in New York, is best known for his innovative integration of video, sculpture, and performance. While studying at the California Institute of Arts, Oursler was influenced by John Baldessari, who taught him, Mike Kelley, John Miller, and Jim Shaw the importance of the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language. A pioneering figure in new media since the 1970s, Oursler has since explored diverse methods of incorporating video into his practice, breaking video art out of the two-dimensional screen to create moving three-dimensional environments with the use of projections. At the center of Oursler’s practice is a persisting preoccupation with technology and its effect on humanity, and in his immersive installations he presents a dissonance of moving image and sound that seeks to disorient and disarm viewers. His videos often take as their subject the human face, fragmenting and distorting its physiognomy, and thus the legibility of expression, by projecting it onto inanimate objects or embedding it into his sculptures. With these video-sculptures Oursler explores the role that the rapid growth of technology plays in altering, and often inhibiting, human social behavior. 

Oursler received a B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan (2021); Musée d’arts de Nantes, Nantes, France (2020); Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY (2019); Public Art Fund, Riverside Park South, NY (2018); Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy (2017); CaixaForum Madrid, Spain (2017); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2016); LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2014); Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2013); Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil (2013); Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine (2013); Art Sonje Center, Seoul, South Korea (2012); ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (2012); and Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, traveling to the DA2 Domus Artium, Salamanca, Spain, and the Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Denmark (2005). Select group exhibitions featuring his work include On Everyone’s Lips: From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2020); Noire Lumière, HOW Museum, Shanghai, China (2020); Just Connect, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2020); Trees, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France (2019); Almost Human: Digital Art from the Permanent Collection, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2019); Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, Met Breuer, New York, NY (2018); David Bowie Is, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (2018); Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2018); Creature, The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2016); America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2015); Disembodied, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2013); Mike Kelley, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2013); The Royal Family, Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, United Kingdom (2012); Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2010); Spazio: The Scene and the Imaginary, Museo Nazionale delle arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, Italy (2010); Looking at Music, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2008); and California Video, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2008). 

Oursler’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain; Museum der Kulturen, Basel, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; National Museum of Osaka, Osaka, Japan; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Saatchi Collection, London, United Kingdom; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA.

In 2000, Oursler was awarded the U.S. Art Critics Association ICA New Media Award. (Photo Credit: Edouard Caupeil)

Liz Roberts, Artist (Oakland, CA)

Exhibition: Liz Roberts: Post Blonde
Reception and Talk for Liz Roberts: Post Blonde

Liz Roberts’ work is often collaborative and rooted in moving image and sound. Roberts has exhibited widely in the United States, including Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2014); Filmmakers Cooperative, New York, NY (2015); Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (2016); Cleveland Museum of Art at Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH (2017); ACRE Projects (2018, Chicago, IL); Beeler Gallery (2019, Columbus, OH); ABC No Rio, New York, NY (2020); and Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA (2021). Her most recent short film, Midwaste, had its festival premiere at Hot Docs in 2022. Roberts is a 2022 BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) MediaMaker fellow. (Photo Credit: Stephen Takacs)

Tif Sigfrids, Owner and Director of Tif Sigfrids Gallery (Athens, GA and New York, NY)

Curator: These Things Are Connected
Panel Talk for These Things Are Connected

Tif Sigfrids is the owner and director of Tif Sigfrids Gallery in Athens, GA and New York, NY. Her eponymous gallery opened in Los Angeles in 2013 after previously working as the Director for the Thomas Solomon Gallery. In 2021 Sigfrids opened a satellite space in New York in addition to regular participation in art fairs around the world. Sigfrids represents a diverse range of artists that explore the conceptual and formal limits of making objects. 

Sigfrids received her B.A. from UCLA. In 2018, Sigfrids became the co-director of the Arts Career and Entrepreneurship Spaces to provide students in the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music with career support. At Sigfrids’ gallery, she currently represents a dozen artists based in the US and abroad, including Joe Sola, Becky Kolsrud, Mimi Lauter, and Frances Scholz. She has represented artists in art fairs like NADA Miami, Frieze New York, Art Los Angeles Contemporary, and The Armory Show.

Xaviera Simmons, Artist (New York, NY)

Exhibition: On the Line: Documents of Risk and Faith
Discussion of On The Line: Documents of Risk and Faith

Xaviera Simmons’ sweeping practice includes photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text and installation. Her work engages the formal histories of art through the construction of landscape, language, and the complex histories of the United States and its continuing empire building internally and on a global scale.

Simmons received her B.F.A. from Bard College in 2004 after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art in 2005 while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio, NY. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Crisis Makes A Book Club at The Queens Museum (2023); Nectar at Kadist, Paris (2022); The Structure, The Labor, The Pause at Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, FL (2022);  Conveneat Sculpture Center, New York, NY; Overlayat Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, MA; The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line at The Museum of Modern Art- The Modern Window, New York, NY; and CODED at The Kitchen, New York, NY. 

Recent museum group exhibitions include The Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR;  Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; MassArt, Boston, MA; The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Prospect.4, New Orleans, LA; Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, Italy; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA, among others. Simmons’ work has been featured and reviewed in many publications; most recently in ArtNews, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, Artforum, Hyperallergic, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Paper Magazine, The New York Times and others. 

Simmons’ works are in major museum and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Deutsche Bank, New York, NY; UBS, New York, NY; The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Agnes Gund Art Collection, New York, NY; The De La Cruz Collection, Miami, FL; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; ICA Miami; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; among many others. She has held teaching positions at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University and The School Of The Art Institute of Chicago.

In Winter 2021 Simmons worked as the inaugural guest editor of Art Basel Magazine. In Spring 2020 she was awarded the prestigious The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College. Simmons is a recipient of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award (2019) and Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award (2018), as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award (2018)

The artist has exhibitions, performances and projects slated to open globally through 2024. (Photo Credit: John Edmunds)

Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, Co-coordinator, Lesbian Herstory Archives and Associate Dean, NYU Libraries (New York, NY)

Exhibition: Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s
Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s

Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is a co-coordinating volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives where she began to archive and exhibit the Salsa Soul Sisters, the first known African ancestral lesbian organization in the United States. During that time she created a Salsa Soul Sisters zine as a resident for the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Gallery and delivered a keynote on the Salsa Soul Sisters for the 2016 London-based LGBT ALMS (Archives, Libraries, Museums, and Special Libraries) Conference. She is also the recipient of the 2020 WGSS Award for Significant Achievement in Women’s & Gender Studies in Librarianship from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Shawn is a contributing editor to Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal, and has two forthcoming publications as co-editor, with Litwin Books/Library Juice Press, titled: Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice, and Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries. Shawn has a B.S. in Queer Women’s Studies from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Fiction, and an M.L.S. with a focus on Archiving and Records Management from Queens College, CUNY. She serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Pratt School of Information, and an Assistant Curator and Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at New York University Division of Libraries. She lives in Norwalk, CT with her daughter, Joey, two sibling cats, a broken one-eyed dog, and her wife & best friend, Jaz. (Photo Credit: Erin Burns)

Diana Solís, Photographer and Educator (Chicago, IL)

Exhibition: Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s
Discussion of Images on which to build, 1970s–1990s

Diana Solís is a Mexican-born visual artist, photographer, and educator whose work includes painting, illustration, printmaking, comics, public murals, and installation. She is inspired by Mexican and Chicano culture, memory, cautionary tales, oral and personal histories, queer identities, and narratives. Her work examines notions of place, identity, and belonging. Central to Solís’s practice is her commitment to being a teaching artist who shares her knowledge and process in collaboration with youth, immigrant families, and adults and supports them in creating art from their perspectives.

As a teaching artist of four decades, Solís has taught students in a wide range of settings including community organizations, public schools, museums, and special residency programs. She holds a B.F.A. in Photography from the University of Illinois Chicago and has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Toluca, Mexico; and Centre Cívic Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain. Solís has several upcoming exhibitions of her photography scheduled including Images on which to build, which will travel to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2022 and the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York City in 2023.

Nathaniel Stein, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH)

Curator: Natural World
Member Preview Opening, Reception, & Artist Conversation for Natural World

Nathaniel M. Stein, Ph.D., is Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Stein holds degrees in art history from Wesleyan University and Brown University, where his doctoral research focused on the history of photography in India. He has organized exhibitions and published on contemporary and historical photography from South Asia, Europe, and North America. Recent projects in Cincinnati include exhibitions with Sohrab Hura, Gillian Wearing, Hank Willis Thomas, and the Kamoinge Workshop, as well as the formation of The Nancy Rexroth Collection. Stein is the author of The Levee: A Photographer in the American South (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2020), which was the first major study of Indian photographer Sohrab Hura, and “Interference: Andre Bradley and Paul Anthony Smith (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2017), among other publications. Prior to arriving in Cincinnati, Stein held curatorial positions at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the RISD Museum. He has taught the history of photography, film, and modern and contemporary art at the Rhode Island School of Design, Arcadia University, and Brown University, and held fellowships and delivered lectures at research centers and museums in Europe and the United States. (Photo Credit: Tim Tiebout)

Pepper Stetler, FotoFocus Guest Curator, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture History and Associate Director of the Miami University Humanities Center (Oxford, OH)

Curator: Craft and Camera: The Art of Nancy Ford Cones
Curator Talk for Craft and Camera: The Art of Nancy Ford Cones

Pepper Stetler, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Art and Architecture History and Associate Director of the Miami University Humanities Center. She is the author of Stop Reading! Look!: Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book (University of Michigan, 2015). Stetler’s essays on early twentieth-century art and photography have appeared in publications of the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Ian Strange, Transdisciplinary Artist (Perth, Australia)

Exhibition:  Ian Strange: Disturbed Home, Ian Strange: Annex
Artist Talk by Ian Strange

Ian Strange is a transdisciplinary artist whose work explores architecture, space and the home. His practice includes multifaceted collaborative community-based projects, architectural interventions and exhibitions. Strange is best known for his ongoing series of suburban architectural interventions, film and photographic works subverting the archetypal domestic home. (Photo Credit: Chris Gurney)

Wendel A. White, Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies at Stockton University (Galloway, NJ)

Exhibition: ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory
Discussion of ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory

Wendel A. White was born in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He was awarded a B.F.A. in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an M.F.A. in photography from the University of Texas at Austin. White taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, NY; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY; the International Center for Photography, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology, NY; and is currently Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies at Stockton University.

He has received various awards and fellowships including the Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archeology & Ethnography, Harvard University, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography, three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, Bunn Lectureship in Photography and grants from Center Santa Fe, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and various artist’s residencies.

His work is represented in museum and corporate collections including: Duke University, Durham, NC; the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA; The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago, IL; En Foco, New York, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Haverford College, Haverford, PA; University of Delaware, Newark, DE; University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL; and the NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY.

White served on the board of directors for the Society for Photographic Education, three years as board chair. He has also served on the Kodak Educational Advisory Council, NJ, Save Outdoor Sculpture, the Atlantic City Historical Museum, and the New Jersey Black Culture and Heritage Foundation. White was a board member, including three years as board chair, of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

Recent projects include; Red Summer; Manifest; Schools for the Colored; Village of Peace: An African American Community in Israel; Small Towns, Black Lives; and others. (Photo Credit: Carmela Colòn-White)

Deborah Willis, FotoFocus Guest Curator and Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (New York, NY)

Curator: ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory
Reading by Deborah Willis on J.P. Ball, Discussion of ‘Free as they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory

Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is also the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers and beauty.  Willis is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship (NYU Press, 2021) and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (W.W. Norton & Company,2009), among others. Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: Home: Reimagining Interiority (2022) at YoungArts, Miami, Framing Moments in the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (2021), Migrations and Meanings in Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (2020),  Out of Fashion Photography; Framing Beauty (2013) at the Henry Art Gallery and ‘Free at they want to be’: Artists Committed to Memory at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center for the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial: World Record.