Ni'Ja Whitson | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Interdisciplinary Artist, Writer, Performer, Founder/Artistic Director of The NWA Project |
Ni'Ja Whitson is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, writer and the founder/artistic director of The NWA Project. Whitson is gender non-conforming and use the pronouns they/them.
A Bessie-Award-winning gender nonconforming interdisciplinary artist, performer and writer, Ni’Ja Whitson has been referred to as "majestic" [1] and "magnetic" [2] by The New York Times , and is recognized by Brooklyn Magazine as being one of the 100 culture influencers. [3] Recent awards include a Hedgebrook Residency, LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist Residency, two-time Creative Capital "On Our Radar" award including being an inaugural recipient, among many other recognitions across disciplines.
Nick Flynn is an American writer, playwright, and poet. His writing is characterized by lyric, distilled moments, which blur the boundaries of various genres. Many of his books are structured using a collage technique, which creates narratives with fractured, mosaic qualities. His work can be classified as récit—a French term for writing that is not the narration of an event, but an event itself. Several of his books are what he refers to as “siblings” to each other, in that they examine similar material from various perspectives.
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
Suheir Hammad is an American poet, author, performer, and political activist.
The Edward MacDowell Medal is an award which has been given since 1960 to one person annually who has made an outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts. It is given by MacDowell, the first artist residency program in the United States.
Heather T. Hart is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including interactive and participatory Installation art, drawing, collage, and painting. She is a co-founder of the Black Lunch Table Project, which includes a Wikipedia initiative focused on addressing gender gap and diversity representation in the arts on Wikipedia.
A concert residency is a series of concerts, similar to a concert tour, but only performed at one location. Pollstar Awards defined residency as a run of 10 or more shows at a single venue. An artist who performs on a concert residency is called a resident performer. Concert residencies have been the staple of the Las Vegas Strip for decades, pioneered by singer-pianist Liberace in the 1940s and Frank Sinatra with the Rat Pack in the 1950s.
Amanda Petrusich is an American music journalist, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of three books: Pink Moon (2007), It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music (2008), and Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records (2014).
Ulrike Müller is a contemporary visual artist. Müller is a member of the New York-based feminist genderqueer group LTTR as well as an editor of its eponymous journal. She also represented Austria at the Cairo Biennale in 2011. She is currently a professor and Co-Chair of Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a published poet, performer, educator, food writer, cultural strategist, and transgender, gender non-conforming, and disability advocate based in New York and New Jersey, whose work has been showcased nationally and internationally. Their second book, More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They are a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship recipient, three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and two-time Best of the Net Nominee. Barrett's writing and performance centers on the experience of queer, transgender, people of color, mixed race people, Asian, and Filipino/a/x community. The focus of their artistic work navigates multiple systems of oppression in the context of the U.S.
Boryana Rossa is a Bulgarian interdisciplinary artist and curator making performance art, video and photographic work.
Kenya (Robinson) is an American multimedia artist whose work includes performance, sculpture and installation. Raised in Gainesville, Florida, (Robinson)'s work depicts themes of privilege and consumerism, exploring perceptions of gender, race and ability. Combining a variety of audio-visual elements and live performance, (Robinson)'s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank. She has lectured at Hampshire College, Long Island University, and the University of Florida.
Jaishri Abichandani is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. Her interdisciplinary practice focuses on the intersection of art, feminism, and social practice. Abichandani was the founder of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, with chapters in New York City and London, and director from 1997 until 2013. She was also the Founding Director of Public Events and Projects from at the Queens Museum from 2003-2006.
Kambui Olujimi is a New York-based visual artist working across disciplines using installation, photography, performance, tapestry, works on paper, video, large sculptures and painting. His artwork reflects on public discourse, mythology, historical narrative, social practices, exchange, mediated cultures, resilience and autonomy.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an American writer, educator, and artist from East Palo Alto, California. She is known for her work in installations, book arts, immersive text-based installations, large-scale public text pieces, publications, collage, and audio recordings. Rasheed's art explores memory, ritual, discursive regimes, historiography, and archival practices through the use of fragments and historical residue. Based in Brooklyn, NY, she is currently the Arts Editor for SPOOK magazine and is also a contributing editor for The New Inquiry.
Tuesday Smillie is an American interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on trans-feminist politics and the aesthetics of protest. Smillie has been recognized for her reinterpretation of protest banners through traditional craft materials. Writer Johanna Fateman describes work like Smillie's Street Transvestites 1973 (2015) as "ornate, meticulously sewn and painted trans-liberation banners" that "could not get their radical point across more lovingly."
Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, and text from Houston, Texas who lives and works in New York City. Knight attended the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX and went on to achieve an M.A. in Drama Therapy, from New York University and a B.A. in Theatre Arts/Speech Communications from Dillard University. Knight holds certificates in Arts Management & Marketing from Birkbeck College in London, U.K. and in Speech & Drama from Central School of London.
E. Jane, also known by their performance name MHYSA, is an American interdisciplinary new media artist and musician.
Meissa Hampton is an American independent film actress, writer, director and activist. She has published a book of poetry is a contributing writer for the Guardian, and received a Ford Scholarship. She is currently a Resident Artist at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her film projects have screened internationally in festivals and on television. She has received 12 Best Actress awards from domestic and international independent film festivals. She formed One Pair of Shoes Productions to direct and produce A Social Cure, a feature-length documentary about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. In 2015 she authored a petition the Screen Actors Guild to address the gender inequities that were fueling sexual harassment and assault in the Entertainment industry. She founded the Actors Alliance for Gender Equity in Media and the website $#!% People say to actresses which provides an anonymous forum for performers to share their stories of harassment and assault in the industry. She has been cited and interviewed about her activism by The Guardian and The Independent. In 2017, after Harvey Weinstein was indicted for sexual assault and rape, she wrote an article for the Guardian.
Charlene Incarnate is a Brooklyn-based female performer and writer. She started out her gender transition as a drag queen as part of her life experience.
