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I am a researcher-writer-artist studying how people use culture to resist the dominant systems of racial, economic, and migration inequity and build the future worlds we deserve.
I use this focus to study, seed, and sustain solidarity economy movements in the arts and culture ecosystem led with, by, and for the self-determination of QTBIPOC, and away from state, interpersonal, and historically traumatic violence. My work with Art.coop focuses on weaving systems for transformative labor/resource/monetary exchange across borders, while my research with Cultural Solidarity Fund looks at how local community-led funds and organizations support artists and cultural workers in and beyond crises. My independent research looks at how movements for artists' rights economically, culturally, and socially integrate with movements against fascism.
This website builds directly off the websites of my friends/mentors/beloved community members, Emma Werowinski and Caroline Woolard.
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I'm currently thinking about meals to share, domestic crafts, unseen labor, found families...
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Research
Ongoing
Organizing Histories, Presents, and Futures
Knowledge Sharing Ecosystems & Spaces
In the communities I flow with/through/beyond, I reflect on how people share knowledge to co-develop and expand communities.
I have and continue to organize gatherings and dialogues for collective inquiry, including potluck critiques, workshops on storytelling through craft, and pedagogical exercises for discussions of racial justice in the arts and culture sector, including in academia, at museums, and in cooperative organizing.
In 2023, I started a deeper collaboration with Emma Werowinski through a partnership with the Cultural Solidarity Fund (supported by Mellon Foundation) to study how coalitional structures can move money to support artists and cultural workers in and beyond times of crises.
✦ Learn more about the Cultural Solidarity Fund here.
In 2022, I also began working full-time at Art.coop, alongside Caroline Woolard, Ebony Gustave, Marina Lopez, Nati Conrazon, and Robin Bean Crane. Together, we are creating a future in which artists closest to the pain of economic exploitation know and channel their power to create the Art Worlds We Want. Write to us at team@art.coop.
✦Listen to our podcast, Remember The Future wherever you get your podcasts.
✦ Take our courses on the Solidarity Economy via CreativeStudy here.
✦Read the series we curated for Non Profit Quarterly here.
✦Find funding opportunities from Art.coop to BOLDLY engage the Solidarity Economy here.
From 2021 to 2023, I worked with other community members at Interference Archive to do educational programming and exhibition support. Though I'm no longer at the Archive, I'm still making work with my IA friends and talking about active archiving.
✦See a collaborative zine made with Radio Al-Hara and Musicans for Palestine from 2023 here.
✦ See zines we made for Halloween on abolition here.
✦ See fruits of a valen-zines workshop from 2022 here.
✦ See an exhibition we produced on the Zapatistas here.
In 2020, I worked on designing a tool to facilitate the weaving of "undoing" and "creating" in movement spaces with Kaajal Shah and Nouf Bazaz as part of my work with SAALT.
✦ View my other community education programming and tools on the roads to abolition for SAALT here.
May 2022 to January 2023
Intergenerational Participatory Action
Gender-Based Violence and Pan-Asian Diasporic Organizing
With the support of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and AAPI Women Lead, I worked with 15 other individuals from community groups and organizations across the U.S. and U.S-affiliated islands to conduct community-driven research, focusing on gender-based violence against Asian and Pacific Islander women, girls, and non-binary communities.
✦ See a lecture I delivered on "Weaponizing Care" here.
My and my collaborator Katha's participation in this program has ended early; we can share more information upon request.
February 2020 - May 2022
At South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), I helped research strategies and issues for advocacy (both in grassroots and political spaces) reflecting on issues of caste, immigration, hate violence, Islamophobia, and queerness as they relate to the South Asian American diaspora.
✦ View collaborator and Healing & Justice Researcher Katha Sikka's work on non-profit relationships with transformative, reparative, and healing justice here.
✦ View a publication from the Urban Institute on "Centering Race and Structural Racism in Immigration Policy Research" that was produced in alignment with a workshop I participated in on September 20 & 23, 2021 here.
✦ View our reports on acts of hate here, and read coverage of my research at SAALT by Nitish Pahwa at Slate here. Find more media coverage of my work at the bottom of this webpage.
✦View SAALT's report, "Unequal Consequences", on the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Asian Americans here as a map, here as a report, or here as a series of video testimonials. The report is also published in Volume 31 (2021) of the Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, available here for purchase.
May 2021 - December 2021
Spirits and Logistics: How Grantmakers, Universities, and Arts Institutions Start Working with the BIPOC-Led Cooperative Movement to Build the Future of Art Education
Solidarity Economics, Arts + Culture, and Education
On 7 December 2021, the Center for Cultural Innovation published a report on the futures of art-based learning in co-ops that I worked on with Caroline Woolard, Dan Taeyoung, and Luana Marques Soares as a part of Dan & Caroline's work with AmbitioUS.
✦ Read the report here.
February 2020 - May 2022
I regularly produced pieces for SAALT that reflect on issues of caste, immigration, hate violence, and queerness as they relate to the South Asian American diaspora.
✦ View a fact sheet and zine I made that provides an overview of trends in South Asian migration along the U.S. Southern Border here.
✦ View a Campus Workshop Guide I made on combating Islamophobia and hate in college spaces here. View my pieces reporting on Islamophobic and xenophobic hate incidents in the U.S. here.
✦ View our report and research mapping the disparate impact of COVID-19 on South Asian communities across the United States here as a map, here as a report, or here as a series of video testimonials.
✦ To see my editorial work, read SAALT's blog, Voices from the Community, here.
✦ Find SAALT's work on the Internet Archive here.
October 2019 - October 2021
Alongside Alliah George, Angeles Fitzpatrick, danyele brown, and Eric Padró, I studied the role of arts institutions in building sustainable communities within Dia Art Foundation's Education Department.
I also collaborated with Fellow danyele brown to launch her tea line, "The Teas", which resists and challenges the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse and exploitation of trans communities by offering recipes for teas and tings in solidarity with the T- and titty-averse. The Teas are non-pharmaceutical supplements for male to female (MTF) hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and other trans-utilitarian remedies.
✦ Read a piece I wrote for Dia's blog about my work with danyele and The Teas here.
✦ Find The Teas on depop here.
August 2019
On Reparative Justice & Expanding 'Social Equity & Inclusion'
Social Justice Beyond Talk in Academia
This report details research conducted on the Center for Complexity regarding its relationship to racial justice movements happening within its parent community at the Rhode Island School of Design.
✦ Read the report here.
This digital publication documents my year-long thesis endeavor to study my relationship to labor and productivity within the contexts of my university community. Looking at the effects of Arts Academia on my relationships with people, environments, and the objects that bring the two together, I use this collection of actions, performances, and portraits to construct a subjective and semi-biographical narrative concerning labor politics within maker/artist/designer workspaces.
✦ View my thesis here.
May 2019
March 2019 - December 2019
The Future of Food, In The Round
Research Design for Collaboration
This publication, designed by Maddie Woods and put forth by the Center for Complexity, documents the research and analysis of Charlotte Clement, Tim Maly and myself at a convening led by PopTech.
✦ View Maddie's compilation of our findings here.
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Making
Ongoing
Away From The Desk
Lacing, Grids + Kitchen 'Craft'
I've spent almost the entirety of the (still!) ongoing COVID-19 pandemic digesting + figuring out a project that involves lace-making, netting and other textile arts, in conjunction with the crafts involved in cooking/growing/farming/eating. Its fruits litter the gardens of my brain, but I have yet to document them formally.
This is made possible by the current work structure that my Co-Organizers and I follow at Art.coop, laid out here.
✦ See pictures of the lacing & grids I'm working on here.
✦ See pictures of the food I've been making here.
Ongoing
Collaborative Apprenticeship
Labor Exchange, Solidarity Economy, Arts + Culture Curricula
This is an on-going labor/resource exchange system that attempts to rebalance understandings of different forms of productivity (physical, mental, emotional).
Its first iteration took place at the Rhode Island School of Design between 2018 and 2019, and is a part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio".
✦ You can view the zine that documents my work with the Department of Furniture Design and the class of 2019 here.
✦ You can visit my collaborators' webpages below:
clayton cottingham adam hunt fertig
becca ford anya gupta
makoto kumasaka marc librizzi
adrienne may jacob miller
max pratt monel reina
alicia wang soo joo
valeria buttaci rincon tom caycedo
dan cha kira dekhayser
haojun 'frank' gong sisi zhang
bea mandel rowan mccallister
jon ng elena ralls
rowan shaw-jones lotte walworth
irene wei yuning 'ruby' zhu
The second iteration took place at the Center for Complexity, and was titled Slumber Party. Its primary documentation is not available without direct inquiry to all participants, whose emails are as follows:
Jess Brown theladyjbrown@gmail.com
Eury Kim eury.christina.kim@gmail.com
Sophie Engel sengel@risd.edu
Madeline Woods mwoods@risd.edu
Charlotte Clement cclement@risd.edu
Irina Wang iwang03@risd.edu
S Suryanarayanan ssuryana@alumni.risd.edu
✦ Its secondary documentation, in the form of the reasoning provided for the Center for Complexity to 'allow' this event, is available here.
The third iteration, known as Filed Work, is an ongoing project at Dia Art Foundation, that aims to unpack the relationships between arts institutions, anti-institutional artists, and their inherent coexistence.
It was originally scheduled to culminate in July 2020; due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Filed Work has been indefinitely postponed.
The fourth iteration took place at Moos in Am Treptower, Berlin, and intended to look at domestic labor and feminist economics in communal living spaces -- but, due to the structure of the space, I and other resident artists were forced to explore these topics in the face of violence. To learn more, reach out to me.
The fifth iteration has manifested partially into how Art.coop organizes itself as a team of part-time, full-time, and contracted workers. The remainder of it continues to unfurl as we develop Art.coop from a loose collaboration to a formalized collective, whose form is still in gestation.
✦ See how work works at Art.coop here.
May 2021 - May 2022
PROCESS: 20 YEARS SINCE
Curation, Redistribution
PROCESS: 20 YEARS SINCE is a mini-docuseries and interactive digital exhibition which amplifies young South Asian American siblings’ calls to process — the past twenty years, and the next twenty years — in just, transformative, and unifying ways as the diaspora's first adult generation familiar only with a post-9/11 America.
I worked with artists Shravya Kag, Noor Khan, and Lameesa Mallic, and organizer Sharmin Hossain to bring this show together. On 10 September 2021, we marked the launch of the show at Judson Memorial Church, leading Jummah and a collective flower drawing across the street under the Washington Square Arch.
✦ See pictures of our 10 September installation, taken by Iqra Shahbaz, here.
✦ Explore the digital exhibition here.
✦ Hear the stories of the ten young siblings we interviewed here.
July 2021 - August 2021
Tea Party Recipes to T(r)Averse
Cooking, Labor Exchange
This is an experimental cookbook and guide created in collaboration with danyele brown to resists and challenges the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse and exploitation of trans communities. Offering recipes for teas and tings in solidarity with the T- and titty-averse, The Teas: Party Recipes to T(raverse) supports people, especially transwomen, transfemmes, and nonbinary folks who are looking for natural, non-pharmaceutical supplements for male to female (MTF) hormone replacement therapy (HRT). and other trans-utilitarian remedies.
To purchase a copy of our inaugural cookbook: Tea Party Recipes To Traverse, email us at fellows@diaart.org. Low-cost and free versions are available upon request.
May 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
box & lid is the final piece in the series "artifacts 314-520", & addresses questions of labor and productivity, packaging them in a circular and self-referential moment where each relies on the other to be discussed or even exist.
✦ See pictures of box & lid here.
May 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
The Big Tarlatan is the last soft ground intaglio etching in the series "artifacts 314-520" and examines the realities of continuing one's own creative practice while still working as a part-time studio assistant for my peers.
✦ See pictures of The Big Tarlatan here.
March 2019
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
artifacts 103-201 is a collection of miniature soft ground intaglio etchings that use tarlatan to materially map the movements of makers in the studio. It builds on the language of its predecessor, mold friend (below), examining the elements of physical studio spaces that encourage and support healthy maker practices.
✦ See pictures of artifacts 103-201 here.
January 2019
This is a combination of intaglio prints and graphite drawings which explore the relationship between the pipes of construction, innards, and systems of thinking. The intaglio prints exaggerate the relationship of the understructure of the chair, Mold Friend, whose portraits are on the right of the prints.
Each print and drawing is named for/after its recipient -- thus, there are no 'unclaimed' or 'lonely' Pipes [4].
✦ See in-progress pictures of Pipes 4 Mold Friend, Harry, Marc, and Anya here.
December 2018
*Part of "artifacts 314-520: Labor Politics in the Studio"*
An exhibition of how labor can both be beautiful and capable of deteriorating over time, mold friend is an autobiographical timestamp of its making process, a transparent reflection of my maker instincts -- as well as a representation of how one can leave emotional unstable work environments and create safe havens of one's own.
✦ Meet mold friend here.
May 2018
Fifi is a metal portrait, brought to life from Bahman Mohasses's drawings of the same character, "howling with happiness" -- and from my own reimaginations of Fifi (below).
✦ See Fifi with her with her friends here.
March 2018
Bear Trap
Metal Working, Curricular Development, Performance
Bear Trap is a pedagogical exercise and sculpture, developed specifically to augment Tyler Inman's curricular practice. Reach out to experience Bear Trap yourself.
December 2017
Built by hand, Bentwood Sled / Sehnsucht is carefully tended to since conception, remaining with its owner until it is worn down; thus it is an ongoing project awaiting its 'completion'.
✦ View pictures of Bentwood Sled / Sehnsucht here.
November 2017
Inspired by Bahman Mohasses's Fifi Howls with Happiness, this series presents a mixed-media exploration of his void of a figure. Fifi has since become an extension with which to simultaneously bring together my multiple selves (who may not always see one another...).
✦ See my portraits of Fifi here.
