CURRENT FELLOWS
FELLOWSHIP FOR UTOPIAN PRACTICE
Aiyo Cheboi
BLACK UTOPIAN FELLOW 2024
PROJECT: THE EXPERIMENTAL FOOD LAB
Aiyo Cheboi (they/them) is a Black, genderqueer human seeking to nurture interpersonal connections via courageous and tender exchanges of knowledge. They are also an experimental artist / educator nestled within an ecosystem of bio art, cooking + food systems, physical computation + code, and research about regenerative technologies. Spiritually and politically, they’re committed to nurturing individual + collective expressions of imagination.
Camille Mbayo
BLACK UTOPIAN FELLOW 2024
Camille-Louise “Cam” Kouba Mbayo (she, they, we) is a queer Congolese-born Brooklyn-based abolitionist, abortion doula, nerd-artist, daughter, sister, friend, process becoming. Cam is committed to living fully in the present moment and believes there is an artistry in that. With the engineering tools they’ve acquired through academia and their Indig enous knowledge systems Cam works at the intersection of art, tech, culture, and education.
Living themselves at the intersection of many identities, as they continue to figure out their place in the world and their relationship to land, belonging, and being good kin, they are learning how to build communities rooted in love, care, and right relationships. In the making of those communities, Cam is interested in exploring art as a portal to different futures.
Megan Bent
Disability Arts Curatorial Fellow 2024
Megan Bent (she/her) is a lens-based artist interested in ways image-making can happen beyond "traditional" media and methods. She is drawn to processes that reflect and embrace her disabled experience; especially interdependence, impermanence, care, and slowness. Her most recent work focuses on personal experiences of healthcare denials and critiques the use of AI in healthcare. She is interested in weaving together her health justice activism and art practice. Her work has been exhibited domestically and abroad at venues including The U.N. Headquarters, NY, NY; Root Division, San Francisco, CA; form & concept, Santa Fe, NM; F1963, Busan, South Korea; and Fotonostrum, Barcelona, Spain. She was a recent recipient of the 2023 Wynn Newhouse Awards. Her work has been featured in Lenscratch, Analog Forever Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Rfotofolio, and Float Photography Magazine.
hú-tu (Laura 嘟嘟 & huiyin zhou)
PROJECT : ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS: A QUEER JOURNEY OF DREAMS AND DIASPORA
hú-tu (Laura 嘟嘟 & huiyin zhou) is an artist duo with backgrounds in social practice and anthropology, working across moving image, photography, performance, and collaborative writing. Since 2020, huiyin and Laura have collaborated on over 40 performances, workshops, and exhibitions exploring diasporic queer identity, family memory, generational trauma, and collective grief through ritualistic and community-centered processes. huiyin and Laura have been awarded residencies at Durham Art Guild, BRIClab, Pedantic Arts, and Feminist Incubator. Their work has received support from BRIC, Raleigh Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Queens Art Fund, Asian American Arts Alliance, Durham Arts Council, and beyond.
Kwé Neshai
PROJECT : MY FOODSCAPE
Kwé is a Black, Queer, interdisciplinary researcher and artist from Brooklyn, New York.
Rooted in the intersections of ecology, social justice, and community science, their work explores how participatory practices within science and design can create justice-oriented solutions for marginalized urban communities. Kwé’s research has earned recognition in Nature magazine and has been presented in international circles, including the 2019 Society for Social Studies of Science annual meeting. As a 2023 Confident Futures Fellow, they developed international collaborations fostering culturally informed youth programs in both Brooklyn and Amsterdam. Their work is dedicated to forging intercommunal connections and breaking down systemic barriers to opportunity.
Miguel Alejandro Castillo
PROJECT: ELMO-MENTO
Recently recognized as one of the "25 to Watch" in 2024 by Dance Magazine, Miguel Alejandro Castillo is drawn to the permeability of art forms and the new inquiries that arise from cross-disciplinary and multicultural collaborations. A director, choreographer, performer and educator, his research explores diasporic imagination and future folklore. Castillo has performed in works by Faye Driscoll, Jeanine Durning, and Tzveta Kassabova, among others. He choreographed John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the Volksoper in Vienna. He was a 2021 danceWEB scholar at the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna and a 2022–2023 Fresh Tracks Artist in Residence at New York Live Arts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in dance and theater from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Smith College.
Suzanne Schulz
PROJECT: I NEED MORE TIME MACHINE
Suzanne Schulz (she/her) is a video artist, researcher, and educator. Her videos, which explore work, debt, reconciliation, and friendship have screened at Rooftop films, Hunter College, and at the University Film and Video Association. Suzanne is an MFA candidate in the Integrated Media Arts at CUNY-Hunter College and has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the ACLS/Mellon Foundation and the Library of Congress. In her research-based artistic practice and her teaching at Bard Early College Queens, Suzanne draws on her experiences and training in South Asian Studies and Media Studies.
Nasrah Omar
PROJECT: IN CONTINUUM (A CIRCLE OF INVOCATION)
Nasrah Omar (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, AR/VR and collage. Through imaginative world-building, her work probes narratives of visibility, connection and re-generation through the cultivation of affirming paracosms. Interlacing layered threads from the South Asian diaspora, ecology, ritual, folklore, material culture and technology, she constructs fantastical realms of healing with pan-psychic and universalist strands. Mediated through carefully crafted, lurid tableaus, Nasrah's work explores pathways to de-colonial futurities; traversing the realms of the sensory, simulated and sublime.
Katherine Toukhy
PROJECT: ITERU: NOTES ON FLUID PRESENCE
Katherine Toukhy is an artist and creative facilitator who has resided in Brooklyn (unceded Lenapehoking) for over a decade and grew up part of a small Coptic Egyptian diaspora in Rhode Island. In the studio, she draws upon movement, plant life, and her intersectional reality to transform figurative shapes into mixed media for public and private installations.
Ashley Dawson
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2024
PROJECT: PUBLIC POWER OBSERVATORY
Ashley Dawson is an author, activist, and professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. Ashley works for the abolition of fossil fuels and a democratic energy transition as a member of the Public Power NY campaign and founder of the Public Power Observatory.
Nifemi Ogunro
BLACK UTOPIAN FELLOW 2023
PROJECT : MELD
As a Nigerian American designer, Nifemi Ogunro bridges the gap between design, social issues, and sustainability. Nifemi use’s photography and performance as a way to articulate this work.
Nifemi designs functional sculptures._
Six
PROJECT : Playdate
Six is a multi-medium designer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work is centered around the power to imagine, dream, and realize the futures that we want and need. Six continues to call on their audience and peers to be both the dreamer and the dream. Their work has been featured by IBM Quantum and the Processing Foundation.
Branden Janese
PROJECT : LOVE REPARATIONS
Since 2018 I’ve helped develop programs for The Literary Freedom Project, a Bronx-based nonprofit literary arts organization. As a facilitator I’ve grown a humble group of less than ten attendees to a thirty plus person, multi-location, weekly event. I’ve facilitated a diverse collection of book titles to a community of readers that vary in age, race, gender, and professions, both in-person and during virtual sessions. Recently, I finished my second residency at The Bronx Museum where I developed and facilitated a five-week literary discussion to over forty participants. I’ve been organizing and curating art and literary programs since 2015, and in 2021 I was granted a NYSCA/NYFA fellowship to develop, organize, and execute a public event featuring local NYC artists.
Sabina Sethi Unni
PROJECT : Flood Sensor Aunty
Sabina is a public theater artist, organizer, and urban planner who tells silly stories about our changing climate. As much as she loves sitting through (or organizing!) boring multi-hour workshops about climate resiliency, she sees public theater as an exciting strategy for meeting people where they’re at (like Rockaway Beach on a lazy Saturday afternoon in June) with resources, community, glitter, and fun.
Nora Almeida
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2023
PROJECT : OPEN WATER
Nora is an urban swimmer, writer, performance artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn / Lenapehoking. Her art explores intersections of archiving, environmental investigation, and spatial disruption. Recent public artworks—Last Street End in Gowanus (2021), Land Use Intervention Library (2022), and Open Water (ongoing)—focus on relationships between people and environmentally disturbed, post-industrial waterfront spaces.
Melissa West & Jahtiek Long
PROJECT : SHAOLIN ART PARTY
Melissa West is a choreographer and curator based in Staten Island, NY. Her work has been shared at Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts, The Living Theater, Atlantic Salt, and Queens Museum. West is the Director & Senior Curator of the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor, and is an adjunct faculty member of Wagner College.
Jahtiek Long is an interdisciplinary artist, emerging curator, photographer, musician, and community organizer. His work is centered around subverting the "traditional" narrative surrounding Staten Island and providing a shift in perspective of the borough and its people. His work has been featured by PBS, NY1, The Staten Island Advance, and Inked Magazine.
Sara Zielinski
PROJECT : ABOLITIONIST BENCHES
Sara Zielinski is an artist and activist based in Brooklyn. She holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in Integrated Practices from Pratt Institute. Zielinski incorporates printmaking, drawing, text, video, and sewing into her work, often combining several techniques to create immersive environments. She has organized projects with artists in Chicago and New York and interviewed artists for The Huffington Post from 2015 to 2017. Zielinski has created installations at the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia in Tbilisi, Georgia, Ink Miami Art Fair in Miami, FL, Sapar Contemporary in New York, NY, and Pantocrátor Gallery in Suzhou, China, and has exhibited in group shows at Childs Gallery, International Print Center New York, Find & Form, Harriet Tubman Gallery, and Shoestring Press, among others.
Monica Dudárov Hunken & Daddy Delight
PROJECT : DRAGCYCLE
Monica Dudárov Hunken (they/she) is a Brooklyn-based performer who creates docu-adventure theatre including; Reading the Water, Blondie of Arabia, The Wild Finish, Hunker Down, Outside the World and Mt Rushmore. In NY, they have been produced at Culture Project, Exponential Festival, The Brick, The Living Theatre, Polish Cultural Institute and HERE Arts Center. Abroad: Australia’s Horse’s Mouth Festival, the Netherland’s DeParade Festival, Norway’s PIT festival, the Glastonbury Festival, among many others. She was artist in residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Fish Factory in Iceland and winner of the Patrolio Award for responding to social injustice through art. They lead arts programming in refugee camps globally.
Daddy Delight is your God and Savior. They play with the power of spirituality, sexuality and domination casting irresistible spells and blurring the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, recognizing that we are powerfully whole when in harmony with both.
Yanni Young
BLACK UTOPIAN Fellow 2022
PROJECT: COMING IN STORIES: CONVERSATIONS w/ BLACK LGBTQ ELDERS IN HARLEM
Yanni Young is a Black, queer, multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Harlem, NYC. Yanni grew up performing in plays, musicals, played piano for five years and attended a performing arts high school as a vocal major. Other mediums that Yanni has explored have been podcasting as well as documentary filmmaking. For two years Yanni had a podcast called "Soul Rebel Podcast" centering Black artists, healers, and grassroots organizers, allowing them to speak on their work and their life journey that led to where they are in the present. They currently intern for a Black jewelry brand based in Brooklyn by the name of Heavy Metals NYC. Yanni is also an administrative assistant and teaching artist with the LEAP program of NYC in Brooklyn. Learn More — >>
Dena Igusti
PROJECT : A BIT TUARY
Dena Igusti is a queer non binary Indonesian Muslim poet, playwright, filmmaker, producer, and FGC survivor & activist born and raised in Queens, New York. They are the author of CUT WOMAN (Game Over Books, 2020), which has been listed as a 2020 Harvard Bookstore Staff Pick and a Entropy Mag’s Best Of 2020-2021, and I NEED THIS TO NOT SWALLOW ME ALIVE (Gingerbug Press, 2021). They are the co-playwright of the wish: a manual for a last-ditch effort to save abortion in the united states through theater. They are the founder of Dearest Mearest. Their work has been featured in BOAAT Press, Peregrine Journal, and several other publications. Their work has been produced and performed at The Brooklyn Museum, The Apollo Theater, the 2018 Teen Vogue Summit, Players Theatre (SHARUM, 2019), Prelude Festival (Cut Woman, 2020), Center At West Park (CON DOUGH, 2021), The Tank (First Sight 2021 at LimeFest), and several other venues internationally.
Nia Witherspoon
PROJECT : PRIESTESS OF TWERK
Nia O. Witherspoon(Smith BA/Stanford PhD) is a Black queer multidisciplinary artist + healing justice practitioner investigating the metaphysics of black liberation, desire, and diaspora, as they track across the space-time continuum. A forever student and practitioner of African cosmologies, and combining Black feminism,eco-feminism, and auto-critogrophy with mediums in writing, performance, sound, and installation, Witherspoon creates portals for communion, witnessing, and healing. Current and recent works include: Priestess of Twerk: A Black Femme Temple to Pleasure + Wisdom School (HERE Art Center/Musical Theatre Factory, 2024), Chronicle X: The Dark Girl Chronicles (The Shed, 2021), and MESSIAH (La Mama, 2019).
Emmanuel Oni
PROJECT: BEYOND MEMORIAL
Emmanuel Oni is a first-generation Nigerian-American living in New York City. He is an artist and designer utilizing spatial justice to unearth past trauma, reclaim space, and speculate possible futures for healing. He received a Master's in Architecture from Parsons School of Design and a dual Bachelor's in Biology & Psychology from the University of Houston. He is a former Director of Community Design at the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, an Adjunct Professor at Parsons the New School for Design, and co-founder and Creative Director of the non-profit Liminal.
Alicia Raquel Morales
CLIMATE JUSTICE Fellow 2022
PROJECT: CROWNING IN OCTOBER, OR HOW TO CHANGE SHAPE WHILE REMEMBERING YOUR NAME…
I am a dancer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural organizer. My aesthetic is quirky, queer, “spanglish,” Boricua, urban, nerdy and working class. I grew up building altars, listening to and making up stories that straddle "real" and unseen worlds, and watching formal and informal ritual work. I am a child of street dance. These practices shape my world view and style. In pandemic times, I have brought my dance practice back outdoors.
I am a former Dancing Futures and Skylab Artist in Residence, and a Brooklyn Arts Fund and NYFA Bridge Fund Recipient. I have danced with Arthur Aviles Typical Theater, MBDance, Renegade Performance Group, K. Hamilton Productions, and the NWA Project. My current work is a constellation of interactive pieces within the crowning world, the latest of which is crowning in october (or how to change shape while remembering your name). Learn More — >>
Tara Aliya Kesavan &
Indranil Choudhury
Tara and Indranil are the 2022 LAB MFA residents at Locust Projects, Miami. Their month-long residency will conclude with an exhibition that opens with a preview and reception on Saturday, July 23 from 6-8pm, and is on view through August 13, 2022. Learn More — >>
Tara Aliya Kesavan is an artist working across drawing, film and sculpture. She teaches in the Film and Media Department at Hunter College. She also works as the Programs Coordinator at UnionDocs. She is a candidate for an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College, CUNY.
Indranil Choudhury is a media artist working in sound, sculpture and video. He teaches at Hunter College and Marymount Manhattan College. He is a candidate for an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College, CUNY.
The Lebanese Mafia
PROJECT: SALON AL-MAHJAR صالون المھجر
Salon Al-Mahjar صالون المهجر is a feminist open mic for immigrant queer, trans, and allied artists, actors, activists, writers, poets, storytellers, filmmakers, dancers, singers, musicians, thinkers, historians, and teachers from South West Asia and North Africa.
We gather to celebrate each other’s voices, exchange ideas, engage in each other’s passions, counteract censorship, promote and support each other, give and receive feedback, and challenge what may be considered inappropriate "ayb" عیب or forbidden "haram" حرام. Learn More — >>
Ann Bennett
Black Utopian Fellow 2021
PROJECT: LINEAGE LAUNCHPAD © - ANCESTORS’ TONIC
Ann Bennett is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and multimedia producer. She produced the NAACP Image Award-winning PBS feature documentary, “Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People” as well as the multi-platform community engagement initiative, “Digital Diaspora Family Reunion” (DDFR). Bennett’s film credits include; ‘Citizen King’ and ‘Fisk Jubilee Singers’ for the PBS series “American Experience”, ‘Hymn for Alvin Ailey’ for “Dance in America”, and the award-winning PBS mini-series; ‘Africans in America’ and ‘America’s War on Poverty’. Bennett is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Harvard College and focuses her work on exploring the nexus of history, culture, disability, and technology within multicultural communities.
Learn More — >>
Zain Alam
Project: BED-STUY FAITH ARCHIVE
Zain Alam is an artist and musician of Indian-Pakistani origin based in Brooklyn, NY. Described as “a unique intersection, merging the cinematic formality of Bollywood and geometric repetition of Islamic art,” his recording project Humeysha began during his year working as an oral historian for the 1947 Partition Archive. His work is a project in translation using contemporary pop forms, found sound, and oral history.
Alam’s practice extends his sonic vision into video, performance, and writing. His essays have been published in Miami Rail, Buzzfeed, and The New Yorker, and Humeysha has been covered by the New York Times, Vice, and Village Voice. Alam has recently completed fellowships with The Anderson Center, Marble House, and Harvard University. He is currently at work on a full-length album and the Bed-Stuy Faith Archive. Learn More — >>
Cody Herrmann
CLIMATE JUSTICE Fellow 2021
Project: Flushing Waterways Boathouse
Cody Ann Herrmann is an artist and community organizer based in Flushing, Queens, NYC. Guided by her interest in public space, participatory design methods, and urban resilience Cody’s work often explores urban planning processes while applying an iterative, human centered approach to ecological problem solving. Since 2014 her work has focused on her hometown of Flushing, creating projects critiquing policy related to land use and environmental planning in areas surrounding Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek.
Learn More — >>
Angela Miskis
PROJECT: "LEAVE SOME FOR ME." A PROJECT BY ABUELA NEIGHBORHOOD MAINTENANCE
Angela Miskis (b. Ecuador, 1987) is an artist and community organizer based in Southeast Queens. Her work is influenced by her family upbringing, dedication to social service, and building a healthier and more sustainable future in her immediate community. Angela Miskis graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2013 with a degree in Visual and Critical Studies. Her honors include the Silas H. Rhodes scholarship (2011), and the Visual and Critical Studies Scholarship (2013) which awarded her a five-month artist residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme (2014) in Germany. Recently, Miskis was awarded a residency at ChaShaMa's ChaNorth International Artists Program (2019) in Pine Plains, NY, and the ArtWorks Inc. Seminar Fellowship at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (2020). She is currently a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project in New York, and a Utopian Practice Fellow with Culture Pusher (2021).
Bianca Mońa
PROJECT: HEALING EMBODIED: STORIES OF MOVEMENT FOR JOY
Bianca Mońa is a lover of the arts. As an artist, curator, educator, and advocate, she has initiated a number of projects at institutions such as Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) and The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, DC), and Market Photo Workshop (Johannesburg, SA). All of her artistic endeavors center on a greater understanding of contemporary Africa and her Diaspora. In addition, she is particularly keen on investigative projects that tackle the living history of regular citizens who negotiate grand topics such as gender, heritage, and social-economic placement. As an oral historian and sound artist she had received commissions from The Laundromat Project and Initiatives of Change USA. Learn More — >>