School of Art

Sholeh Asgary is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist whose works implicate the viewer-participant into future mythological excavations, bridging large swathes of time and history, through water, water clocks, crude oil, movement, light, imaging, voice, and sound.

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A self-taught photographer born in 1981 and based in Tehran, Newsha Tavakolian began working professionally in the Iranian press at the age of 16, at women's daily newspaper "Zan". At the age of 18, she was the youngest photographer to cover the 1999 student uprising.

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Ricardo Dominguez was a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble and a cofounder of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998. 

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Gloria is a Xicana-Filipina artist who works in painting, weaving, sculpture, and mixed media. Her use of everyday material invoked the Xicanx concept of ‘Rasquache,’ which signifies a resourceful, working class sensibility.

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Autumn Breon works to reimagine global narratives through art and creativity. A graduate of Stanford University, she studied Aeronautics & Astronautics and researched aeronautical astrobiology applications for NASA.

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Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, filmmaker, and cultural producer.

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Star Montana is a photo-based artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She was born and raised in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, which is predominantly Mexican American and serves as the backdrop to much of her work. 

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Dr. Roja Najafi is an art historian, educator, and curator specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is the lead of the Art History Program at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in Arizona.

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Tina Linville received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington and her MFA in Fibers from California State University, Long Beach.

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As a Ghanaian-born woman artist, Na Chainkua Reindorf finds that engaging with textiles provides a unique path toward (re)claiming agency in self-expression. 

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Ruiz is a self-taught artist whose practice blends diverse forms of expression and media, including sculpture, video, painting, and apparel design.

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Heather Pesanti is Curator and Vice President of Dimensional Fund Advisors, where she oversees their global corporate art collection.

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Arbelaez Natalia Arbelaez is a Colombian American artist, born and raised in Miami, Florida to immigrant parents.

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Rindon Johnson is an artist and writer. His most recent virtual reality film, Meat Growers: A Love Story, was commissioned by Rhizome and Tentacular.

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Arash Kamali Sarvestani is an Iranian Dutch Filmmaker and Video Artist. He holds a BA in Cinema in Art from University of Tehran, and Video Art in Gerrit Rietveld, Academie in Amsterdam.

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Sohrab Mohebbi is the curator of the 58th Carnegie International and curator-at-large at SculptureCenter, New York.

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Hannah Chalew is an artist, educator and environmental activist raised and currently working in New Orleans. She received her BA from Brandeis University in 2009 and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2016.

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Geoffrey Koslov co-founded Foto Relevance, a fine art gallery located in the museum district of Houston, Texas, for contemporary photography- based art.

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Nicole R. Fleetwood is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication in the Steinhardt School at New York University.

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James “Yaya” Hough is from Pittsburgh, PA. At age 17 he was charged and convicted of murder. While Hough regrets his actions and now fully understands how precious life is, he also has first-hand knowledge of how punitive and unforgiving the system can be, having served 23 years of a mandatory life without parole sentence.

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Debra Klomp Ching is the co-owner of the Klompching Gallery. In addition to owning and operating the gallery, she is a freelance consultant, writer, curator and educator.Her writing has been published in Magenta Magazine, photo-eye Booklist, (re)collect, Nahtsellen, At Length and PDN.

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Areli Arellano is a Los Angeles-based artist working in a variety of mediums. Inspired by Latine culture, Areli's work explores religion, race, and gender. Exploring the juxtaposition between hard concepts and soft materials, she creates pieces with faux fur and other plush fabrics. The bright colors and textures draw viewers in, while the messages behind her work offer a place for reflection once they are fully captivated. Areli wants to create safe spaces for people of color, specifically women of color. She creates work that reminds POC of home while simultaneously challenging those in positions of privilege and power. 

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Larsen received their BFA with an emphasis in Photography from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in May 2019. Later that same year, they earned first place in the 2019 Getty Images Creative Bursary Award, first prize in thAmsterdam Pride Photo Award, and was named a 2019 Emerging Fellow by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation MarL. Nohl Fellowship. 

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Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico based multidisciplinary artist who uses social collaboration in response to timely and site-specific issues. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota and European descent. Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms—through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, new media, technology and repurposed materials,

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**This event has been updated to reflect the new date of Nov. 16, 2021.** Janice McNab is a Scottish artist and academic who now lives in the Netherlands. From 2020-2022 she is also a post-doctoral scholar with The University of the Arts, The Hague / Leiden University.

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Abby Chen is the Curator and Artistic Director for the Chinese Culture Foundation. She has more than 10 years of experience curating visual arts, film, and performing arts programs. She is responsible for the Foundation’s artistic vision, planning, and management, including exhibition, public art, collection, communication, publication, and strategic partnerships.

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TERESA HUBBARD (Irish/ American/ Swiss, born in Dublin, Ireland 1965) and ALEXANDER BIRCHLER (Swiss, born in Baden, Switzerland 1962) have been working collaboratively in film, photography and sculpture since 1990. They live and work in Austin, USA and Berlin, Germany.

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Nebras Hoveizavi was born in Ahavaz, and lived in United States since her 20s, she graduated from California  Institute of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Photo-Media in May 2014, and M.F.A. from the same Institute in May  2016.

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Based in Manchester, Anya Paintsil is a Welsh and Ghanaian artist working primarily with textiles. Frequently using weaves, braids and other hair pieces (as well as her own hair), Paintsil laces debates around race and gender into the very fabric of her work. Anya Paintsil works at the intersection of textile and sculpture, engaged in practices like rug-hooking, embroidery, and tapestry-making, some of which she learned from family members. In terms of material, she frequently incorporates weaves, braids, and other hair pieces into her works. Painstil’s oeuvre—which explores topics such as the female gaze, personal relationships, and collective prejudices—are informed by the artist’s experiences growing up in North Wales in a mixed-race family.

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Clarissa Tossin is a visual artist who uses installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography to negotiate hybridization of cultures and the persistence of difference. By embracing semantic displacements in given material cultural ecosystems, Tossin's work reflects on circulation from the level of the body to the global industry. 

Tossin's has been exhibited widely, including in the exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modem Architecture, New Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2018), and in the 12th Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea (2018). In 2017, Tossin received a commission from the city of Los Angeles as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA for the exhibition Condemned to be Modern at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Also in conjunction with PST: LA/LA, her work was included in the exhibition Mundos Altemos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas at the VCR/California Museum of Photography, which will travel to the Queens Museum in 2019. 

All lectures are free, open to the public, and presented online. RSVP required. 

To register, please email artvals@alum.calarts.edu with the subject RSVP PBVALS.

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Sara Madandar is an Iranian multi-disciplinary artist based in New Orleans. She received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and her BA in painting from the Azad University of Art and Architecture in Tehran. 

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Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations. Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, scissors, paper, stone, wax and water, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural narratives. As Kay Whitney wrote about Liu's work in Sculpture Magazine: "Liu’s installations leap from obsession and repetition to something profound and expansive, merging the personal with the political." 

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Maria Maea is a multidisciplinary artist working in production, installation and performance. Through film, sculpture and movement, she deepens her connection to source.

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