Participant Bios
Featured Artists
Natalia Villanueva Linares
Natalia Villanueva Linares is a multidisciplinary moment maker of French + Peruvian origin. Natalia speaks in amounts and believes in poetry made from excessive quantities, in simple objects radiating with power. Transmuting found, worn, old objects or those found in the banal of everyday life, Natalia uses destruction as a form of distribution. With an animistic relation to certain materials, she invites others to feel the magnitude of their generosity.
The concept of sensitive mathematics inhabits a large part of her work, either through the abundance of large quantities of gestures and objects, or in its relationship to space and temporality. Her monumental pieces reveal her magnetic affection for large collections, accompanied by a notion of continuity which communicates between the immense and the Minute.
Natalia has developed an ongoing series of nomadic performances in which participants activate objects in communion with one another. She aims to integrate both these objects and the experiences created and lived by many individuals into the archives of humanity. Through her project, The Library of Gestures, she seeks to question the history of art and its future.
Katia Perez Fuentes
Katia Perez Fuentes is an artist, facilitator, and professional astrologer. Their practice explores leisure as a means to pursue self-actualization.
KPF works intentionally with the cycles of celestial bodies as a fundamental aspect of timing. They honor traditional approaches to interpret astrology and consciously 'elect' auspicious influences of time. This ephemeral mural was intentionally made during Venus' day and hour, with Venus at the highest point of the sky receiving a supportive aspect from the moon. Venus is the patron archetype for artists, with traditional associations spanning over six thousand years. When in the solar sign of Leo, artistic endeavors are marked by generous spirits and the brilliance of vibrant expression. The timing of this mural also coincides with the ingress of Mercury's exaltation into Virgo. Scholars historically attribute Mercury here to have a meticulous and methodical approach to knowledge. This placement organizes, classifies, and informs, making it the patron planet for writers and researchers.
Katia ritually engages in sky gazing and draws inspiration from celajes—the visual and imagined components of ethereal cloudscapes. For them, abstraction is inspired by animistic energies and the process focuses on the meditative movements of materials across the surface. KPF emphasizes the importance of consciously dedicating time towards learning, play, rest, or celebration, principals informed by revolutionary Latin American literature theorizing temporalities.
Ireashia M. Bennett
Ireashia M. Bennett (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based Black, queer, and disabled filmmaker, writer, and photographer. They have over five years of work experience in journalism, interdisciplinary research, and film. Their work takes the form of new media, short and experimental films, as well as written and multimedia essays. They view filmmaking as a medium with the power of visibility and memory. As such, they wield this medium intending to celebrate and amplify stories and lived experiences that have been omitted or silenced. With this in mind, their films serve as sites of truth-telling, liberation, re-imagination, and reclamation.
They are a recipient of the two-year RaD Lab + Outside the Walls fellowship at Threewalls and the SPARK Grant from the Chicago Artists Coalition. Their artistic roots are in Chicago, where their creative work has been exhibited in art spaces such as the Sullivan Galleries, Arts Incubator, Stony Island Arts Bank, and the Chicago Art Department in Chicago.
BAILAR Y LLORAR
BAILAR Y LLORAR is a queer latine vinyl DJ duo between DJ Jungyal & Light of Your Vida, a.k.a. Luz Magdaleno Flores, Sixty's beloved editor for Sesenta en Español! BAILAR Y LLORAR's sounds evoke both sonic energies composed of salsa, dance hall, and house music from Jungyal’s Puerto Rican identity and lowrider oldies, soul, and romanticas from Luz's upbringing in California.
As a duo they bring expansive knowledge in music from the Caribbean and diaspora from Fania Records, Boleros, 80's Merengue, cumbia, hip hop, mariachi, and good ole Dance Hall beats. They evoke nostalgic memories of family parties and backyard carne asada mixed with bajo mundo and sad girl music.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 2ND
Kinship within the Archive: On the Emotions, Vulnerabilities, and Personal Connection of Archives
Panelists:
Emily Hooper Lansana
Emily Hooper Lansana is a community builder and performance maker. As a performing artist, she is most known for her work with Performance Duo: In the Spirit. For more than thirty years, she has performed as a storyteller, sharing her work with audiences throughout Chicago and across the country. She has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival, the National Association of Black Storytellers Festival, and at a variety of museums, colleges and performance venues. She is the Artistic Director of SOL Collective. Emily teaches storytelling in a range of venues from universities to community settings. She has received numerous honors including a 3arts award and Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Her work seeks to highlight those whose stories are often untold, especially those of the African diaspora.
Haku Blaisdell
Haku Blaisdell is the Associate Director of Outreach and Strategy in the Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies. In this role, she serves as the liaison between tribal nations and the Newberry. She’s honored and grateful to be a part of the work that reconnects Native communities with their materials that the Newberry currently stewards. She's also one of the leaders of the Indigenous Chicago project's oral history component, which aims to emphasize that Chicago is—and always has been—a Native place. In this capacity, she's had the opportunity to learn from members of the Native community in Chicago as she assists with recording their stories. Ultimately, she credits her upbringing as a proud Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) for the work that she does today within archives.
Liú Chen
Liú Chen (they/them//tā) is a queer, trans non-binary, disabled Abolitionist cultural organizer, descended from the islands of Taiwan and Ireland. They are currently the Oral History Programs Manager at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago. They view storytelling and oral history as key strategies for thawing trauma, empowering connection, and creating radical change. Their personal work focuses on anti-imperialism, queer/trans liberation, the heterogeneity of Asian and Asian/American identities, Black/Asian coalition movements, and the textures of silence and absence. Their Master’s thesis about asian trans kinship can be heard at www.tidalflats.xyz.
Troy Gaston
Troy Gaston is a former Robert Taylor Homes resident, and is currently an organizer with Black Lives Matter, a McNair Graduate from Roosevelt University (Political Science and Legal Studies), and was a 2022 Chicago United for Equity (CUE) Community Building Fellow. Troy is pursuing his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), continuing his research centered on Black women impacted by the carceral system (with particular emphasis on community within the Robert Taylor Homes). Troy is a regular interviewer for the NPHM Oral History Corps, and is also one of three members of the NPHM Research Oral History Corps, who are collaborating on a NEH- & OHA-funded project about ethical audio-based research with incarcerated communities.
Samantha Hill
Samantha Hill is the Curator of Civic Engagement at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts and Artist/creator of the Kinship Project, a community archive of photographs & artifacts from African American families, 1839-2012.
She holds master’s degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Michigan, School of Information. As an artist, Samantha collaborates with community organizations to produce archive-based immersive environments based on BIPOC regional history, and empowerment. Samantha has shown in museums and public spaces across the country including, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Anchorage Museum, the Block Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Art Basel Miami Public Programs, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture at the University of Chicago.
As the Curator of Civic Engagement, she collaborates with Philadelphia's non-profit organizations to preserve the city's diverse histories and cultures. She works to develop special projects which extend access collections for public knowledge.
Instagram:
Kislak Center: @kislakcenter
Penn Libraries: @upennlib
Twitter/X: @upennlib
Facebook and LinkedIn: pennlibraries
Co-Moderators:
Morris (Dino) Robinson, Jr
Morris (Dino) Robinson, Jr. is the Production Manager at Northwestern University Press. Throughout his career, he held several positions in various advertising firms in Chicago, IL and later operated Robinson Design specializing in exhibit design and logo development. He holds a BA degree in n Communication Design and a minor in African American Studies. Dino is the founder and current executive director of Shorefront, an organization he pioneered in 1995. Within Shorefront, he has written three books, produces a journal (1999 – present), hosted dozens of lectures and has assembled several subject specific traveling exhibits. Most importantly, Dino built a collection measuring over 500 linear feet that illustrates the histories and contributions of the local Black communities in Chicago’s suburban North Shore.
Kate Hadley Toftness
Kate Hadley Toftness is a writer and arts organizer. With the Sixty team, she leads the Chicago Archives + Artists Project. Based in Chicago and Savannah, she focuses on collections-based programs that promote social justice and inspire new artistic work. She believes that radical access to collections creates powerful connections between individual expression and shared experience. (www.chicagoarchivesandartists.org)
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3RD
Archiving in Times of Cultural Erasure + Censorship: A Roundtable Discussion
Speakers:
Anita Sharma
Anita Sharma is an independent visual arts archivist specializing in community-based digital archives and legacy preservation. Her work is dedicated to transforming archives into platforms for reparative justice. As the founder of WAAM (Women Artists Archive Miami), she has curated numerous exhibitions that celebrate the contributions of women artists in Miami. Recently, she served as the guest archivist for "Women's Voices: A Journey Through Miami's Art History" at the Vasari Project in Miami and for the exhibition "What is Seen & Unseen: Mapping Contemporary South Asian Art" at the South Asia Institute in Chicago.
Jose Luis Benavides
Jose Luis Benavides is a Latinx and queer photographer, moving image maker, and lecturer for the City Colleges of Chicago. Working primarily with a range of personal archives, his work explores issues relating to gender, sexuality, culture, and migration. His work has been screened at Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, and other festivals worldwide. He was recently awarded a Best of Fest’ Spotlight Film at the 55th Humboldt International Film Festival. He has made commissioned works for Chicago Film Archives, Defy Film Festival, and Envisioning Justice: An Exhibition at The Sullivan Galleries. He has recently held solo exhibitions at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago Art Department, and the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice. His work also exhibited at the Gerber/Hart Library and Archive, the Chicago Art Department, and the Logan Center for the Arts.
Maira Khwaja
Fawn Pochel
Rebelle
Co-Moderators:
Erin Glasco
Erin Glasco (they/them) is a fat, Black, queer, non-binary independent archivist and researcher based in Chicago, Illinois. Erin enjoys using their research and administrative skills to support radical, grassroots campaigns and initiatives. In terms of their archival work, their interests include helping to archive radical movement work and Black LGBTQIA+ people and communities in Chicago and beyond. Erin is committed to finding ways to meaningfully integrate Black, queer feminist practice and disability justice into their archival work. Erin is a founding member of The Blackivists, a collective of Black archivists who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices for Black cultural heritage and memory work in the Chicago area.
Tempestt Hazel
SUNDAY, AUGUST 4TH
Extending Life: On Writing for the Archive and the Value of Somatic Preservation
Moderator:
Tara Aisha Willis, Ph.D.
Tara Aisha Willis, Ph.D. is a dancer, writer, and curator. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU and her monograph in development, Indescribable Moves: Improvised Experiments in Dancing Blackness, explores contemporary practices of improvisation and experimentation in Black dance performances. She will be a 2024-25 Getty Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in the African American Art History Initiative and is currently Curator-in-Residence in Dance at The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Previously, she has served as Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at University of Chicago, Curator of Performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and a programmer at Movement Research, as well as founding administrator of their Artists of Color Council.
Her writing and editing appears in publications by Women & Performance, TDR/The Drama Review, The Black Scholar, Contact Quarterly, Movement Research Performance Journal, Center for Art Research and Alliances, Sixty Inches From Center, Performance Research,Brooklyn Rail, Center for Book Arts, Dancing While Black, Danspace Project, Wendy's Subway, Getty Research Institute/X Artists’ Books, and forthcoming from University of Illinois Press and Soberscove Press. Willis performed in a collaboration between Will Rawls and Claudia Rankine, in works by artists such as Sandra Binion, Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Paulina Olowska, devynn emory, and Anna Sperber, and in the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award-winning performance by The Skeleton Architecture. Her choreographic work includes collaborations with sound artists Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Damon Locks, and a forthcoming project with dance artists Anna Martine Whitehead and Zachary Nicol.
Panelists:
Britt Julious
Britt Julious is a writer, editor, essayist, and strategist. A firm believer in the underground, the avant-garde and the underdog, her work focuses on art, culture, race, feminism and politics. She’s written for publications like The New York Times, Vogue, Glamour, Marie Claire, Esquire, ELLE, and she currently serves as the music critic for the Chicago Tribune. Her essays have appeared in books like American Subcultures from Bedford/St. Martin’s and Rust Belt Chicago from BELT Publishing. Her work has also received press from outlets like The New York Times, CNN, H&M, Warby Parker, Rent the Runway and Shine Text. In 2019, NBC and The Today Show created a documentary about Britt’s life.
Britt also frequently serves as a speaker for organizations throughout the country, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Pitchfork Music Festival, Adidas Originals, Soho House, and the Chicago Humanities Festival.
In 2023, Britt was an inaugural fellow of the University of Chicago’s Critic’s Table. She is also a recipient of the Studs Terkel award in journalism for her work spotlighting underserved communities. Britt has also received writing residencies from Tiny Letter and the Ace Hotel, Helsinki Secret, Spark Camp, and Rail Europe. The Chicago Reader named Britt the “Best Local Writer Who Excels at Social Media,” and BuzzFeed named her one of the “Best Role Models for Ambitious Twentysomethings.”
Aaliyah Christina
Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina creates and supports performance work as an administrator, curator, movement artist, and writer. She makes dances and writes poetic stories about relationship/power dynamics, mental health, and Blackness as a resident on the South side of Chicago. She works as the Artist Programs Manager & Associate Curator at Links Hall, co-organizes with Performance Response Journal (PRJ), and collaborates with community organizations and fellow artists across the city of Chicago. Since 2015, she has collaborated with Chicago artists like Keyierra Collins, Ysayë Alma, Darling Shear, Wisdom Baty, Ayako Kato, and Dorian Sylvain to name a few. In 2021, Aaliyah received the 3Arts Make-A-Wave grant and as of 2023, she received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2023 Artist Fellowship Finalist Award. In 2024, she was selected as a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and a part of the Chicago Cultural Center Dance Studio Residency cohort. She created PRAISE MOTHER, a dance theater project highlighting relationships between Black matriarchs and their kin through their mental health journeys.
Nicky Ni
Nicky Ni is a curator and writer based in Chicago. She was co-founder of LITHIUM (2017-19), a Pilsen-based gallery dedicated to time-based art. LITHIUM then became TNL (aka. The Neu Lithium, Facebook/Instagram), an online editorial and curatorial platform for time-based and media art. Additionally, she has curated exhibitions or screenings at Conversations at the Edge, Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Photography, SITE Galleries, among others. She is Assistant Editor at Newcity and Editor at Sixty Inches From Center. She has written for Newcity, Chicago Artist Writers, Call for Curators, and others.
Unfurlings: Digging into the Personal Collections of Drag, Burlesque, and Sound Artists
Ále Campos
Ále Campos (b. 1994, Los Angeles, California) is a multidisciplinary artist and performance maker whose elastic studio practice is anchored in the vernacular of drag and their persona, ‘Celeste’. They generate live performance works that are often rhapsodic and mediated by technology, often involving or unfolding into the mediums of sculpture, sound, text, video and installation. Drag is the lens through which they consider performance making: they consider the stage and its borders, the malleability of the gaze, how to de/construct an image, the various states of in/visibility and how to handle time. Playing with optics and the boundaries between audience and the performing-body, allows them to explore the varying scales of vulnerability. Ultimately, their work dissects the psyche by declaring liveness and performance modalities as the catalyst for moving through states of becoming.
They received a BA from Bennington College (2016) and an MFA in Performance at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2022). Their work has been shown at the Hyde Park Arts Center, NO NATION, Comfort Station, Heaven Gallery, Ruschwoman, Jude Gallery, Roots & Culture, Elastic Arts, SITE/less (Chicago, IL), Lane Meyer Projects (Denver, CO), Collar Works (Troy, NY), September Gallery, The 405 Project (Hudson, NY), Kunsthalle Darmstadt (Germany), SS Gallerie (CDMX), BMOCA (Boulder, CO), Pamplemousse Gallery (Richmond, VA) They’ve attended ACRE Residency and are a recipient of the 2022 James Nelson Fellowship Award at SAIC and the City of Hudson’s Tourism Board Grant (2021). They were a 2023 BOLT artist-in-residence at the Chicago Artists’ Coalition and were named one of the ten New City 2023 Breakout Artists of Chicago.
They are currently a lecturer in Performance at SAIC and are an active, participating member of the drag and nightlife community in Chicago and are currently a resident performer / co-producer of Rumors, a monthly event that showcases some of the city’s premiere performers and DJ’s.
Jenn Freeman
Chicago-based performance artist Jenn Freeman also known as Po’Chop uses elements of dance, storytelling, and striptease to create performances and inspire students and collaborators across the country. Po’Chop is the co-founder of House of the Lorde and creator and author of the blogzine, The Brown Pages. She has performed at the Brooklyn Museum in Brown Girls Burlesque’s Bodyspeak, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance for TedxChicago 2022 and headlined shows in New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, St. Louis and New York. Po’Chop is a board member & cast member for Jeezy’s Juke Joint, an all Black burlesque revue. Po’Chop performs on Netflix’s Easy (Season 2), appears in music videos for songs by Jamila Woods and Mykele Deville, and creates and performs in experimental dance films such as LITANY. Jenn Freeman was recognized as a 2022 United States Artist Fellow; a 2022 Dance/USA Fellow; a 2021 Foundation of Contemporary Art Grant for Artist recipient, selected as a 2019-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Fellow and as a 2018 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist. Po’Chop has been voted among the top 50 Most Influential Burlesque Artist by 21st Century Magazine in 2022, 2021 & 2020 and was dancer in residence at Rebuild Foundation in 2020.
TRQPiTECA
TRQPiTECA is a Chicago-based artist duo and production company founded by DJs, artists, and producers Natalie Murillo (La Spacer) & Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero (Cqqchifruit). TRQPITECA presents inclusive cultural experiences that celebrate diverse communities through dance music and art. Since 2015 we have worked with over 350 performance and visual artists, designers, DJs, and musicians from Chicago and around the world. TRQPITECA is an LGBTQIA+, women of color owned platform celebrating Chicago’s legacy as the birthplace of house music, a musical movement created by Chicago’s BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities. Our mission is creating opportunities for people to experiment and connect through the production of dance music and art; uniting individuals across generations, cultural backgrounds, and identities; celebrating individuality, self-determination, and self-expression.
Remember Me: Oral History + Storytelling Workshop
Sierra King
Sierra King is currently a Social Justice For Archivist Scholar at The University of Alabama. She lives and works as an artist, archivist and curator in Atlanta, GA, and holds a BA in Art from Valdosta State University. She made curatorial debut in 2020 with MINT Gallery in Atlanta,GA, where she mounted a group exhibition here.there.everywhere: A multidimensional portrait of the journey towards Black Futurity. King was the co-curator for New Worlds - Georgia Women to Watch alongside Melissa Messina showcased the work of 5 Georgia-based women artists. She has presented her work about art and community archiving at the 2018 American Studies Association Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, the 2021 Memory Work for Black Lives Plenary presented by University of Oregon Library Archives for Black Lives: A Liberated Archives Exhibition and the 2023 Art Libraries Society of North America 51st Conference in Mexico City, Mexico. She serves as the founder of Build Your Archive, a nomadic memory work lab for Black Women Artists, Cultural Workers, Organizers and their communities to build their archives in real time.
Ask an Archivist Group Advisory Sessions
Haruhi Kobayashi
Haruhi Kobayashi is a Chicago-based sound artist and vocal performer from Tokyo, Japan. She has worked as a freelance archivist for Experimental Sound Studio and Asian Improv aRts Midwest, and is a sound and film archive enthusiast. She was a 2023 Chicago Film Archives Media Mixer Sound Artist and continues to implement archival material in her compositions. She is currently the High Concept Labs AIR resident 2024. / IG @haruhi_ Haruhi
Jehoiada Zechariah Calvin
Jehoiada Zechariah Calvin is a memory worker, writer, and zine-maker from Chicago. Jehoiada is the Archives Assistant for the Johnson Publishing Company Archive, helping to process the historic photograph collection for Ebony, Jet, and other magazines and programs. Before joining JPC, he created legacy management resources as the Community Engagement Archivist for the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. Jehoiada is a fellow in the University of Alabama’s Social Justice for Archivists Master of Library and Information Studies program, focusing on memory work that supports practices rooted in cultural traditions outside of institutional archives. He is also a co-organizer with Beet Street Zine, an art-based and community-led publication for and by Queer and Trans Black people and people of color to create a more equitable food system. / IG @ChiArchivist
Angélica Hernández
Angélica Hernández is the archivist for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s Digitizing The Barrio archive project. She received her Masters in Library and Information Science from Dominican University in 2022, and a BA in Art History from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Born and raised in Avondale, Hernández is deeply passionate about community engagement, equitable access to information, and participatory archival practices. / IG @aher37
Nicholas Lowe
Nicholas Lowe is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, author, and teacher. Working through drawing, photography, video, performance, and installation, his work is concerned with narrative traditions and material culture. His recent research, writing and material studio work are focused on landscape and muti-modal panoramic and immersive media and their role in forming cultural landscapes. His work has grown through issue-based and community connected approaches where personal and social experiences intersect to platform content and meaning. / IG @ruftydog
Sara Chapman
Sara Chapman has been executive director of Media Burn since 2009, and has been an integral part of the organization since its founding in 2003. You can catch her online at Media Burn’s biweekly Virtual Talks with Video Activists series on Thursdays. A scholar of early video and television, her article “Guerrilla Television in the Digital Archive” was published in the Journal of Film and Video. She was the producer of the feature-length experimental film, Ghosts in the Machine, which toured internationally. She’s also an avid swimmer and former co-chair of her Masters swim team, the Chicago Smelts. / IG @MediaBurnArchive