Meet at The Shed

Janani Balasubramanian is an artist and creative researcher. Balasubramanian frequently works in deep collaboration with astrophysicists to shift how we understand inner and outer space,and uses artmaking as an occasion to pursue ambitious research inquiries. Their practice centers experimentation with form and technology, wide accessibility, and play, and includes works of new media (augmented / virtual reality), film, immersive theatre, and literary fiction.

Balasubramanian’s work has been presented at more than 160 stages across North America and Europe, including The Public Theater, MOMA, Abrons Arts Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Red Bull Arts, Ace Hotel, Brooklyn Museum, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, High Line, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Residency support for this work has included the National Endowment for the Arts, Public Theater Devised Theater Working Group, Abrons Arts Center, and Mount Tremper Arts. Balasubramanian was a 2019 Innovator-in-Residence at Colorado College, 2019 Brooklyn College/Tow Foundation artist resident, 2018 artist-in-residence at the University of Colorado, and a 2018 – 19 Van Lier Fellow at the Public Theater. Balasubramanian is currently a 2020 Hemispheric Institute fellow at NYU; a 2019 – 20 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow; artist-in-residence in the brown dwarf astrophysics group at the American Museum of Natural History; and a 2020 Pioneer Works Narrative Arts Fellow.

Through her research-based practice, Bahar Behbahani approaches landscape as a metaphor for politics and poetics. She works in a range of media—such as painting, video, installation and performative talks—to pose urgent questions that consider the ways in which people negotiate space and place. Her solo exhibitions include Let the Garden Eram Flourish, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; Garden Coup, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY, and The Short Films of Bahar Behbahani, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI. She was an Open Sessions artist at The Drawing Center 2017-2019. Her work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including EMPAC, Troy, NY; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art; and the 11th Shanghai Biennale. Behbahani is a recipient of a 2019 Creative Capital award for Ispahan Flowers Only Once, a community garden, inspired by Persian garden design, philosophy, plants, and flora, which will bring people together to take part and re-activate the history by gathering and gardening.

Bembona is a Puerto Rican-Panamanian DJ, multiplatform artist, and activist, born and raised in Brooklyn. Her work represents and pushes forward the Afro-Diasporadical movement (Latinx/Indigenous/Caribbean/African) with the purpose of empowering and bridging the gap between POC communities and generations in activist work and beyond.

Torkwase Dyson was born in Chicago and spent her developmental years between North Carolina and Mississippi. Traversing these geographies helped develop a fundamental interest in architecture, systems, and environment. Dyson received a BA from Tougaloo College in 1996, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999 and MFA from Yale School of Art in painting / printmaking in 2003. Though working in multiple forms Dyson describes herself as a painter whose compositions address the continuity of movement, climate change, infrastructure, and architecture. For Dyson, these subjects in relationship to each other produce abstractions shaped by the history of black spatial liberation and environmental resistance.

Dyson’s solo exhibitions and installations include Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, New York; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Bennington College VAPA Usdan Gallery, Vermont; Cooper Union, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Franconia Sculpture Park, Maine; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia. Group exhibitions include Between the Waters, Whitney Museum of American Art; Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, California African American Museum; Look for Me All Around You, 2019 Sharjah Biennial; PopRally: Practice and Ritual, Museum of Modern Art. Dyson has been awarded the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, Anonymous Was A Woman grant, the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, the Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship, Spelman College Art Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council grant, Yale University Barry Cohen Scholarship, the Yale University Paul Harper Residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, and FSP / Jerome Fellowship and Yaddo. Dyson’s work has also been supported by the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, The Laundromat Project, the Green Festival of New York, Obsidian Arts and Public funds of the City of Minneapolis, Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, The Kitchen, and Dorchester Projects in Chicago. Torkwase Dyson lives and works in New York and is a critic at the Yale School of Art.

Avram Finkelstein is a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. His work has shown at the Whitney, MoMA, the Metropolitan, the New Museum, and the Venice Biennale, and is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the Metropolitan, the New Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. He is featured in the Visual Arts and AIDS Oral History Project at the Smithsonian Archives. His book for UC Press, After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Critical Writing / Research.

Moko Fukuyama is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She has a quasi-documentary approach to filmmaking, using real-life stories and adapting them to more fantastical cinematic and sculptural scenarios.

Dr. Natalie Gosnell is an observational astrophysicist and assistant professor of physics at Colorado College. Dr. Gosnell received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then was a McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She returned to her Colorado College, her alma mater, as faculty in 2016. Dr. Gosnell’s research uses both ground- and space-based telescopes to explore the stories of binary star systems. Her research has appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, Astrophysical Journal Letters, Astronomical Journal, and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In her role as a teacher-scholar, Dr. Gosnell seeks to bring creative practices into both the physics classroom and her research pursuits.

John Hatfield is the executive director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. Previous to Socrates Sculpture Park, he worked for 17 years in various capacities at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. As the deputy director of the New Museum, he oversaw the curatorial and exhibitions departments. Hatfield served as assistant vice president for memorial, cultural, and civic programs at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation managing the largest public design competition in the world for the September 11 memorial and selection process. He has served on many public art panels, juries, and curated exhibitions; has lectured on art in the public realm; and has consulted and advised organizations throughout the country on public art.

NYC-based artist J Hoard is known for performances that fuse the core of the Black church and allure of “The Great White Way” (Broadway). As a songwriter, his original, imaginative compositions and arrangements easily shift from genre to genre. His credits include Chance the Rapper, Brasstracks, and hip hop royalty Jean Grae and Quelle Chris. Additionally, he has worked closely with a host of jazz / experimental artists such as Sonnymoon, Javier Santiago, and Meshell Ndegeocello.

DJ April Hunt presents music that weaves through various genres and periods from the 1970s to today, Hunt mixes for cultural happenings at large; she has played at art parties organized by artists Derrick Adams, Rashaad Newsome, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, the Public Art Fund, and the High Line. Hunt is also the founder and CEO of sparkplugPR, a communications agency with an emphasis on amplifying inclusive projects and underrepresented voices within the artworld.

Recent sets include: Aspen Art Museum Anniversary (Aspen, CO), Tumblr afterparty for Derrick Adams (NY, NY), Cartier Mansion reception for Swizz Beatz + Alicia Keys (NY,NY), Trevor LIVE Gala at Cipriani’s (NY, NY); Armory Show Party at Museum of Modern Art, (NY, NY); Rashaad Newsome at Henrik Springmann (Berlin, Germany), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (São Paulo, Brazil); Uptown Triennial (NY, NY); Storm King Gala at the Rainbow Room (NY, NY); Derrick Adams: Future People Opening (Chicago, IL), Studio Museum’s Uptown Fridays (NY, NY).

Founded in 2015 in the Bronx, It’s Showtime NYC! (IST) is one of the largest street dance companies in New York City. IST celebrates New York City street culture, provides performance and professional development opportunities to street and subway dancers as a legal alternative to dancing in subway cars, and fosters the importance of street dancers finding a better footing in their artistic careers in NYC.

It’s Showtime NYC! is a program of Dancing in the Streets, developed in partnership with the Mark Morris Dance Center, with funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation. It’s Showtime NYC! is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

DJ Synchro (Level Up Showcase) was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He has played piano and numerous instruments since he was three years old, and started to develop a love for electronic music around the age of 12 when he first listened to Daft Punk’s Discovery album. He started his career after joining an after school program at his middle school from a non-profit organization called Building Beats. From there, he started DJ'ing at school dances and later other venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Funkadelic Studios, LinkedIn, and several other clubs and locations throughout New York City. Now, he produces his own music, with a mixture of heavy electronic trap and lo-fi-inspired beats.

Artist Tattfoo Tan’s practice focuses on issues relating to ecology, sustainability and healthy living. His work is project-based, ephemeral and educational in nature. Tan has exhibited at venues including the Queens Museum of Art, Eugene Lang College at the New School for Liberal Arts, Parsons the New School for Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, 601 Tully: Center for Engaged Art and Research at Syracuse University, Macalester College, Ballroom Marfa, Creative Time, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Project Row Houses, and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. Tan’s projects have been presented by the Laundromat Project, the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for the Arts program, and the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts program. His work has been published by Gestalten and Thames and Hudson.

Tan has been widely recognized for his artistic contributions and service to the community, and is the proud recipient of a proclamation from the City of New York. He is the recipient of grants from Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Art Matters, Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and Staten Island Arts. In 2010, Tan received the annual Award for Excellence in Design by the Public Design Commission of the City of New York for his design and branding of the Super-Graphic on Bronx River Art Center. He currently serves on the Mayor’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee to support the development of a Comprehensive Cultural Plan.