4‑H is the youth development component of Rutgers Cooperative Extension, connecting youth and our community to Rutgers University (4-H Connects Kids with Rutgers). The 4-H Youth Development Program uses a learn-by-doing approach to enable youth to develop the knowledge, attitudes, and skills they need to become competent, caring, and contributing citizens of the world. This is accomplished by using the knowledge and resources of caring adults.
Professor Eric Adamson is an Instructor of English at Hudson County Community College where he teaches composition classes, creative writing, and literature classes. He co-chairs the HCCC Poetry and Language Collective and serves on the President’s Advisory Council for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
He received his MFA from Brown University and is passionate about poetry, video games, animation, and finding new and innovative ways to teach his students.
The HCCC Poetry and Language Collective is dedicated to engaging the HCCC community through written poetry and spoken word. The committee aims to bring poetry events to the school and the community through various and diverse voices that uplift the community and showcase poetic talent.
Marseille-based publisher and curator Lydia Amarouche is a sociology, anthropology, and history graduate of the École Normale Supérieure. She explores various archive documents to create publishing surveys that are either exhibited or performed. In 2019, she launched Corpus, a series of collective, open-access readings that dealt with colonial history, queer and feminist issues, the penitentiary system, education, and art.
In 2020, she founded Shed publishing, a publishing and art platform that releases essays on social and political theory, and youth literature. Lydia also lectures at Aix-Marseille University.
John Peter Apruzzese writes fiction, poetry, and book and art reviews. His work, which explores the crossroads between cultures, perspectives, and religions, has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Brooklyn Magazine, Burning House Press, PANK Magazine, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, among others.
A Jersey City native, he works at the United Nations as a communication and intergovernmental specialist and lived for many years in France and Egypt. He is the Translator Editor at LIT, The New School’s literary and arts review where he launched the Global Voices interview series.
Ugo Arsac is a digital and plastic artist. He is based in Marseille, France. He completed his studies at the Beaux-Arts and Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and then at Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts. He produces films, installations, and immersive experiences that bring together the urban and the human, mythology, and anthropology. He has been awarded the Émergences Prize (Scam) and the Prix des Amis du Fresnoy. His work was recently shown at the Chronique – Biennale of Digital Imagination, Ososphère, and DDessin, among others. His latest creation, IN-URBE, is now part of the Espace Multimédia Gantner collection.
Before leading the Centre Pompidou project in Jersey City with Anna Hiddleston, Charles Aubin served as Senior Curator & Head of Publications at Performa—New York’s performance biennial—where he commissioned and produced new performances, publications, and programs featuring a wide range of artists, architects, and choreographers, including Nairy Baghramian, Jérôme Bel, Julien Creuzet, François Dallegret, Tarik Kiswanson, Yvonne Rainer, Franz Erhard Walther, and Mabel O. Wilson. In 2019, Aubin coedited “Bodybuilding: Architecture and Performance,” the first book to survey the use of live performance by architects. Between 2015 and 2018 he also served as curator for the inaugural program of Lafayette Anticipations in Paris.
Mikaela Avakian is a senior at Princeton University in the French and Italian department with a keen interest in Politics and Near Eastern studies. At Princeton, she actively participates in the L’Avant-Scène Theatre productions, led by Florent Masse, and serves as an officer for the Princeton Armenian Student Society. Outside of academics, Mikaela is passionate about fencing, equestrian, and learning new languages.
Oliver Beer studied musical composition at the Academy of Contemporary Music before reading Fine Art at the Ruskin, University of Oxford and film theory at the Sorbonne, Paris. He makes sculptures, installations, videos, and immersive live performances that reveal the hidden properties and musicality of objects, bodies, and architectural sites. Drawing on his musical training, his social and familial relationships often become the blueprint for multi-disciplinary works that engage with intimate and universal concerns, such as the transmission of musical memories and the personal and cultural meanings invested in the things we possess. The artist’s work has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions, notably at Met Breuer, Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA PS1, New York; Centre Pompidou, Opéra Garnier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’Art Moderne and Château de Versailles, Paris; and the Sydney, Istanbul and Venice biennales.
Larissa Belcic is an artist, designer, and educator from northern New Jersey. She grew up in Leonia, comes from Italian-American and Croatian families of West New York, and now lives in Jersey City. The industrial-infrastructural landscapes of the region and their stories have been a powerful teacher in her life, shaping her personal, educational, and professional decisions.
Larissa is co-director and co-founder of Nocturnal Medicine, a nonprofit studio for climate consciousness and cultural transformation. Founded alongside Michelle Farang Shofet in 2016, the collective makes new ways of gathering for the worlds of today and tomorrow. Their practice centers the regeneration of our relationships – with Earth, with each other, and with ourselves. Amongst Nocturnal Medicine’s body of work, they have created sanctuaries for ecological grief, climate-aware seasonal rites, chapels for extinction, and raves for public healing.
Their work has been celebrated in The New York Times and CityLab as bringing a cutting-edge, soul-centered approach to addressing the psycho-emotional impacts of climate crisis. They have designed and produced immersive social experiences across diverse platforms, including in nightlife (Nowadays, Gospel), cultural institutions (Lincoln Center, Performance Space New York), and at universities across the country (MIT, UVA, Yale).
Larissa has a BA in Linguistics from Boston College and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University, and teaches landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Céline Bessière is a professor of sociology at Paris Dauphine University (PSL University) and a senior member at the Institut Universitaire de France. Her research focuses on the material, economic and legal dimensions of family, especially through the analysis of inheritance and marital breakdown. Her work is at the crossroads of several fields: economics, sociology, sociology of law and justice, sociology of gender, class and family. Céline Bessière is also the co-author of Au tribunal des couples, published in 2013 by Odile Jacob, and the author of De génération en génération, published by Raison d’Agir in 2010.
Bike JC is Jersey City’s independent, volunteer-led nonprofit organization for better, safer, and more equitable biking. Through advocacy for improved bike infrastructure and policy, public and individual education, group rides and other community events, we strive to make our city cleaner, greener, and more people-centric by transforming its transportation systems and culture.
Raphaël Bourgois, a historian by training, specializes in cultural journalism, books, and ideas. He has spent most of his career in public radio in France, starting in 2006. In 2018, he co-founded the online daily newspaper AOC and acted as its editor-in-chief for more than three years. AOC has established itself as an indispensable interface between the worlds of culture, academia, and journalism. He now serves as editorial director of Villa Albertine and its online magazine, which features articles, podcasts, videos, and a series of live events on France’s cultural activities in the United States.
Lindsey Brittain Collins (lives and works in New York, NY) creates abstract architectural
landscapes that narrate her experience within the built environment and serve as an archive of
places, raising questions of visibility and invisibility – shining a light on the stories of people and
places that have been overlooked. Through formal compositions and mosaic-like abstractions that
engulf and disorient viewers, her work challenges perceptions and explores themes of
organization, power, and the impact of architecture on society. Drawing inspiration from her
background in business and economics, contemporary and historical events, memory, and
personal experiences, her conceptually-driven work explores the complexities of environmental
inequality and challenges us to consider how we can learn from the past to design a more equitable
and human-centered future.
Lindsey received her MFA from Columbia University in 2021. She holds an MBA from Columbia
Business School and B.A. in Economics and Sociology from the University of Virginia. In 2018 she
was appointed by the Governor to the Art & Architectural Review Board for the state of Virginia.
She has been an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center and was the recipient of the 2019
Arena Stage Emerging Leader in the Arts Award. Most recently, Brittain Collins was an artist-in
residence at Silver Art Projects at the World Trade Center, where the program’s focus was social
justice and activism
Dario Calmese is an American creative director, photographer, and design theorist. His work interrogates the mechanisms of cultural production and the ways in which image, environment and technology shape the lived experience. Spanning across the fields of photography, design, fashion, and performance, his practice aims at repopulating the voids within the construction of historical narrative and identity by leveraging the very systems that dictate how we come to know ourselves both collectively and individually.
In 2020, Dario made history as the first-ever Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vanity Fair — in its 106-year existence — with his portrait of Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis. That same year, Calmese launched The Institute of Black Imagination (IBI), a design start-up that works to preserve, integrate, and cultivate the Black imagination through innovative and interactive experiences. IBI’s portfolio includes a widely-acclaimed podcast, a powerful online archive of Black creativity, and a forthcoming location at the Oculus World Trade Center, all of which tap into the “Pool of Black Genius” to share the visions of the modern iconoclasts taking the reins on cultural thought and innovation.
Currently a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Calmese serves on the global advisory board for Estee Lauder Companies and is a professor at The New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City. He is also an NYC Urban Design Forum Fellow, show director for the fashion brand Pyer Moss, and collaborated with Adobe Lightroom to design presets specifically for people of color.
Tei Carpenter is the director of Agency—Agency, an award-winning architectural design studio dedicated to the transformative potentials of design. The studio specializes in cultural and public projects at multiple scales including environments, infrastructure, buildings and exhibitions. Agency—Agency has been recognized internationally as part of a new generation of impactful designers by Domus, PIN-UP, Architect, and Cultured and was honored with the AIA New Practices award from the American Institute of Architects in 2018 and the League Prize from the Architectural League of New York in 2021. Cultural and educational clients include A/D/O BMW Mini, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Columbia University, the Museum of Modern Art, Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Ali Forney Center. The studio’s work has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture, the Museum of Modern Art, the Oslo Triennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Venice Biennale.
Tei is currently a Critic at the Yale School of Architecture and has previously held positions at Brown University, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Brown University and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University.
Nina is the founding principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design, a multidisciplinary design studio that values placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the built environment. Studio Cooke John’s Shadow of A Face, the new Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark, NJ was unveiled in March 2023. The studio was awarded a 2021 AIANS Merit Award for the public art installation, Point of Action, commissioned for the Flatiron public plazas in 2020 and currently on view at the Wassaic Project. Nina was named a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. Her work has also been featured in Architectural Record, Madame Architect, The New York Times, Dwell, NBC’s Open House, the Center for Architecture’s 2018 exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture and PBS NewsHour Weekend. Nina earned her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Master’s in Architecture from Columbia University. She now teaches at Columbia University.
Mélanie Courtinat is an award-winning art director and artist, born and based in Paris, France.
Considering video games as a major medium, she focuses on their extraordinary immersive properties, and seeks to push back their limits.
The outcome, crafted through the use of digital tools, results in CGI images and films, Interactive experiences, Virtual and Augmented reality.
As an art director, she works on commissioned projects for clients in the Luxury, Fashion, Culture & Music fields.
As an artist, her personal work is consistently being shown worldwide in cultural institutions, galleries and museums, from Tokyo to New York.
Mélanie also teaches video game theory at Écal in Lausanne and frequently conducts lectures and workshops in an academic setting.
Additionally, she has received recent nominations from the French ‘Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée’ to serve as a jury member for the Videogame Support Fund, and from the Swiss ‘Cinéforum’ as an expert for the Digital Experiences Support Fund.
Department of Transformation (D🌏T) is an artist-organized group that mobilizes the power of art and design towards individual, collective, and structural transformation. D🌎T was founded by designer, author, and educator Prem Krishnamurthy and takes shape through workshops, events, publications, and community-based activities (+ karaoke!) around the world.
Department of Transformation’s Spring 2024 programs are supported by Canal Projects, New York.
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn of Mende and Bubi descent. She uses multiple mediums to create works with themes of the collective unconscious, identity, utopia, decolonization, and stories of the past, present and future. Fawundu co-published the critically acclaimed book, MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. For decades, she has exhibited both nationally and internationally and is a 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition finalist.
Her awards include, The Anonymous Was A Women Grant, New York Foundation for The Arts Photography Fellowship (2016) and the Rema Hort Mann Artist Grant (2018) amongst others.
She was commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory to participate in the 100 Years|100 Women Project/The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium (2019-2021).
Her works are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Princeton University Museum, Princeton, NJ; Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA; The Petrucci Family Foundation of African American Art, Asbury, NJ; The Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, NY; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Springs, FL, The David C. Driskell Art Collection, College Park, MD; and number of private collections. She is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.
Chantal Fischzang, a Communication Designer based in NY/NJ, specializes in Socially Engaged Design, tackling multidisciplinary projects spanning brand identity, print, publication, exhibition, interactive and environmental design. As Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Rutgers University-Newark, she fosters collaboration between academia and community, addressing contemporary social issues through public art and design. Chantal integrates publicly engaged practice and design education through her roles at Express Newark. She serves as Co-Director of Visual Means and Design Consortium, academic programs focused on cooperative learning and community building in the city of Newark. Her accolades include recognition from AIGA, COMMUNICATION ARTS, the WEBBYs and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Notably, her work with IntraCollaborative is part of the museum’s permanent collection. Recently, her team secured the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant for the project Lead through Language, as part of the Design Consortium’s partnership with Lives In Translation. Born in Israel and raised in Bolivia, Fischzang holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Florida Atlantic University and an MFA in Communication Design from Pratt Institute.
Beatrice Galilee is a London-born, New York-based curator, writer and cultural advisor who is internationally recognized for her expertise in global contemporary architecture and design. Ms Galilee is co-founder and executive director of The World Around, a global nonprofit platform headquartered in New York, with a clear and ambitious mission: to connect, empower, and amplify the exceptional new voices and ideas in global architecture that meet the challenges of our time.
She is the author of Radical Architecture of the Future, published by Phaidon in 2021, and between 2014-2019 served as the first curator of contemporary architecture and design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beatrice is a visiting professor at Pratt Institute where she lectures on curating. Beatrice Galilee served as chief curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale; co-curator of 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, co-curator of 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Between 2010-2012 she launched and co-directed The Gopher Hole, an experimental exhibition and project space in London.
Sibylle Gollac is a research fellow in sociology at Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). After completing her dissertation on the family dynamics of housing and real estate, she studied inheritance and marital separations to analyze the construction of economic inequalities in the family. A member of the JustineS team (Justice and inequalities through the prism of social sciences), she studies the role of justice and the law in the perpetuation of inequalities.
Gordon is a French writer, filmmaker and art director. After creating visual identities for television broadcasters and collaborating on musical films mixing video recordings and animation sequences, he turned his attention to immersive technologies and created a number of XR experiences such as The Van Gogh’s palette (co-produced with. Lucid Realities, TSVP, Musée d’Orsay et VIVE Arts), ARCHI VR – La villa Savoye (co-produced with Lucid Realities, Centre des monuments nationaux and Fondation Le Corbusier), the virtual reality game 1,2,3…Bruegel! (co-directed with Andrés Jarach, co-produced with Camera lucida, Arte France), and the augmented reality applications BiblioQuête (written by Andrés Jarach, co-produced with Red Corner, France Télévisions) and The little dancer (written by Marie Sellier, co-produced with Lucid Realtities, France Télévisions and Musée d’Orsay).
Jeielle Habinam is a sophomore at Princeton University majoring in Anthropology, with minors in African Studies, French and Visual Arts. At Princeton, she is a member of L’Avant-Scène Theatre productions and serves as the president of the African Summit and the vice-president of the Society of Africans. Outside of academics, she is passionate about artistic social activism, storytelling and photography.
Working as the Senior Director of International Programs and Special Projects, Tania is spearheading Games for Change’s international growth, working to extend the impact games movement into new regions and communities around the world. During her 10-year career at the organization, Tania has led a variety of youth, community and client-facing programs. She currently oversees G4C’s professional design challenges and competitions, facilitates cross-cultural exchange programs and supports client services including curation, workshops, executive production and more. She was also instrumental in launching and expanding G4C’s award winning youth program – the G4C Student Challenge – a game design program and competition that inspires youth to create digital games about issues impacting their communities. Today, the program reaches tens of thousands of educators and underserved students in the US – and is currently on track to expand internationally in 2024.
Tania graduated from Cornell University with a BA in film, theater and dance and has a certificate in entertainment media management from NYU-SCPS. Her professional background spans a range of entertainment companies and productions including Vivendi Games, the Hamptons International Film Festival, Visit Films LLC, and the Charlie Rose Show. She is a social gamer, a lover of cinema, and a big advocate for the power of interactive media to make the world a better place.
Andrew Harrison, a New Jersey native, is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, and curator who has exhibited his sculptures, short-films, digital prints, and installations in galleries and museums nationally. He has exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Governor’s Island Art Fair in New York, Rowan University Art Gallery, the Krannert Art Museum, Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, and Cincinnati’s Manifest Gallery among others.
As a curator, Harrison has managed the exhibitions and artists’ talks at the Mariboe Gallery in New Jersey and developed exhibitions and design competitions for Montclair Design Week in Montclair New Jersey. He is co-editor of Dense, a design publication that explores our social, cultural and environmental futures through the lens of New Jersey.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University, he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in interdisciplinary studio arts from Maine College of Art in 2008. For over 15 years, Harrison has taught photography, film, and advanced studio courses in high schools and in New Jersey and New York City.
Anna Hiddleston has been a member of the curatorial team at Centre Pompidou in Paris since 1996 and has been deeply engaged with its collections, installations, exhibitions, and programs. Among her most notable exhibitions are “Georgia O’Keeffe” (2021), which had the highest attendance of any exhibition in France that year, and “Francis Bacon: Books and Painting” (2019). She has co-curated exhibitions across the full sweep on the museum’s collections, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Alberto Giacometti. She has been leading the Centre Pompidou project in Jersey City with Charles Aubin for the past two years.
Since the creation of her podcast “Décalés”, Léa Hirschfeld has become increasingly active in the public representation of disability. She has given a variety of talks and been interviewed by Brut, Le Figaro, France Inter and other press. Her focus on disability in the context of family relationships and cultural influences and the response it has engendered is testimony to the importance of dealing openly and creatively with this inexhaustible subject. Her work also includes writing and photography.
Mark Hurst is a writer and radio host. On his WFMU show Techtonic, exploring “our shift to a digital future,” Hurst has interviewed hundreds of authors, journalists, and creators grappling with digital technology and its effects. For over 25 years Hurst has written the Creative Good email newsletter and blog, making it one of the longest-running digital publications in the world.
Hervé Ishimwe is a senior at Princeton University studying Computer Science with a focus on Computational Biology and Global Health. He is part of the Princeton University’s French Theater Troupe, L’Avant Scène. He is passionate about social theories and increasing minority visibility through technology and the arts!
Deborah Jack is a multidisciplinary artist based between St. Maarten and Jersey City whose work includes video installation, photography, and text. Her practice engages a variety of strategies for mining the intersections of histories, cultural memory, ecology, and climate change.
Her work was featured in the exhibition “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today” at the MCA Chicago and ICA Boston in Fall 2023. In Fall 2021, a retrospective, “Deborah Jack: 20 Years,” was presented at Pen + Brush in New York City. Her work is in the collections of the MCA Chicago, PAMM and the Smith College Museum of Art.
Deborah is the recipient of a 2023 Soros Arts Fellowship, a 2023 Changing Climate Resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute, a Surf Point Foundation Artist in Residence, a 2022 Jersey City Individual Artist Grant and a 2021 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists.
Her solo show at the Houston Center for Photography opens in March and she will exhibit a new work at the Prospect 6 Triennial this Fall. Deborah is currently a Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.
Camille Juzeau has written and directed documentaries or docu-fiction for radio and podcasts. After her experience with France Inter (La Tête au carré, Le temps d’un bivouac), she collaborated with France Culture (A voix nue, Toute une vie, Les Pieds sur Terre) and presented her first podcast, Les Baladeurs (Les Others), for which she wrote and directed the first three seasons. She excels particularly in on-the-field documentary work with series such as L’avocat des terreurs, L’Insomniaque (ARTE radio), Bleue comme Mars (Paradiso), L’île sous la mer (L’école des loisirs), and more. She currently serves as the editorial director of StudioFact Audio, launched with Chloé Tavitian.
Jonah King is an Interdisciplinary Artist and Assistant Professor of Interactive Digital Media at Stevens Institute of Technology. Through emerging technologies: artificial intelligence, virtual reality, motion capture, and digital avatars, King conjures multifaceted world-building projects that trace speculative futures and human/non-human relations. Born in Ireland, based in Brooklyn, King has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art and New York Jewish Museum, and received official selections at Oberhausen and London Motion Picture Awards. Recent solo exhibitions include GBA (Brooklyn), Rockford Art Museum (Chicago) NCAD Gallery (Dublin), University Galleries (Illinois), Clima (Milan), Weekend (Seoul), and Meyohas (New York). King holds an MFA from Columbia University, and attended the Skowhegan School.
Prem Krishnamurthy is a designer, author, and educator. His multifaceted work explores the role of art as an agent of transformation at an individual, collective, and structural level. This manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops. He received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015 and KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s “A Year With…” residency fellowship in 2018. He has curated several large-scale exhibitions including FRONT International 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows. In 2022, Domain Books published his book-length epistolary essay, On Letters. Previously, Prem founded the design studio Project Projects and the exhibition space P! in New York.
Damon Krukowski is a musician and writer. He was a member of the band Galaxie 500 and now performs as half of Damon and Naomi. “Ways of Hearing,” Damon’s book and podcast with the same name, explored “the nature of listening in our digital world.” He now writes the blog Dada Drummer Almanach about his thoughts on music and the musician’s life.
Jason Long is a Partner at OMA who leads its New York office and diverse portfolio in the Americas. Since joining the firm in 2003, Jason has brought a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of OMA’s projects internationally. He served as the project manager overseeing the Quebec National Museum in Quebec City and the Faena Forum in Miami from concept to completion.
A number of projects under Jason’s direction take a creative approach to adaptive reuse and preservation, including POST Houston, the transformation of a former post office warehouse into a mixed-use hub; the conversion of a historic parking garage in New York City into a new synagogue; the adaptive reuse of Jersey City’s historic Pathside Building into Centre Pompidou x Jersey City; and LANTERN, the reimagination of a former commercial bakery into a community arts hub in Detroit. In addition to his adaptive reuse cultural projects, he is leading the design of Waco Culture, Arts and Performance Center in Texas.
Jason leads a number of projects in urbanism and the public realm that provide an innovative approach to recreation, public health, resiliency, and equitable development at varying scales—including the 11th Street Bridge Park connecting disparate communities on either side of the Anacostia River and a coastal masterplan and landmark building for Paysandú, Uruguay.
Florent Masse is a Professor of the Practice in the Department of French and Italian and the Director of L’Avant-Scène, the French Theater Workshop. Since 2012, he has served as Artistic Director of Seuls en Scène, Princeton French Theater Festival that he has produced annually in partnership with the Lewis Center for the Arts. At Princeton since 2001, he has developed and enriched L’Avant-Scène’s curricular and co-curricular programs. He has directed more than sixty full-length productions of popular and celebrated plays in the French theatrical canon. Masse will direct Méphisto Rhapsodie by Samuel Gallet, Les fausses confidences by Marivaux, Fantasio by Musset, Soeurs by Pascal Rambert, and an abridged version of Le Favori by Madame de Villedieu. In the early fall of 2021, Florent Masse will produce the tenth annual edition of Seuls en Scène, Princeton French Theater Festival in partnership with the Lewis Center for the Arts. This edition of the festival will consist of HD screenings of recent works by renowned French artists including Dorothée Munyaneza, Tania de Montaigne, Marion Siéfert, David Geselson, Gisèle Vienne, and Pascal Rambert, among others.
Petia Morozov is an architect, community brick-layer, and sleuth. She is the founder and Director of Programs at DesignShed, where she spearheads large-scale special events that include Montclair Design Week and Jersey Art Book Fair. She is also the cofounder of DesignShed’s publication, Dense. She is also the co-founder of the award-winning and internationally published architecture and design firm MADLAB, now in its 20th year. Morozov is an associate of SPURSE, a research and design collective whose public programs include Crooked River in First and Third Persons and .
Morozov has taught architecture, urban design and environmental design at Columbia GSAPP, Parsons School of Design, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Fordham, NJIT and University of Arkansas. Her writing and research has received funding from Graham Foundation, Boston Society of Architects, New York Department of Transportation, and National Science Foundation.
Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in New York. She is at work on her first book, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” to be published in 2025 by Astra House. Her byline has appeared at The Baffler, Guardian, NPR, Pioneer Works Broadcast, and many other outlets. She is an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch.
Asad Raza’s polymathic practice represents an expanded approach to artmaking—encompassing installations, writing, curating, dramaturgy, filmmaking, pedagogy, and organizing. It often takes local ecosystems and planetary ecologies as a focus. Across his work, there is a strong emphasis on the participatory and the performative aspects of art, as well as an engagement with all of the human senses. His recent exhibitions and ambitious public art projects, such as Diversion (2022, Kunsthalle Portikus, Frankfurt), Absorption (2019–, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Ruhrtrienniale, Essen), and Root sequence. Mother tongue (2017 Whitney Biennial, New York; Rockbund Museum, Shanghai; Sifang Museum, Nanjing; TU Gallery, Dresden), all involve both scripted and improvised interactions with natural materials. Raza’s work is intrinsically collaborative, emerging out of multipart interdisciplinary dialogues. For example, each iteration of Absorption involves work with experts including soil scientists, horticulturalists, compost specialists, and organic farmers. Orientation, developed for FRONT International 2022, emerged out of dialogues with astronomers, physicists, architects, and musicians. In Raza’s practice, the artist is a director, a convener, a gatherer of beings who frames unexpected conversations between humans and more-than-humans alike.
Graduate of the Institute of Political Studies in Grenoble, doctor (EHESS), HDR, (Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 1), Carole Reynaud-Paligot has been teaching sociology and history at the University of Burgundy since 2018. Before, she has taught at the Université de Franche-Comté and at the Paris branch offices of American universities (University of New York, University of California) and Sciences po Paris. She is also researcher at the “Centre de recherche en histoire du XIXe siècle” of the Université de Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 1. She was scientific co-curator of the exhibition “Nous et les Autres, from prejudice to racism” which took place at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris in 2017-2018 and which is currently circulating in France and abroad in itinerant forms. Specialist in the history of intellectuals and the history of racialization processes, she notably published: La République raciale. Une Histoire, PUF, „Quadrige“, 2021 ; L’Ecole aux colonies entre mission civilisatrice et racialisation 1815-1940 (2020, Champ Vallon), 2020, and an Comics book : Ismaël Méziane, C. Reynaud-Paligot, E. Heyer, Comment devient-on raciste ?, Casterman, Bruxelles, 2021.
Laurie Riccadonna is a Professor of Fine Arts and Studio Art Department Coordinator at Hudson County Community College. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from Pennsylvania State University. Laurie exhibits her paintings nationally and internationally. Her work is included in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Art Collection, Hudson County Community College Foundation Permanent Art Collection, and private collections in the United States. Ms. Riccadonna has received awards such as the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) Northeast Region Faculty Award, the Philip Johnston Award for Excellence in Teaching, and NJ State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships, among others.
Prof. Riccadonna worked with a group of HCCC students to offer special highlights of the HCCC Foundation Art Collection. Jasmine Arriaza, Joshua Beltran, Jadae Cepeda and Josh Greenbaum will be sharing information about some of the collection’s major works. Meet the Volunteers
Rimli Roy is an artist, dancer, choreographer, producer, actor and director from Kolkata, India who embarked on her artistic journey at the age of four, immersing herself first in classical Indian dance forms like Odissi, Bharatnatyam, Manipuri under renowned gurus of India, while also learning Western classical pianoforte under the tutelage of the Trinity College of Music, London as well as Indian Classical music (Hindustani vocals and harmonium). Her quest led her to explore beyond traditional practices. She has explored various classical and folk dances, even delving into Tagore’s art forms. By blending modern, ballet, jazz, opera, and musical theatre elements, her performances have found a global audience, from conventional stages to digital platforms and television screens.
Darius is a senior in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department and is from Rwanda. He has been part of l’Avant-Scène since September 2023 but has been a long-time admirer of theatre and the arts. On the Princeton campus, he has been involved in various organizations that foster welcoming and inclusive environments.
Gil Sander Joseph is a junior in the Sociology Department at Princeton University. Born and raised in Port-au-Prince (Haiti), he left his native country in 2019 to attend a United World College in Freiburg (Germany), before coming to Princeton in 2021. At Princeton, he serves as the President of his class and as co-President of the Princeton African Students Association (PASA). He is a member of L’Avant-Scène – Princeton’s French Theater Troupe under the guidance of Florent Masse. His research in the Sociology Department is focused on the role of informal networks in facilitating the integration of migrants in the context of South-to-South migration.
Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese writer and academic. He is Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after having taught at University Gaston Berger at Saint-Louis in Senegal, where he is adjunct professor of Economics. His academic work focuses on the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African Philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology and the history of religious ideas. In 2016, he created with the historian Achille Mbembé, the Ateliers de la pensée de Dakar which is a platform that brings together intellectuals and artists from the Continent and the diasporas to think about the challenges of the contemporary world. In 2018, the French president commissioned him to write a report, with the art historian Benedicte Savoy, on the restitution of African heritage present in French museums.
He has published Dahij (Gallimard 2009), 105 Rue Carnot (Mémoire d’Encrier 2011), Méditations africaines (Mémoire d’Encrier 2012), Afrotopia (Philippe Rey 2016), Ishindenshin (Mémoire d’Encrier 2017), Habiter le monde (Mémoire d’Encrier 2017), Écrire l’Afrique-monde (collective work co-edited with Achille Mbembé, Philippe Rey 2017), Restituer le patrimoine africain (Philippe Rey/Seuil) with Benedicte Savoy and Politique des temps (co-edited with Achille Mbembé, Philippe Rey 2019), La saveur des derniers mètres (Philippe Rey 2021), Traces (Actes Sud, 2021), l’Économie à venir (Les liens qui Libèrent, 2021) with Gaël Giraud, and Les lieux qu’habitent mes rêves (Gallimard, 2022). He is the co-publisher with his publishing house Jimsaan of the Prix Goncourt 2021, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr.
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author of, most recently, the story collection, “American Estrangement,” a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His memoir, “When Skateboards Will Be Free,” was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize.
Akhil Sharma is the author of the novels Family Life and An Obedient Father. His short stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. He is a professor at Duke University and lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and daughter.
Andrea Siegel has coordinated the HCCC Foundation Art Collection for over 13 years. She has a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. You can see her TEDx talk about building public art collections here: Andrea Siegel: How to Create a Great Art Collection on a Budget | TED Talk
Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ, USA, primarily working in the areas of mixed media drawing, found object assemblage, and performance. In his practice, he is interested in world-building, informed by the intersection of ritual, memory, language, history and art-making processes that prioritize the use of previously used materials, the body, and play; through the lens of Blackness.
Nyugen holds a BA, Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History, Norway, Frist Art Museum, Blanton Museum, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others.
Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant.
Helene Stapinski was born and raised in Jersey City. She cut her teeth writing for the Hudson Reporter and Jersey Journal, where she was an opinion columnist. Since then she has written extensively for The New York Times and Washington Post and has published four books, including the best-selling Five-Finger Discount, which was made into a PBS documentary. Her latest book The American Way: A True Story of Nazii Escape, Superman and Marilyn Monroe, tells the story of a man who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Superman’s publisher.
Stapinski also teaches writing at New York University.
Surati is a performing arts organization and entertainment company committed to promote Indian art and culture primarily through dance, music and theater. Surati’s mission is to educate and enrich the community through staged performances, classes, events, educational projects, lectures and workshops and to bring to its audience quality educational, cultural and entertainment programs and events. The Surati team performs at corporate, fund raiser, community and cultural events throughout the U.S. and abroad.
Surati Founder-Director RIMLI ROY and the Surati team have performed at the United Nations Headquarters, representing India at their 1st official Diwali celebrations, Incredible India’s Annual Road Show for the Indian Ministry of Tourism, for the Indian Ministry of Textiles, World Financial Center Wintergarden, The Reichhold Center at the U.S. Virgin islands, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York City Hall and The Indian Consulate in NYC and also at prestigious venues like The Kennedy Center and The Library of Congress (Washington D.C), the Alaska Performing Arts Center (AK) and even at the Las Vegas Convention Center (NV).
András Szántó advises museums, foundations, educational institutions, and corporations on cultural strategy and program development, worldwide. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University. A widely published author, his writings have appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Artnet News, and The Art Newspaper, among other publications. As a consultant, he advises some of the world’s leading cultural institutions and corporate art programs. He has lectured on art business at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and has directed the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he helped launch and oversee the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium, a series of seminars for museum directors. He is a frequent moderator of the Art Basel Conversations series. Born in Budapest, he has curated exhibitions on Hungarian art of the 1960s and 70s. His most recent books are The Future of the Museum (2020) and Imagining the Future Museum (2022). Website
Professor Teipen’s passion for teaching art using new, emerging, electronic media derives from his many years of experience in both the academic and professional art worlds, and the convergence of art, technology, and science that is prevalent in both. He guides students individually to develop their unique visions with hands-on learning experiences that facilitate professional goals and success.Professor Teipen has received various awards and grants, including a production grant from Asia Culture Center, Gwangju; SIGGRAPH Artist’s Grant; the Asian Cultural Council Japan/United States Grant; an Exhibition Grant from the Seoul Foundation of Arts and Culture; and an ARKO Exhibition Grant, Arts Council Korea.
His work has appeared in exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including shows at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; Centro de Arte de Burgos; Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku; SIGGRAPH Pacifico, Yokohama; Gallery Factory, Seoul; Radiator Gallery, NY; Showfields, NY; SUNY Purchase College, NY; Monmouth University, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University, NJ, Columbia University, NY; Queens Museum, NY; Asia Culture Center, Gwangju; Spring Break Art Show, NY; SVA House, Governor’s Island, NY; and Cindy Rucker Gallery, NY. Professor Teipen’s work has also been featured in the Leonardo Journal of Arts and Sciences by The MIT Press, and The New York Times.
Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark, and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning contributing critic-at-large at the New York Times. She is the director of Express Newark, a center for socially engaged art and design art at Rutgers, and the author of “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination” and, most recently, “In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece.” In 2003, she and her sister, Scheherazade Tillet founded A Long Walk Home, a non-profit that empowers young people to use art to end violence against girls and women. In 2023, she, along with Paul Farber of Monument Lab, curated “Pulling Together,” the first public arts exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Tillet is currently completing a book on the Civil Rights musician, Nina Simone.
Deborah Treisman has been the fiction editor of The New Yorker since 2003. She is also the host of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, a winner of the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Contribution to Fiction, and a Chevalier in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Michelle Vitale is the Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Curator of the Benjamin J. Dineen III & Dennis C. Hull Gallery and the Art Concourse at North Hudson at Hudson County Community College. Vitale is the first gallery director at both sites and has held this position for the last eight years, curating exhibits that celebrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Distinguished community exhibition partners include the Leslie Lohman Museum, the Robert Blackburn Printshop, WBGO Public Radio, and the National World War 1 Museum. Special guest speakers include N’daba Mandela, Tamika Palmer, and Holocaust survivor Pieter Kohnstam.
Tiana Webb Evans is the Founder ESP Group LLC, a brand strategy and communications consultancy supporting international clients across art, design, and hospitality industries. She is also the founder and creative director of Yard Concept, a cultural platform comprised of a digital journal, gallery, and ‘happenings’ in the form of her signature Reading Circles dedicated to fostering consciousness through the engagement of art, design, and community; and most recently the founder of Jamaica Art Society an initiative designed to support Jamaican art professional and celebrate its visual arts legacy.
Tiana’s experience includes branding, communications, strategic planning, business development and cultural programming. Before launching ESP in 2014, Tiana served as the Communications Director at Phillips Auctioneers, a global corporation focused on the sale of Contemporary Art. As Vice President of the Hospitality and Real Estate group at Nadine Johnson & Associates she was responsible for a portfolio of clients working at the intersection of art, culture and business. Prior establishing a career in communications she was the Business Director of Studio Sofield, a celebrated architecture and design firm known for its work with Gucci Group and a host of notable luxury good brands.
In addition to her professional endeavors Tiana, writes about culture, advises and supports emerging artists, and shares her expertise by serving on the boards of Project for Empty Space, the Female Design Council, and Atlanta Art Week, and is on advisory committees for the Laundromat Project, Photo Fairs, and Art at a Time Like This.
Naoco Wowsugi is a community-engaged artist who lives and works in Washington, DC. Wowsugi’s cross-disciplinary projects range from portrait photography, participatory performance, and sound healing, to horticulture, exploring the nature of belonging and inclusive community building while they highlight and fortify everyday communal and interpersonal identities. Wowsugi’s art practice blurs the lines between being an artist and an engaged citizen.
Rashad Wright is the poet laureate emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and a teacher on behalf of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation and Passaic County’s Theatre & Poetry Program. He is a graduate of New Jersey City University, receiving his BA in English: Creative Writing. He is the author of Romeo’s Whiskey, published via Rebel Ink.
Rashad’s poetry has been heard from both local and national stages via slam poetry, currently recently was a member of the 2023 New Jeru Slam Poetry team whom placed second in the country at the Southern Fried National Poetry Slam. He is the only person to be titled the “Grandslam Champion of Jersey City Slam” twice. He has competed in Slams in the Tristate area, Oakland, San Diego, Spokane, and Denver, once ranking 25th in the country at the 2019 Individual World Poetry Slam. He has coached Jersey City Slam, the UACHS Poetry Club, and 6th Borough Slam whom placed 10th in the world at Brave New Voices 2019. Rashad has also been awarded First Place at the Walter Glospie American Academy of Poets Prize, being inducted into the Academy of American Poets. He can be found on multiple podcasts and radio interviews most notably NPR’s Here & Now and WBGO.
Outside of poetry Rashad’s work expands into memoir, fiction, short story, performance art, music, film, neo-soul alongside his band ChillBrown, jazz alongside The Just Now Orchestra, and theatre with the completion of two one-man plays Romeo’s Whiskey & Nimbus Presents Etu’s Raucus Caucus Tango. His work can be found in multiple online journals and magazines. Rashad has performed alongside Amiri Baraka, Rudy Francisco, Tyehimba Jess, Emi Mahmoud, and many others. He currently is working on his sophomore book entitled, Papa’s Tango.
Andros Zins-Browne, born in New York in 1981, works at the intersection of performance and dance. His work extends choreographic notions into encounters with dancers, nondancers, singers, objects, and texts. Since 2016, his performance Already Unmade where he de-hearses previous works, ‘unmaking’ them, has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; and Lafayette Anticipations, Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris. In 2019, Atlas Unlimited, a series of exhibitions in collaboration with artist Karthik Pandian, was featured at the PERFORMA19 Biennial, New York, and as a series of music videos currently presented on the Criterion Channel. In 2020/21, his work was commissioned for online projects by Danspace Project, the Aspen Art Museum, and Triple Canopy. In 2022, Zins-Browne premiered color a body who flees, a collaborative sound installation and performance series at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Performance remixes include The Tony Cokes Remixes, 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), Dia Art Foundation (2023); See-Saw, MoMA, New York (2019) and Asymmetry 222, Getty Museum, Los Angeles by Simone Forti; as well as Jérôme Bel, 1995 (2020) KADIST, Paris, in collaboration with e-flux (2020). In collaboration with Ley, Kris Lee and a host of co-conspirators, Zins-Browne premiered duel c (River-To-River Festival, 2023) a performance that ascended Outlook Hill on Governors’ Island, in a choreography that stirs towards a commingling of care and violence. Zins-Browne is the recipient of awards from the Goethe-Institut; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community; and New York State Council on the Arts.