EMERGENYC alumni include award-winning playwrights, curators, directors, choreographers, filmmakers, grantmakers, university faculty, arts administrators, healers, educators, and multidisciplinary artists. Many continue to collaborate with each other and with faculty long beyond the programâtheyâve formed collectives, created artist residencies, directed each other in plays, made music together, taught together, and (as seen in their testimonials) been fearless together. Below are some of the folks in this love-fueled network of 300+ people. Â
Adin Lenahan, 2023 Â Adin Lenahan (they/them) is a writer and performer. Adin makes art about losers, the kinds of people who canât even pull it together to make themselves look cool on Instagram, but whose depth of experience could fill a million feeds and timelines. Their work has been
Alice Anonymous, 2023 Alice Anonymous is a New York City-based multi-disciplinary human and Internet-user. Anonymous first began working in video and performance at Wellesley College, using the mainstays of contemporary “feminist” art practices to dissect the visual processes of mercy and power. Synthesizing poetry’s immaterial quality with performance and video,Â
Ana Anu, 2023 Ana Anu (She/They) is an author and multi-media artist. Their work, centering eco feminism, has manifested in two books of poetry and a portfolio of installations across mediums. Anuâs work has collected in exhibitions, installations and public performances internationally. Their background in Environmental Consulting closely informs their
Brynne O’Rourke, 2023 Brynne OâRourke (they/them) is a white, transfemme director, theatre practitioner, teaching artist and poet. As a theatre practitioner, Brynne commits themself to stories that challenge and expand definitions of performance in ways that uplift the project of liberation and support the development of critical consciousness and action.
Chris Bisram, 2023 Chris Bisram is an Indo-Caribbean Multidisciplinary Artist with a primary focus in dance and theater. Bisram completed a work-study and summer intensive at Greenspace, a dance studio in Queens. They have performed in the Fertile Ground Showcase at Greenspace, and City of Forest Day, hosted by IDig2Learn,
Evan Simone Frazier, 2023 Evan Simone Frazier is an interdisciplinary artist from Long Island, NY. Evan is trained in Musical Theater and Meisner acting – her stage credits include Ragtime (Axelrod Theater), The Cake (The Philipstown Theater). In 2021, she received an MFAIA from Goddard College, where she developed a
laura Hunter petree, 2023 Hunter is a creator, performer, and writer making work about the foundational stories of whiteness and âAmericaâ. Hunter builds alternate concurrent realities to satisfy humansâ innate âfourth driveâ, or desire to alter consciousness. Hunter graduated with performance-related honors from Stanford University and Queen Mary University of
Katherine Bahena-BenĂtez, 2023 Katherine Bahena-Benitez (They/Them/Elle) is a Queer Mexican Indigenous actor, poet, dancer, stage manager and model. Katherine is bicoastal with New York and California. Katherine studied at CSUS and has had the pleasure of performing and training with the American Conservatory Theater, 24 Hour Plays, the Eugene OâNeill
Kelsey Sky, 2023 Kelsey Sky (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, a public school teacher in training, and a cultural anthropology Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Across all her endeavors, Kelseyâs work is inspired by Sylvia Wynterâs call for a âre-enchanted humanismâ and
Kristen Holfeur, 2023 Kristen Holfeuer is an actor and director from Saskatchewan now based in Brooklyn. She is pursuing her PhD in Performance Studies at NYU. Her theatrical practice includes dynamic physical vocabularies, political and social satire, and is concerned with themes of friendship, devotion, and ecological justice. kristenholfeuer.com
Kristian Sorensen, 2023 Kristian Sorensen is a queer multi-hyphenate from Southern California pursuing artistic work that holds space for critical dialogue and action incubation, while maintaining a deep commitment to embodied playfulness. Kristian teaches theatre and devising workshops with young people all over NYC, writes poetry and plays, mixes music,
Madi O’Halloran, 2023 Madi OâHalloran (she/they), hails from Morningside Heights, New York City, Lenape Land. A movement practitioner, performer, researcher, abolitionist feminist, and witch, Madi understands dance to be a powerful tool for imagining and gesturing toward liberatory futures based in mutual care, pleasure, and curiosity. Their practice is grounded
Mikah Baumrin-Daniels, 2023 Mikah Baumrin-Daniels (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in dance and performance. Their practice leans towards somatic and emotional movements while navigating humor and illusions in the diasporic and mundane. Their work is centered in collaboration, connection, and searches for the pleasures to be found
miscelvnea, 2023 miscelvnea (they/she, it) (elle, elli/ellu) is a Boriké-born multimedia and interdisciplinary artist whose work mainly integrates image, text, performance and spirituality informed by an academic background in History, Caribbean and Gender studies. Mother and collaborator to Haus of Vanguardia, a collective of queer artists striving for the liberation
NĂ©stor PĂ©rez-MoliĂšre, 2023 NĂ©stor PĂ©rez-MoliĂšre was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, currently residing in The Bronx. His art entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis. Through this cathartic process he hopes to connect with the viewerâs struggles and depathologize
Resham Mantri, 2023 Resham Mantri is a queer, first generation Indian-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, death doula and single co-parent seeking liberation and pleasure through practicing vulnerability, exploring lineage, dismantling socialized notions of self, and deathwork. They explore these ideas across mediums including installations, essays, photos, podcasting, Instagram, written interviews, vintage
Robert Anthony Gibbons, 2023 Robert Anthony Gibbons is author of Close to the Treeâ (Three Rooms Press, 2012) and âFlightâ (Poets Wear Prada, 2019). He was nominated for the Pushcart in 2022 by Great Weather for Media for his poem, ” a self taught genius.” He has been published in
Samira Mendoza, 2023 Samira Mendoza is a transdisciplinary performance artist, visual artist, curator, and educator based in Brooklyn. Their work centers improvisation through different mediums including sound, sculpture, organizing, and movement to investigate oppressive systems, familial history in Latin America and the Caribbean, and my personal experiences growing up in
Star Mitchell, 2023 Star Mitchell is a Celestial force descended from the sun and the moonâs love. A Brooklyn based artist using natural elements to connect to their ancestors and rebuild narratives that provide a gentle approach to healing.  Star uses movement/multimedia as a further expression of our inner being.
Wow Quisqueya, 2023 Wow Quisqueya (they/them) is a Brooklyn born and bred multidimensional artist who specializes in making their most intimate feelings and hardships less scary. Their visual art is often colorful and texturized and aligned or accompanied by poetry, thoughts and/or sounds. They are a Peer Leader at Recess
Dragonfly (Robin LaVerne Wilson), 2023 Virtual Dragonfly is also Robin LaVerne Wilson [and alter ego Miss Justice Jester]âmultidisciplinary conceptual trickster artist who alchemizes spectacle, ritual, text, visuals, music and activism to educate, [re]create and [re]store the human archive. I also vacillate between first- and third-person in my bio and accept
InĂ©s de Arce, 2023 Virtual InĂ©s de Arce (she/her, ella) is a Spanish-Argentinian actress and creator based in Madrid, Spain. With a long experience in theater, InĂ©s is now looking to examine the ways in which her identities as an Andalusian, bisexual woman whoâs the daughter of an immigrant can
Jimena Navas, 2023 Virtual Jimena Navas is a multidisciplinary human being. After ten years fighting the patriarchy and its institutions as a social worker in Argentina, she set out on a five-year journey of personal and professional deconstruction in the search for inner peace. From the rubble, her visual craft
Karley Wasaff, 2023 Virtual Karley Wasaff is a non-binary and pansexual movement artist based in NYC. Karleyâs current choreography incorporates compositional improvisation scores to evoke the spontaneity of genuine un-adulterated human interaction. Karley views this process as a way to bring radical awareness to Karleyâs identity: gender binary and choreography
Larissa Jeanniton, 2023 Virtual Larissa is a Haitian American, 27-year-old Taurus with a heart and soul for political theater. Her acting and directing career has taken her to several theaters in NYC, Thailand, Switzerland, and several UN conferences. Her work primarily focuses on the liberation of thought from the many
Leah Shelley, 2023 Virtual Leah Shelley is a performance artist and writer based in Wisconsin. They are currently interested in the magic of brief imperfections. They are also interested in turning an eye onto what they are afraid of (whiteness, gender non-conformity) and trying to (or trying not to) tell
Lorena Pipa, 2023 Virtual Lorena Pipa is a Brazilian multimedia artist who studied Image and Sound Design at University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She works at the intersection of performance, video, photography, music, object, and installation. Her work crosses the boundaries between image and sound, generating sensorial relationships between body,
Lucy Phillips, 2023 Virtual I am a grieving person, by default I am an artist. Searching for my own autonomy in images and websites and machines that create and tell me who I am. How do I pull apart from it? I am an artist. I test how we commodify
Manuel Lopez, 2023 Virtual From far Far Rockaway to the Catskill Mountains, Manuel E. “Manny” Lopez is fluttering about blossoms not only of his/their own hand-aided germination, but amidst daffodils and daisies dug down deep by schoolkids of the Manhattan Country School. Before the ides of March when we found
Mario Lamothe, 2023 Virtual Mario LaMothe is a Haitian-American performance artist, curator, and scholar. He was a 2021-22 Links Hall Co-Mission resident (Chicago) and a 2022 emerging choreographer in the Atlas program in Viennaâs ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival. His curations and performances have been hosted and funded by Duke University,
Nrzagaray, 2023 Virtual Nrzagaray (CuliacĂĄn, Sinaloa, 1998) is a multi-disciplinary artist and Audio Visual Arts and Communication student at Instituto TecnolĂłgico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Jalisco, MĂ©xico. His artistic development is born from the necessity to explore his identity, the wounds that cross him and his relation to others.
Pati Cruz MartĂnez, 2023 Virtual Born cuir (queer) and brought up catholic in the colonized archipelago of BorikĂ©n (Puerto Rico). The catholic slowly disappeared, the cuir stuck around. Spent a few years in New York (Bachelor of Arts at Vassar College, 2008-2012), then another few years in Cuba (Film Directing
Saul Villegas (The Sun), 2023 Virtual Saul Villegas (The Sun) is a First-Year MFA student in the Future Stages cohort in the Digital Arts & New Media program at UCSC. Using art to create a revolving system from the mental, physical, and virtual environment, he invites people to participate in
SĂłl Casique, 2023 Virtual SĂłl Casique (they/elle) is an undocumented Venezuelan and Colombian creative living in D.C. on Piscataway Conoy Lands. They come to Emerge through a joint residency with House of AlegrĂa. They exist within the gender fckery and immortality of fungi and lichen and the interconnectedness of celestial
Sophia Valera Heinecke, 2023 Virtual Sophia Valera Heinecke (she/her) is a writer for the screen and stage as well as a dramaturg, archivist, and creative consultant. Her play Trash Lord: Renovation is a semi-finalist for the 2023 National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. While she is a very
Autumn Newcomb, 2022 Autumn Newcomb is a funkadelic multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a radical joy resister, a modern day dadaist, and a proud, queer, Mexican American. She uses color, humor and optimism to fight the power and promote self love through a variety of mediums including
Aviya Hernstadt, 2022 Aviya is a New York-Jewish multidisciplinary performance artist working primarily in movement, autobiography, comedy, and sculptural installation. She deconstructs Jewish rituals, traditions, and stories in hopes to dig out their contemporary, diasporic, queer, apocalypse-surviving, and anti-racist contexts. She has performed in collaboration with Carmen Caceres DanceAction, Yehuda
Catherine Chen, 2022 Catherine Chen is a poet and performer living in Brooklyn. They are the author of the chapbook Manifesto, or: Hysteria (Big Lucks, 2019) and the forthcoming full-length collection Beautiful Machine Woman Language (Noemi Press, 2023). They have been awarded fellowships and residencies from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council,
Cristina Bartley DomĂnguez, 2022 Cristina is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her practice centers on the reconstruction of myths into icons of progress through the unraveling of memory and movement to negotiate the relationship between the US and Mexico. She uses movement and world-building as a way
Josiah Vasquez, 2022 Josiah Vasquez (he/they) is an alum of Tufts Universityâs Class of 2020, having graduated with a Bachelorâs in Drama with a minor in Music. As a Bronx-born, non-binary, and Afro-Latinx performer, Josiah specializes in theatrical performance (having credits from Columbia University and Prospect Theatre Company), but has
Jovon Outlaw, 2022 Jovon Outlaw (they/he) is a Bronx-born and raised interdisciplinary artist. They specialize in cinematography, performance art, and writing. Jovon looks to reexamine generational traumas through a comedic lens, adding video and lo-fi technology to the stage. Jovonâs films have appeared at SXSW and Jacob Burns Film Center.
kc jackperson, 2022 kc jackperson is a dance and movement artist in new york city. for kc dance is a means of communication and a tool for intervention in social practice. their work is a conversation in movement which explores themes of identity, belonging/unbelonging, community, and the expansion of binaries.
Maira Duarte, 2022 Maira Duarte, a Mexican New York-based artist, educator, and organizer, champions non-hierarchical artistic exchange through Dance To The People (DTTP), an evolving collective created in 2015. DTTP has created choreographed pieces and organized community forums, workshops, public practices, environmental movement research, and performance parties, all donation-based and
Mobéy Lola Irizarry, 2022 Mobéy Lola Irizarry (they/she) is a genderqueer composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and transdisciplinary artist. Based in Brooklyn, they hail from the Puerto Rican diaspora in Hartford, CT, and are a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She makes within the lineages of decolonial uprisings, collections of tiny mirrors
Naisha Solomon, 2022 Naisha Solomon is a Trinbagonian singer-songwriter, sonic archivist and Caribbean scholar living and working in Brooklyn as a Community Organizer. Her practice explores Afro-Caribbean music genres, dance, storytelling and other modes of performance in relation to colonial resistance. Her motivation to emancipate the unheard or concealed has
Honey Bundy / Parker White, 2022 Honey Bundy/Parker White (he/him) is a genderqueer trans man and drag artist based in NYC. Originally from Pittsburgh, Honey has only recently started his drag journey, but has been a lifelong multidisciplinary artist who draws inspiration from all corners of life. Horror, camp, occultism,
Yali Romagoza, 2022 Yali Romagoza (she/her) is a Cuban-born multidisciplinary artist currently based in Queens, NY. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Fashion, Body, and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and a BA in Art History from the University of Havana, Cuba. Her
Aitor Gil Flores, 2022 Virtual Aitor Gil Flores (he/she/they) is a non-binary person currently finding their way and and place in the world. A young stylist, tattoo artist, and illustrator based in Barcelona, Aitor is developing his path as an artist, which began during childhood through acting and visual arts.
Alexa Vasquez, 2022 Virtual Alexa Vasquez is a Pisces, a writer and artist from Oaxacalifornia. Her visual artworks are inspired by her birthplace, Oaxaca. She comes to Emerge through a joint residency with House of AlegrĂa. Her writings are memories of growing up in an immigrant household, leaving home, transitioning
Arantxa Araujo, 2022-Virtual (and 2017 Flagship) Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist with a background in neuroscience. Her work is essentially multidisciplinary, feminist, meditative and rooted in bio-behavioral research and technology. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women LatinAmerican Art Exhibit, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Grace
Ching-In Chen, 2022 Virtual Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American hybrid writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart’s Traffic and recombinant (winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as the chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin
Dimple Shah, 2022 Virtual Dimple Shah is a transdisciplinary performance and printmaking artist from Bangalore, India. Her work grapples with humanitarian concerns, equality, justice reaction, and emotive responses borne out of her first-hand experiences of religious communal riots and clashes, womenâs safety issues, suppressions, and ecological and environmental concerns in
Dora Selva, 2022 Dora Selva is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rio de Janeiro. With Brazilian and Honduran descent, works with dance, performance and visual arts. Dora is also the creator of the Viva Pelve project, a multifaceted that involves workshops, regular practices, artistic processes, sound research and content creation.
Ikpemesi O, 2022 Virtual Ikpemesi O (she/her/hers) is a Nigerian-American musician, artist and performer. She loves exploring the world through vocal music, poetry and spoken word. A community builder to the core, her art explores the human experience through the lens of finding joy in the little things while critically
Ivonne Navas DomĂnguez, 2022 Virtual Ivonne is a multidisciplinary artist from Cali, Colombia, based in Mexico since 2010. She uses performance as a vehicle to create experiences that question our human existence, reflecting on being present, and on the endurance and vulnerability of our nature. Her Experimental Creation Laboratoriesâwhich include
Jaguar Mary X, 2022 Virtual Jaguar Mary X is a glossolalia vocalist, ritual performance artist and mover, practicing since 1991, making work informed by queer and black feminist discourse, afro-futurisms, plant sentience and shamanism.Their films, video installations and performances have shown in festival and gallery settings globally. Their work was
JĂșpiter, 2022 Virtual JĂșpiter is a transdisciplinary artist, mother, social change agent, and educator from Puerto Rico. She is a neurodiverse non-binary femme whose practice includes performance, street theater, and puppetry. JĂșpiter has worked with Circo de la Plaza, Taller LibertĂĄ, and BembaPR on political, cultural, artistic movements in the
Marilou Mariko Carrera, 2022 Virtual Marilou Mariko Carrera (they/siyĂĄ*/she) is a queer Filipinx-Japanese cultural worker participating from the area called Chicago on Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi lands. As an emerging artist with roots in health, organizing, and advocacy, Marilou Mariko is finally comfortable in the home they call body. While
Monet Clark, 2022 Virtual Monet Clark is an eco-feminist and performance based video and photographic artist, curator, and professional psychic. Her wryly humorous performance characters and costumes are inspired by subculture, pop-culture, superheroes, marginalized groups, history, and more. Her works address sexual stereotypes, objectification, cultural taboos, ritual, and natureâs sentience,
Nina Terra, 2022 Virtual Nina Terra is a Brazilian artist-therapist who lives in the city of Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After earning a degree in psychology, she studied dance technique with Angel Vianna, and specializes in Pedagogy of Cooperation and Collaborative Methodologies. Nina is the creator of such practices
Raquel Karro, 2022 Virtual Raquel Karro is an actress, director, choreographer, teacher of performing arts, pilates instructor and former trapeze artist. She graduated in dance from Faculdade Angel Vianna and in circus from Escola Nacional de Circo, both in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her trajectory in the arts is marked
Rosina Ivanova, 2022 Virtual Rosina Ivanova works in community art, public art, ecological actions, performance art, and experimental writing. She holds an MFA from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art (Norway) and a Master in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute (Berlin/New York) via the Community Scholarship. In 2017, the
viento izquierdo ugaz, 2022 Virtual viento izquierdo ugaz is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, educator & language justice worker based between Lima & New York. Their work considers the effect of migration on the visual language of their lineage, and how this lexicon permeates their queer & trans chosen family
Angelica Monteiro, 2021 Angelica Monteiro (she/her) is a storyteller, educator, and movement artist from the Brazilian Amazon. Her art comes from the complexity of growing up between the rainforest and the urban landscape while also crossing continental borders. She combines movements from the umbrella of street dances, Amazonian traditions, visionary
Candace Hudert, 2021 Candace Hudert (any pronouns) is a multidisciplinary mess-maker and artist from Richmond, VA. From creating video games, to directing theatre, to writing for animation and more, his work is clown and queer. It aims to stretch the world into something more caring, more attentive, more curious, more
Carolina Teixeira, 2021 Carolina Teixeira is a Brazilian artist, performer, and political activist. She is a disabled woman and her work concerns the phenomenon of Disability as a political instrument of art and resistance. The anti-forms, the bodiedness collapse, and the politics of access are the artistic context of her
Christian Cruz, 2021 Christian Cruz is a conceptual artist, educator, and independent arts writer. Cruz is the creator of Dallas Performance Art Index and of Artist Mama Fund. In 2021, she was awarded grants from NALAC, PAAL, Aurora Dallas, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Sheâs currently in residence with
CristĂłbal Guerra, 2021 CristĂłbal Guerra (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist from San Juan, PR. With a background in film and screenwriting, his current work fluctuates between or combines photography, video and text seeking to create and explore inner multiplicities, drawing from a Caribbean upbringing and a queer political identity. IG
Dahlia Li, 2021; Guest Faculty 2023 Dahlia Li (she/her) is an artist and writer currently completing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of English with certificates from the Programs in Cinema and Media Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. Her dissertation, Caress without Body: Stranded Affect,
Emma Pattison, 2021 Emma Pattison is a queer multi-disciplinary artist, primarily working with dance and video. Their practice currently explores issues at the intersections of gender, queerness, healthcare injustice, and diet culture. Previously, they led Variety Pack Collective, a choreographic project in NYC. IG @emmmoves
Garrett Sager, 2021 Garrett Sager (a.k.a. Melissabeth) (he/they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in theater and cabaret. His work often explores topics like pop culture and identity, queer time, and the creation of new genders via performance. Garrett is currently a member of the inaugural M.A. in Human Rights
Jasmine Hayden, 2021 Jasmine is a queer Black, Mexican Indigenous multidisciplinary artist, healer, social equity facilitator & consultant, and soul embodied leadership coach. She embraces co-creative multidimensionality and expresses her artistry through singing, dance, modeling, acting, directing, and film production, fusing genres & styles into cultural artifacts of celebration, empowerment,
Jason Wang, 2021 Jason Wang (they/he) is a Queer Chinese-American playwright, actor, and game developer from Queens, NY. He is currently wrapping up his education at NYU Tisch Drama’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School. Their EmergeNYC project was “Ranked Choice Dating”- a video game where you can attempt to get down
John Maria Gutierrez, 2021; Reaearch Fellow 2023 John Maria Gutierrez is a multidisciplinary artist who performs on screen and stage nationally and internationally. From Washington Heights, a hood of NYC, his/their works weave movement, music, singing in English and Spanish, and experimental theater to unwind a complex urban disparity brought
Jordan Elizabeth Reed, 2021 Jordan Elizabeth Reed is an Afro-Indigenous-Boricua theater, burlesque, and performance artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Since childhood, she has been a lover of art, singing, and performing. Originally from Western Mass, she is a 2017 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BA in
Julia Rocha-Nava, 2021 Julia Rocha-Nava (they/them/ellx), who performs under the artist name Chispa, is a non-binary first-generation chicanx vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. They grew up surrounded by mountains that turn purple at sunset, in unceded Tongva territory known today as Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. They are currently based in Lenape
june yuen ting, 2021 june yuen ting dreams of another world that is already hereâa world, or worlds that are so expansive, so abundant, and so immanent that the confines of colonial capitalist modernity cannot hold. june dances, organizes, agitates, and grieves. they want for all the descendants of european
Kelindah bee Schuster, 2021 Kelindah bee Schuster (they/them) is a nonbinary educator and drag performance artist known as âTheydy Bedbugâ who grew up in Singapore and Indonesia. They lead a cohort-based course at BAX called “Drag Performance: Between and Beyond Gender“, which exposes participants to the lineages of drag performance
Kevin Quiles Bonilla, 2021 Kevin Quiles Bonilla is an interdisciplinary artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He explores ideas around power, colonialism, and history with his identity as context. He currently lives and works between Puerto Rico and New York. IG @kevinquilesbonillakevinquilesbonilla.com
Kiyo Gutiérrez, 2021 Kiyo Gutiérrez is a Mexican performance artist based in Guadalajara. Ecofeminist, provocative, earthy, and political, she places her body into the ruptures opened up by instability, precarity, and pollution. She also draws on other mediums such as video, dance, poetry, sculpture, and sound. Her art seeks to
Mariano Ruiz, 2021 Mariano Ruiz is a trans nonbinary cabaret artivist from Mexico City. They use humor, pop culture, and satire to talk about Othered bodies and their experiences, creating projects that question the social segregation created by the rejection of identities or sexualities that are outside the ânorm.â A
Mijori Goodwin, 2021 Mijori is a multidisciplinary creative focused on healing through sight & sound. As a singer-songwriter, musician, MC, spoken word artist, graphic designer & illustrator, every extension of herself creates spaces for those who have not yet been given the chance to feel. She aims to be a
olaiya olayemi, 2021 olaiya olayemi is a blk/trans/femme/womxxxn/anti-disciplinary artist/educator/and organizer who centers womxxxn of the african diaspora in her performative/literary/ cinematic/ and sonic works of art that explore love/sex/relationships/family/history/ memory and radical joy/pleasure. IG @capricorn1089
PĂȘdra Costa, 2021 PĂȘdra Costa (they/she) is a ground breaking, formative Brazilian, Visual & Urban Anthropologist, Performer and Tarot Reader based in Berlin that utilizes intimacy to connect with collectivity. They work with their body to create fragmented epistemologies of queer communities within ongoing colonial legacies. Their work aims to
Rodrigo Arenas-Carter, 2021 Rodrigo Arenas-Carter is an arts worker, researcher, migrant, and pansexual. His performance artworks have been exhibited through the Americas, receiving grants and awards, and he is the author of academic essays on performance art. He holds an M.A. in Literature, and is a member of RACA (Red
VerĂłnica Peña, 2021 VerĂłnica Peña is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator from Spain based in the United States. Her work explores the themes of absence, separation, and the search for harmony through Performance Art. Peña is interested in migration policies, cross-cultural dialogue, and womenâs empowerment. Recent works include participatory performances
Yara ColĂłn, 2021 Yara ColĂłn is an interdisciplinary voice artist based on ancestral Nonotuck land. Thematically, their work focuses largely on queer intimacies, ritual, diasporic fragmentations, and collective utopic progressions. She believes that all living and non-living beings “have voice”âand in the importance of listening deeply to them. IG @sospechosa808
Amalia Oliva Rojas, 2020 Amalia Oliva Rojas is a Mexican poet, performer, and theater artivist based in Nueva York. Her work centers and archives the stories, myths, and legends told by her family, her community, and fellow immigrant women. Raised by oral storytellers, Amalia strives with her collection of work to leave
Andrea Ambam, 2020 Andrea Ambam is an NYC-based artist, actress, and playwright whose roots sprout from Cameroon. As a politically engaged theatre artist who believes in the artâs potential for movement building and transformative justice, her current work centers Black lives and embodied ethnography. She is a 2020 Artist-in-Residence for
Anel Rakhimzanova, 2020 Anel Rakhimzhanova researches neo-colonial surveillance infrastructure and algorithmic discriminatory mechanisms. As a part of EMERGE 2020 cohort, she engaged with the Xinjiang victims database and the violence around evidence creation. She is currently a PhD student in Performance Studies at New York University, focusing on human/technology/capital/labor/ideology movements
Bloom Osuala, 2020 Bloom is a multidisciplinary creative activist based in NYC who explores the relationship between systemic oppression, trauma, and emotional abuse among women/woman-identified people in Africana Diaspora. Through song, poetry, and performance, Bloom researches the manifestations of this intersection in the body and in art/creative expression.Â
C. Tai Tai, 2020 C. Tai Tai (she/her) is a performance and installation artist based in Chicago, with roots in New York and California. Historically, she danced under the name, Tina Wang.Identity, fragility, and resilience are key themes in her work, which draws on her experience as a Taiwanese citizen
Courtney Frances Fallon, 2020 Courtney Frances Fallon is a writer, director, artist, and performer living in Brooklyn. Growing up in Buffalo, she identified solely as a writer but her artistic practices expanded with her two first major projects: âYou Know This Girlâ – a one-person play she wrote, directed, and
Danyele Brown, 2020 Danyele is a Black biracial, transwoman set-maker from Virginia, working at the intersection of performance, social practice, and sculpture. She creates her multidisciplinary, time-based sets by merging and cycling roles as performer, organizer and sculptress. Currently Danyele organizes with For The Gworls around Black trans health and
Elyla Barahona, 2020 Elyla is a cochĂłnx barro-mestiza, a non-binary performance artist and activist. Their work often moves between video-performance, installations, photo-performance, experimental theatre, radical activism and site specific political interventions. Elyla is the first Nicaraguan artist to receive an Emerging Artist grant by the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in
Fontaine Capel, 2020 Fontaine Capel is a New York City born-and-based interdisciplinary artist, facilitator, and educator. Capel has presented performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago, and the Jewish Museum; has exhibited work at galleries and project spaces in the U.S. and abroad; has attended
Gabriel Torres, 2020 Gabriel Torres is a Colombian, NYC-based, multidisciplinary artist and community organizer. Gabriel works at the intersection of theatre performance, film and community development. He has directed productions in Colombia, NYC and Hong Kong. During his time at Emerge, Gabriel investigated links between his ancestry and his present
Irisdelia Garcia, 2020 Irisdelia Garcia (she/they) is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist from The Bronx, NY. Her work centers Puerto Rican history, embodiment in gender, colonialism, and digital storytelling. She is a member of Queer and Now’s Digital Cabarets, digital humanities lab IRLHumanities, and a collaborator of La Pocha Nostra.
Kristen Kelso, 2020 Kristen Kelso is a performer, translator, theatre director, musician and writer from Savannah, GA based in Brooklyn. As a bilingual artist from a monolingual family, her performance work and research focus on bilingualism and code-switching while exploring the realms of familial archives, mourning and embodied, experimental translation
Lilach Orenstein, 2020 Lilach Orenstein is a choreographer, performer and producer. She is an Israeli immigrant with Yemeni-Polish-Romanian roots based in New York City. Lilach earned her B.Dance from The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, majoring in choreography, in 2017, and her M.F.A from The University of the Arts,
Michael Zalta, 2020 Michael is a queer Syrian-American Jewish, writer, researcher and playwright interested in the intersections between Media Studies, Arab Cultural Studies, Black Studies, and Human Rights Practice. He is particularly interested in examining the ways in which theories of blackness and indigeneity circulate across various marginalized communities around
Monica Torres, 2020 Being an eco-feminist artist of Caribbean descent, Torres has been theorizing on the idea of jungle mangroves, coastal archways, and ancient cenotes. She expresses them through the symbolism of her everyday environments, meshing the two together in new and compelling ways. In her work she explores tropes
Nessa Norich, 2020 Nessa Norich (she/they) is a writer, director, producer, creative coach and performer who creates works of comedy and social critique for film and theater. For the past five years, she has dedicated herself to independent filmmaking, building on fifteen years of theatrical production. Nessa is a recipient
NĂna HjĂĄlmarsdĂłttir, 2020 NĂna HjĂĄlmarsdĂłttir (she/they) is a performance artist, writer & producer. Her art collective, SĂĄlufĂ©lagar, has produced four performances for the stage. She makes and writes about performances of image and identity, often focusing on the Nordic image and Nordic whiteness. She holds an M.A. in Performance Studies
Susana Plotts-Pineda, 2020 Susana Plotts-Pineda (she/her) is an artist, writer, and translator. Her work touches on cultural identity, revolution, and post-historical debris, by delving into archives and speculative landscapes. She has been published in Kitchen Magazine, Global Performance Studies, Waif Magazine and The Drunken Canal. Her performances and film have
Valentina De Roca Fuerte, 2020 Valentina De Roca Fuerte is a sensitive poet, awakening visual artist, workshop facilitator, and creative wellness educator. Born in BogotĂĄ Colombia, raised in the DMV & Washington state, to now living in Harlem; she carries all these places with her. Her words are motivated by
Wazina Zondon, 2020 Centering her own identities as both an obstacle and a breakthrough, Wazina generates from the in-between space of insider-outsider. Her process is a hybrid of disciplines to recollect memory and nostalgia through written word, personalized soundscape and the rehearsal of cultural choreographies. As a visual thinker and
Ana MarĂa AgĂŒero Jahannes, 2019 Ana MarĂa AgĂŒero Jahannes is a space-maker, handicrafter, and acrobatic dancer based in Brooklyn and New Orleans who illuminates the potentiality of Black imagination and intelligence. She examines how people worldwide fashion their environments and how that reflects the way they see themselves.
Damariz Damken, 2019 Damariz Damken is an artivist from the Rio Grande Valley Frontera of South Texas. She graduated from New York University in May 2019 with a concentration in Politics, Rights, and Development and Latin American Studies. Growing up on both sides of the border as a first-generation citizen
DomĂ©nica GarcĂa, 2019 DomĂ©nica GarcĂa is an Ecuadorian video and performance artist based in NY. She obtained a BFA in Film at the School of Visual Arts, 2018. Her work dives into a process of introspection, breaking down the personal and discovering the universal. By juxtaposing the radical and the
Emily Waters, 2019 Emily Waters is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist grounded in a Black theater tradition that explores the roles of witness and testimony in collective and intergenerational healing. In 2020 Emily created a solo-short commissioned by All for One Theater Company and was part of the inaugural cohort of
Grace Taylor Rae, 2019 Grace Taylor Rae is an artist who works in movement, language and form. She graduated from Williams College with a BA in English and Philosophy in 2013. Grace creates through multidimensional linguistics, liberatory geometries and embodied narrative. Her work is guided by frameworks that affirm love,
Isadora Frost, 2019 Isadora Frost (Brasil, 1985) graduated from PUC SĂŁo Paulo in 2009 with a degree in Performance Art and Dance. In 2014, Frost completed her degree in Fine Arts at The San Francisco Art Institute. In 2018, she received a Masters degree in Photography from Parsons School of
janet e. dandridge, 2019 janet e. dandridge is an Interdisciplinary Artivist who encourages awareness and discourse around, as well as solutions to, ideologies that perpetuate injustice. janet intersplices theatrical performance, photography, empirical data, identity politics, and whimsy into a keen reflection on social constructs and governing policies. Primarily using performance
Julha Franz, 2019 Coming from a place of sexual and gender liberation, Julha Franz (Brazil, 1993) pushes boundaries with her own body. Through the language of performance art, she creates new forms of imposed body and social identities. She has been awarded artistic residencies in Venice, Italy, 2017, and Buenos
Kristel Baldoz, 2019 Kristel Baldoz (she/her) is a Filipina-American artist from Delano, California, home to the Table Grape Strike. She was a 2019 EmergeNYC fellow at the Hemispheric Institute and artist-in-residence at Tisch/Danspace Residency and the Jonah Boaker Arts Foundation | Chez Buschwick, and a 2020 Brooklyn Art Exchange Space
KT Pe Benito, 2019 Faustina KT Pe Benito is a nonbinary queer Filipinx, a Filipino man, and a white woman. They earned a BFA at Cooper Union (2016) and were a recipient of the Osage Nation Higher Education Scholarship. They have exhibited their work in New York City, including group
Mauricio “Cio” Alexander, 2019 Mauricio Alexander is a first-generation bilingual artist of Latin American and East European roots. A graduate of Oberlin College and the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, he has performed at the US Social Forum, Kennedy Center, D.C. Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Symphony
Natacha Voliakovsky, 2019 Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires, 1988) is a political performance artist, feminist, and activist who has been performing around the world for the last 10 years. Her work revolves around the concept of culture as a humanizing system and the deconstruction of the social body, and raises awareness
Oceana James, 2019 Oceana James (she/her) is a St. Croix-born interdisciplinary artist. Her work is an examination/a re-telling/ a re-imagining of her Caribbean indigeneity. It is a commentary on the socio-political, cultural, and economic realities of peoples of African descent. In her work James deconstructs the idea of language as
Rae De Vine, 2019 Rae (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker who engages with the arts primarily as a vehicle for healing and building community. Queer, Black, and Indigenous with Gullah and Caribbean roots, while in EMERGE her research question explored the intersection and convergence of these
Rebecca Fitton, 2019 Rebecca Fitton (she/they) is from many places. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Her work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, administrator, and advocate centers arts and culture policy, Asian American communities, and disability justice. Her practice takes shape in studios, classrooms, basements, warehouses,
Sahar Sepahdari-Dalai, 2019 Sahar Sepahdari-Dalai is an Iranian American video and performance artist. Healing and language are the axes of her practice. She is interested in the metaphorical flux of translation that speaks to diasporic displacement when considering the decolonization of time and space. She is a world-builder and engages
Shenny de Los Angeles, 2019 Shenny de Los Angeles is a Dominican-American performance artist. Her work focuses on healing generational trauma, inviting every hurt to free itself into joy. During her time at Emerge, Shenny was researching the Afro Latinx experience in America and Domincan Americanâs relationship to DR, exploring
stefa marin alarcon, 2019 stefa marin alarcon is a vocalist, composer and multi-media performance artist born and raised in Queens, NY. Using an amalgamation of punk, experimental pop and classical minimalism with queer ethereal aesthetix and video collages, stefa builds worlds that offer a somatic decolonial respite for the misfits
Alejandro Chellet, 2018 Alejandro Chellet is a multidisciplinary artist and social practitioner in cultural and permacultural networks. He was born in Mexico City raised in a family of artists and performers, he currently lives between Upstate NY where he practices permaculture and NYC-CDMX where he is also a cultural producer
Ama BE, 2018 Ama BE (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist exploring dimensions of embodiment through ritual-adjacent performance, digital and screen-based media, She probes porous distinctions between materiality, sentience and memory as it relates to migrations. âCentering her Ghanaian heritage and American upbringing, she interrogates materials with antithetical ties to hegemonic
Angela Veronica Wong, 2018 Angela Veronica Wong is a poet, writer, artist, and educator based in NYC. She is the author of elsa: an unauthorized autobiography (Black Radish 2017). Chapbooks include the Poetry Society of America New York Fellowship winning Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter. Poems have been anthologized
Arian Nakhaie, 2018 Fihi Ma Fihiâs (âFMFâ) founder Arian Nakhaie has 15+ years in a variety of roles, industries and countries which culminated in its creation. The organization is named after and based on the spirit of 13th-century mystic, jurist and poet Rumiâs philosophical treatise, which translates as âSigns of
C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, 2018 C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek (they/them) is an artist and urban planner. Meranda is driven to destabilize the conditions that shaped their upbringingâthe prison industrial complex, poverty, and violenceâthrough an ethic of love and the rigor of transformative justice. They collaborate with groups to understand complex systems, re-orient
Emilio MartĂnez Poppe, 2018 Emilio MartĂnez Poppe is an artist working across installation, performance, participatory projects, and research-based collaborative projects. Their work engages collectivity, its practices, and lived/speculative legacies of belonging through spatial or linguistic formations. Emilio has exhibited their work at FIERMAN, the Queens Museum, CUE Art Foundation, and
Janine Renee Cunningham, 2018 Brooklyn based organizer and theater-maker, Janine Renee Cunningham has presented work at the Prelude Festival and On the Boards, among others. She holds a BA in International Studies from Portland State University and is completing her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College. janinereneecunningham.com
Mercy Viola Carpenter, 2018 Mercy Viola is a Black and Native nonbinary femme raised in Brooklyn, New York. They are passionate about land sovereignty, reclaiming ritual and healing intergenerational trauma. Mercy incorporates these values as a Visual Artist, Performance Artist, Reiki practitioner and Educator. They create art with the intention
Monica Furman, 2018 Monica Furman is a multi-hyphenate artist and conflict mediator. She was raised in Brooklyn by her Jew-ish Russian-speaking family from Ukraine, so sheâs working out her dual-identity crisis by being an artist instead of a doctor like her babushka wanted. Monicaâs most recent work includes The Waiting
Natalie Cook, 2018 Natalie Cook is a filmmaker, poet, and theater-maker. Natalieâs poetry film, âBackwards God,â received the Best Social Justice Film Award at the New York International Film Awards and was the Grand Prize Winner of the AT&T Film Awards. She is the founder of Atlanta Word Works, as
Rad Pereira, 2018 Rad is a two-spirit Afro-Indigenous, Jewish, Brazilian (im)migrant artist currently based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Their practices range from renegade participatory ritual facilitation, to popular theatrical and TV/film performance, to community based educational artmaking and healing centering an Afro-futurist longing for transformative justice and queer reindigenization of culture.
Régine Romain, 2018 Régine Romain is a Haitian-American artist, educator, visual anthropologist and race equity coach living in Brooklyn, NY.  As a storyteller and cultural producer, she uses photographs/film/performance as mixed-media educational tools to promote love, understanding and respect by addressing issues of representation and equity through participatory and reflective learning practices.
Rina Espiritu, 2018 A local of Queens Village, NY with a US greencard and Pilipino passport. This multidisciplinary artist has organized various things but not limited to: public discourse with artists/curator, a physical theater with clickbaity title, solo movement improvisations, solo exhibition of gestural paintings, durational performance in a pond,
Salome Egas, 2018 Salome is proudly Ecuadorian, an interdisciplinary artist, educator and bilingual childrenâs book author who is permanently questioning her identity through multiple mediums: dance, theater, film and textile arts. Sheâs a Brooklyn Arts Council grantee, an American Immigrant Council Fellow, and a For the Artist! resident artist at
Sara Kostic, 2018 Sara Kostic (born in 1990 in Belgrade), received an M.A. in Architecture Design from Belgrade University. She attended EmergeNYC program, at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU. She polished her practices by working with artists such as VestandPage, Marlin Arsem, Franko B. In her work,
Ana Laura RamĂrez Ramos, 2017 Ana Laura is a Mexican artivist and cabaret performer who enjoys making humor. Based in Mexico City, she is the founder of the cabaret company Parafernalia Teatro (2011) and a member of Las Reinas Chulas Cabaret y Derechos Humanos AC (2013). She is a FONCA
Anooj Bhandari, 2017 Anooj is a community organizer and multi-disciplinary performance artist, combining curiosity around spaces of transition, waiting, conflict, contest, and unknown, with histories of community organizing and movement building in an attempt to decolonize and reconstruct concepts of dignity and love. Anooj is an abolitionist who believes that friendship
Arantxa Araujo, 2017 Arantxa is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist with a background in neuroscience based in NYC interested in repetition and duration to access heightened states of awareness. Their work explores biobehavioral research, gender constructions and politics of migration; its affects and consequences in the construction of identity. They hold
Arantxa Araujo, 2022-Virtual (and 2017 Flagship) Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist with a background in neuroscience. Her work is essentially multidisciplinary, feminist, meditative and rooted in bio-behavioral research and technology. Her work has been shown in the Brooklyn Museum, at the Radical Women LatinAmerican Art Exhibit, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Grace
Clarivel Ruiz, 2017 We, the daughter from the land called Kiskeya Ayiti (aka Hispaniola aka Dominican Republic and Haiti), a land colonized but never conquered, raised in New York City on the ancestral bones and covered shrines of the Lenape people. Founder, Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, an art practice developed
David Sierra, 2017 David Sierra is an artist, scholar, and writer practicing and researching performance and production in many contexts. Sierra reads and writes about sex, science, fiction, and language. Her artistic practices are concerned with embodied experiences of movement and sound in procedural settings, horror, and medical technology. She
Effie Nkrumah, 2017 Effie Nkrumah is an interdisciplinary artist and poet of Ghanaian descent brought up in Sydney, Australia. She has worked creatively between Sydney, Accra, and New York granting her a unique sense of humour, aesthetic & keen observation. She holds an MA in Arts Politics from NYU. Twitter
Elena Rose Light, 2017 Elena Rose Light (they/she) is a choreographer, performer, and cultural worker originally from Southern California (Micqanaqaân) currently splitting time between Brooklyn (Lenapehoking) and Giessen, Germany. Their choreographic work is rooted in the potential for somatic empathy to reorganize systems of thought and governance. Their performances have
Girino (aka LUA), 2017 Girino (aka Lua) is a Brazilian video & movement artist and scholar based in Brooklyn, and current PhD candidate at NYU’s Performance Studies. Their work happens amidst performance art, expanded cinema, contemporary dance, independent documentaries and undocumented phenomena. They are drawn to insurgent transgendering, prehensive performances,
Nicole Goodwin aka GOODW.Y.N., 2017 Nicole Goodwin aka GOODW.Y.N. is the author of Warcries, and the poetic sequel Warcrimes as well as the photographic essay book Ain’t I a Woman (?/!): I Give of Myself based on the five year iterations of Ain’t I a Woman (?/!). They are a finalist for
Julia Patinella, 2017 Julia Patinella (she/her) is a multilingual singer and songwriter currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. After years of immersion as a Flamenco singer in southern Spain, Julia has developed several original musical projects in Spanish, Sicilian and English, that draw from her roots, her experience as a first-generation
Linus Ignatius, 2017 Linus Ignatius is a queer Armenian-American filmmaker and a proud third culture kid. Born to journalist parents, Linus grew up in various countries and inhabited the role of the outsider, constantly learning new languages and social structures. After film school in the Czech Republic, Linus directed large
Mariam Bazeed, 2017 An Egyptian immigrant living in Brooklyn, Mariam Bazeed is a performance artist and alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and personal essays. They have an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College; have been awarded fellowships from the Center for Fiction, Asian American Writers Workshop, Hemispheric Institute for
rexylafemme (rex renĂ©e leonowicz), 2017 rexylafemme (rex renĂ©e leonowicz) is a visual + performing artist, writer, and healer born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. As a working class trans femme, rexâs work is grounded in a politics of radical resistance, healing, and witness. s/he blends genders and genres, using
Rosary Solimanto, 2017 Activist artist Rosary Solimanto, explores oppression and societal stigmas living with multiple sclerosis evolving into her international artistic career. She approaches disABILITY identity, biology, healthcare and medicine from a humanitarian perspective. Solimanto graduated with her MFA from SUNY New Paltz in 2015 and since exhibited and performed
Sol Cabrini de la Ciudad, 2017 Sol Cabrini de la Ciudad is a Chicago trans creator based in NYC. Sol has created and collaborated in numerous seasons of shows at Free Street Theatre. From audio engineering to performative efforts she has made mediums concerning the abstraction of how sounds are
Troizel Carr, 2017 An artist, advocate, and academic, Troizel Carr is black + alive and that means more than these words can say. They are pursuing their PhD at New York University in Performance Studies, where they also earned their MA. Currently, their research wants to consider figurations of black
Bex Kwan, 2016 Bex Kwan Bex Kwan is a multimedia artist, organizer, social worker, and athlete. They are a core trainer with the Anti Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA). Bex is currently in collaboration with Sophia Mak (EMERGE’16) creating performances which unearth secret histories of foreignness, family mythologies, and
Chelsea Gregory, 2016 Chelsea Gregory is a dance theater artist, cultural organizer and facilitator who weaves embodied arts together with equity work, community building, healing and restorative practices. She is inspired by working with brilliant folks like Urban Bush Women, Artists Co-Creating Real Equity, Cornerstone Theater Company, PowerTools for Progress,
Courtney Brown, 2016 Courtney Brown is an artist, organizer, curator and non-profit administrator with a background in grant writing, proposal development, campaign strategy and donor relations. Her performance work is grounded in ritual, autobiography, endurance and memory. She scores performative systems that allow for the exploration of time through embodied
Estrellx Supernova, 2016 Estrellx/EHQS embodies a they/them energetics and straddles the roles of choreographer, performer, curator, writer and somatic entrepreneur. They have many diasporic roots and call themselves the Cosmic Energetic Orchestrator of The Universe of Rhizomatic Tenderness (TUoRT), an emerging ecosystem and social enterprise being choreographed by and for
Francheska AlcĂĄntara, 2016 Francheska is a multidisciplinary artist hailing from The Bronx who looks at domestic life and signifiers of Caribbean culture and the diaspora to explore slippages of identity, fragmentation, and longing. They graduated with a MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and hold a
Gethsemane Herron-Coward, 2016 Gethsemane Herron-Coward is a poet/playwright from Washington, D.C. She has developed work with JAG Productions, The Hearth, Magic Time@Judson, and Playwrightâs Playground at Classical Theatre of Harlem. She is alumna of 24Hour Plays-Nationals and The Fire This Time Festival. She has held residencies at The Virginia Center
Jennif(f)er Tamayo, 2016 Jennif(f)er Tamayo is a queer, migrant, formerly undocumented poet, essayist, and performer currently living and working on Patwin and Ohlone lands. JT is the daughter of Nancy, Flora, Leonor, Sol, and Ana. Her poetry and art collections include [Red Missed Aches] (Switchback, 2011), Poems are the Only
Julia Cavagna, 2016 Julia Cavagna is an Argentinian teacher, actress and director based in the United States. She studied Sociology and classical and physical theater (EMAD, Belisario and Movement Theater Studio) where she learned about creating original collective work. She earned a Bachelorâs Degree in acting in Buenos Aires (EMAD) and kept learning from
Kelsey Pyro, 2016 Kelsey Pyro is a St. Paul and Minneapolis-grown/Brooklyn-based producer, singer/songwriter, poet, and educator. Her work often encompasses healing processes and her identity as a Black and Ojibwe Native American Woman. Kelsey has performed at venues such as The Last Of The Record Buyers at SoundSet and TEDx
Lio Mehiel, 2016 Lio Mehiel (they/them) is a Puerto Rican and Greek non-binary, trans masculine writer, actor, and artist. They are currently based between Los Angeles and New York. They attended Northwestern University and are a co-founder of Voyeur Productions with creative partners Russell Kahn (Scrap Paper Pictures, Amazon) and
Paul Bedard, 2016 Paul Bedard is a Brooklyn-based theater director. He is an artistic director of Theater in Asylum. His work has appeared at the Hangar, Cherry Lane, IRT, and Dixon Place Theatres, as well as the Prague, Chicago, and Rochester Fringe Festivals. He has collaborated with Bread and Puppet
Rania Manganaro, 2016 RANIA SALEM MANGANARO is a New York City based actor, artist, activist, and proud member of Actors Equity. Rania is known for originating the role of Peg in Ike Holterâs Hit the Wall, Off-Broadway at Barrow Street Theatre and in Chicago at The Steppenwolf Garage (produced by The Inconvenience). Last
Sophia Mak, 2016 Sophia Mak is a Brooklyn based, multi-disciplinary artist and educator. They have had the pleasure of working with young artists across New York Cityâs five boroughs. Sophia is currently in collaboration with Bex Kwan (EMERGE’16) creating performances which unearth secret histories of foreignness, family mythologies, and kinship
Timothy Du White, 2016 Timothy DuWhite (he/they) is a Black/queer poet, actor, and activist based out of Brooklyn, NY. His essays and poetry can be found in The Rumpus, The Root, Afropunk, Black Youth Project, The Grio, and elsewhere. In the summer of 2018, DuWhite debuted his one-man show NEPTUNE
Vanessa Cuervo, 2016 Born in BogotĂĄ Colombia, Vanessa is a dancer, curator & cultural producer exploring the connections between identity, collective memory building and rituals of resilience in (but not limited to) Latin America. Working with dance, theatre and film organizations in Toronto, Buenos Aires, New York & BogotĂĄ she
Andre Ignacio Dimapilis, 2015 Andre Ignacio Dimapilis (he/him) is a Filipinx-American culture-bearing performance artist, sound facilitator, and peaceful warrior. My art-making in theatre, sound, movement, text, building relationships and rituals are in harmony with the truths that I live as Filipinx-American, a male POC living in the current times working
Anthonywash.Rosado, 2015 Â Anthonywash.Rosado is a queer Afro-Boricua storytraveler and Nuyorican cultural curator. As of 2013, he/she/they produced free and public multimedia art salons at Make The Road NY, May Day Space, Starr Bar, Brooklyn Fire Proof, Five Myles Gallery, Rush Arts Philanthropic, and David & Schweitzer. Rosado was Artist in
Ashley Brockington, 2015 Ashley Brockington’s (she/her) New York City chapter started in 2001. Her first theater family was Circus Amok, a politically-minded queer circus that provides free art to the people. In 2006, Ashley joined the Femmes of the WOW cafĂ© theater collective where she produced orginal work and produced
Daniel Giordano, 2015 Daniel Giordano (he/him) was born in 1988. He lives and works in Newburgh, NY. Giordano earned his MFA from the University of Delaware. Solo exhibitions include the Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY; Wil Aballe Art Projects, BC, Canada; and Sardine, Brooklyn, NY. Group exhibitions include JDJ,
Edgar Javier Ulloa LujĂĄn, 2015 Ădgar J. Ulloa LujĂĄn is a performance artist and poet from Ciudad JuĂĄrez, MĂ©xico. He founded a pioneer multimedia poetry blog Mi Juaritos. His performances negotiate border politics, cultural memory, trauma, immigration, and violence in addition to instigating audience and public participation. Ulloa has performed in
Gabriela Espinosa, 2015 Gabriela es creadora interdisciplinaria e intĂ©rprete de las artes escĂ©nicas, y ejerce como artista educadora y gestora cultural en Chile y LatinoamĂ©rica. Ha desarrollado una carrera creativa y artivista vinculada a temĂĄticas e intervenciones socio-polĂticas. Se titula en Teatro en la Universidad CatĂłlica de Chile para luego
Helen Gutowski, 2015 Helen Gutowski is a performing artist, writer, and activist working in the experimental theater, post modern dance, performance art, poetry, and academic theory. Alumnus of the EmergeNYC program (2015.) BFA in Acting from the Experimental Theater Wing, NYU (2013) and MA in Performance Studies, NYU (2018.) She
Joyce LeeAnn Joseph, 2015 Joyce LeeAnn Joseph is a certified archivist and an interdisciplinary artist whose work aims to redefine the archive as a space for healing and transformation. In 2017, Joyce LeeAnn emancipated her labor by cultivating Archival AlchemyÂź, a small business that provides services to support the development,
Mare Berger, 2015 Mare has been playing the piano for 34 years and writing music for a loooong time too. Mare believes in the importance of creative collaboration and community to help stop fascism and oppression and facilitates workshops called: Collective Songwriting for Collective Liberation. For many years they curated
Nefertiti Asanti, 2015 Nefertiti Asanti (they/she) is a poet from the Bronx and a recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Watering Hole, Queer Cultural Center, Lambda Literary, Anaphora Arts, Winter Tangerine, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Nefertitiâs work can be found at AfroPunk, Foglifter, Santa Clara Review, Split Lip Magazine,
á»má»larĂĄ McCallister, 2015 á»má»larĂĄ Williams McCallister (pronouns: o, love, beloved) is a dynamic creator who shows up in many forms. Oâs work is a call and response blend of sculpture, performance, installation, ritual, space holding, community building, surface design, adornment, word, sound, song, movement, moving images and photography. The roles
ray ferreira 2015 ray ferreira w h e n a m i a performer of sorts aka multidisciplinary artist aka polymath. She stays playin : the dance between materiality<->language through her body w h e n a m i where histories are made and remade. She plays with iridescence, text,
Sriya Sarkar, 2015 Sriya Sarkar is a digital media producer, comedian, and filmmaker working at the intersection of digital media, comedy, and activism. She has worked with artist Maya Lin for the What Is Missing? Foundation as well as the feminist sleeper cell of riotously funny reproductive rights advocates at
Stephano Espinoza, 2015 Stephano is an artist and educator from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He is the co-founder and director of TrueQué Residencia Artistica, an annual artist residency in the coast of Ecuador. He holds a BA in Social and Cultural Analysis with concentrations in Latinx and Metropolitan Studies from New York
Alicia Raquel Morales, 2014 Alicia Raquel Morales is a dancer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural organizer. Their aesthetic is quirky, queer, âspanglish,â Boricua, urban, nerdy and working class. Alicia grew up building altars, listening to and making up stories that straddle “real” and unseen worlds, and watching formal and informal ritual
AnazĂ© Izquierdo, 2014 AnazĂ© Izquierdo (Ana Carolina Izquierdo) : is a peruvian genderqueer brooklyn based visual, performance artist-activist and organizer born and raised in Lima, Peru. / February 23, 1990 . AnazĂ© as an organizer is the founder of “Encuentro / Espacio abierto a libre performance”, an international performance art
Azure D. Osborne-Lee, 2014 Azure D. Osborne-Lee (he/they) is a multi-award-winning Black queer & trans theatre maker from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He holds an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice (2011) from Royal Central School of Speech & Drama as well as an MA in Womenâs & Gender Studies
Camilo Godoy, 2014 Camilo Godoy is an artist and educator born in Bogotå, Colombia and based in New York, United States. He was a 2018 Session Artist, Recess; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, Leslie-Lohman Museum; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, coleção moraes-barbosa; 2017 Artist-in-Residence, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP); 2015-2017 Artist-in-Residence, Movement Research; among others.
Emma Alabaster, 2014 Born and raised in Brooklyn, Emma Alabaster works as a musician, composer, cultural organizer, and educator throughout New York City. Emma performs under her name and with decibelists. She music-directed poet Cornelius Eady’s band, Rough Magic and has collaborated with many artists as a bassist and vocalist.
Kiyan Williams, 2014 Kiyan Williams (they/them) is a visual artist based in New York City. Working fluidly across sculpture, performance, video, and installation, they create art works that redefine fixed notions of history and the body. They are attracted to quotidian, unconventional materials and methods that evoke the historical, political,
Lolo Haha, 2014 Lolo Haha (he/him) is an organizational consultant, conflict mediator, and communication skills trainer based in Portland, Oregon. He works with companies, nonprofits, and community groups to develop creative, collaborative, conflict-positive cultures within their teams. His unique combination of skills in Liberating Structures and Process Work center fun
Magnus Elias Rosengarten, 2014 Magnus (he/him) is particularly interested in the relationship between moving image, sound and live performance. He loves visual storytelling. His work is deeply inspired and motivated by People of Color critique, Black Feminist thought and theories working within the larger Global African Diaspora. Currently, his focus
Manuel Molina MartagĂłn, 2014 Manuel Molina MartagĂłn is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video and social engaged projects. Molina MartagĂłn holds a MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and a MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York
Maxine Montilus, 2014 Maxine Montilus is a native of Brooklyn, New York and a first-generation Haitian-American. Maxine has a B.F.A. in Modern Dance Performance from The University of the Arts, an M.A. in Arts Management from City University London, and an M.A. in Dance Education from Hunter College via the
Melanie Greene, 2014 Melanie Greene is a dance artist, writer, and podcast host. She is no stranger to swirling on the edge of impossible, swimming in the sea of the minority. She has received generous artistic support from MANCC, Marble House Project, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, New York Live Arts,
nyx zierhut, 2014 nyx zierhut is a mixed black tenderqueer performer, poet, healer, organizer, and educator living in Bulbancha (New Orleans, Louisiana). a creator of visceral aesthetic and political interventions, they share public ritual in the wake of state sanctioned violence. their #BlackTouch practice offers somatic and energetic healing and
Renee Floresca, 2014 Originally from Hercules– East Bay Area, Renee is a Filipina actor, educator & writer based in Brooklyn. Creator of original theater works Sidewalk Sisters; Nanay, Tatay, Anak; and Undressing the Fragments, Renee uses theater, hip hop, story telling, poetry & improv to transform personal narratives into theater
Stevie Walker-Webb, 2014 Stevie Walker-Webb is an Obie award winning Director, Playwright, and Cultural Worker who believes in the transformational power of art. As a survivor of poverty and the associative violence that comes with growing up black and poor in America, heâs knows how liberating and necessary it is
Taja Lindley, 2014 Taja Lindley (she/her) is a spirit-led interdisciplinary generative artist creating dynamic and iterative works designed to transform audiences and to shift narratives, culture and consciousness. She is inspired by the healing arts and metaphysical sciences which support her healing journey and inform the rituals of conceiving, developing
Vaseah Dupree, 2014 Vaseah Dupree is a spoken word artist and creative writer who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn during the height of the drug wars and the AIDS/HIV epidemic. She is a survivor of Urban America, sexual, physical, verbal and domestic abuse. While struggling to cope with the affects
Adrienne Nordin Manan, 2013 Adriana Nordin Manan is a Malaysian translator working between the English, Malay, and Spanish languages. She has translated short stories, essays, and poetry. Born, raised, and based in Kuala Lumpur, Adriana is fascinated by the expanse of stories as mirrors of society and monuments to the
Alex Rodabaugh, 2013 Alex Rodabaugh creates performances within the lineage of dance and choreography. Alex’s work includes found performance, dance generated from numerical scores, improvisation, and both found and written text, with a primary focus on framing. Pointing toward the performance of everyday interaction, mass spectacle, illegible manipulation and modes
Aya Aziz, 2013 Aya Aziz is a songwriter and performance artist based between New York and Beirut, Lebanon. Aya wrote and performed her first full production, Sitting Regal by the Window, in 2014 at the Metro Al-Madina Theater in Beirut. The show then featured in both the Fringe and Planet Connections
Giseli Vasconcelos, 2013 Giseli is a cultural worker and interdisciplinary artist from Brazil based in US. She has been organizing festivals, workshops, exhibitions and publications that discuss media and technology related to the Brazilian scene of art and activism. Most of the projects are collaborative process that highlights practices on
Guy Yedwab, 2013 Guy Yedwab ran a small theater company when the 2008 financial crisis propelled him into community organizing through the League of Independent Theater, an advocacy organization for small-sized theaters. As Managing Director, Guy led their work on union codes, endorsements in electoral campaigns, legislative advocacy, and social
Jeca RodrĂguez ColĂłn, 2013 (and Invited Alumni Faculty 2015â16) Jeca RodrĂguez ColĂłn (she/her) is a Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary artist and a scholar living in New York City. She holds a PhD in Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art Theory from IDSVA. Through her academic and creative work, she questions the societal prescription
Jennifer Celestin, 2013 Jennifer Celestin is a writer, performer, and facilitator from Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A. in Humanities at NYU and an M.F.A. in Fiction at CUNY: Queens College. She has performed at numerous venues in NYC and her publication credits include No
Marta JovanoviÄ, 2013 Marta JovanoviÄ (b. 1978, Belgrade, Serbia) constructs scenarios in which she interrogates politics, identity, beauty, and sexuality. JovanoviÄ received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University in 2001 after attending Scuola Lorenzo de Medici, in Florence. Her works have been presented in institutions such as Museo
Mette Loulou von Kohl, 2013 Mette Loulou was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a performer and a wanderer. Currently living on the unceded land of the Lenape people, now colonized as New York City, Mette Loulou is a queer femme, of
Mon Iker, 2013 Mon Iker is an interdisciplinary artist devoted to elevating feminist, social, and environmental justice issues. Their work spans a variety of media, including street art, photography, performance, animation, film, and traditional herbalism. They combine experience in visual media making with knowledge of strategy, operations, and arts administration
Rory Golden, 2013 Rory Golden creates multi-layered figurative work that deals in a clever and sometimes startling way with social issues like racial bigotry, sexuality, love and hate-based violence. A native of Miami Valley, Ohio, Golden holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama. He has exhibited
Sabina Ibarrola, 2013 Sabina is a Brooklyn-based performance artist, activist, and troublemaker: a dancer and bruja on the path towards becoming a writer and healer, too. Sabina apprenticed with herbalist Robin Rose Bennett of Wisewoman Healing Ways. A graduate of Hunter College and the New York School of Burlesque, she
Sita Frederick, 2013 Sita Frederick is a choreographer, performer, arts administrator and teacher based in New York City. After graduating from Swarthmore College, Frederick performed with Bessie-winning choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women and Merian Soto, co-founder of Pepatian. In 2003, Frederick and visual artist José Miguel
Zachary Wager Scholl, 2013 Zachary Wager Scholl is an educator, artist and cultural worker. He’s a member of The Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee, a multi-disciplinary arts collective making queer, intergenerational, diasporic radical purimshpiln; a member of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice; an educator at Kolot Chayeinu Synagogue. Recent projects include
Alexandra Blissett 2012 Alexandra Lauren Prosper Blissett enjoys distilling the sordidly splendid spirits of stovetops and verandas and watching them play with fire. A disciple of the Kiskeya School of Shade and Story Craft she knows that hell hath no fury like a Haitian scorned. She believes reality television holds
Anoushka Ratnarajah, 2012 Anoushka Ratnarajah (she/her) is a queer bi-racial woman, and an artivist, writer and performer. She has an MA in Arts Politics at NYU and was a fellow in the Hemispheric Instituteâs Emerging Artist Program. She is currently collaborating on âCapital, Alice!â an anti-capitalist Alice in Wonderland musical
Benjamin Lundberg Torres SĂĄnchez, 2012 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2013) Benjamin Lundberg Torres SĂĄnchez (b. 1987, BogotĂĄ) (they/them/elle) uses their art to transform individual witness into collective action. As a person who was separated from their first family for 28 years through a private, transnational adoption process, they co-create spaces
Carlos Monroy, 2012 An immigrant in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, Carlos Monroy (BogotĂĄ, 1984) is a Colombian visual and performance artist with a tropical-Andean heart. His performances and installations question the boundaries between so-called highbrow, popular, and mass culture repertoires, revealing colonial structures of power and thinking, as well as the
Chris Tyler, 2012 Chris is a Los Angeles-based playwright and performing artist examining the intersections of popular culture, collective action and digital identity. Recent projects include the Make America series (Ars Nova), Their food tastes better when they see us starving (The Brick), flesh failure (The Civilians’ R&D Group), R*NT
Denae Hannah, 2012 Denae Hannah, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, is a performance artist, social entrepreneur, and Artistic Director and CEO of Denae Dance Theatre. She received her B.A. in Drama from Stanford University and M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography from Florida State University. Ms. Hannah was a 2012
Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, 2012 I am inspired to create art work based on the familiar objects that I view through my daily travels. I ultimately set out to express a meaningful story about events in my life and those found with the communities I work. I utilize different media in
Dominic Cinnamon Bradley, 2012 Raised in the crunk-era “Dirty South,” Dominic Cinnamon Bradley (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based Black disabled queer visual artist, writer, and performer. In 2021 they were a RiseOut Activist-in-Residence fellow focusing on creating resources and conversation about mental health on behalf of BIPOC LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers. Currently,
Getenesh Berhe, 2012 Getenesh Berhe is an Eritrean-Canadian actor and performance artist. Upon completion of training at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, she began working as a theatre artist in various new works and Off-Off-Broadway productions. IG @getenesh
Jesse Phillips-Fein, 2012 Jesse Phillips-Fein is a Brooklyn born and based dancer, choreographer, educator and mama. Her work has been presented at venues in New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Maine, and her writing on dance and race is published in several anthologies. IG @jesse_phlllips_feinTwitter @JessePFeinÂ
Kirya Traber, 2012 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2014) Kirya Traber is a nationally awarded playwright, actress, and cultural worker. She is the lead Community Artist in Residence with Lincoln Center Education. Her latest work, If This Be Sin, a musical about the gender-bending Harlem Renaissance performer, Gladys Bentley, will be
Kyla Searle, 2012 Kyla Searle (she/her) is an artist, producer and activist. Kyla seeks out inquiry and intersection, inspired by the creativity of the community that raised her in Berkeley and Oakland, California. Her work and practice have been developed through the Institute for Theatre in the Jazz Aesthetic, the
Marcelitte Failla, 2012 Marcelitte Failla is a Black and biracial educator, researcher, and scholar of African heritage religions in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. Through a Black feminist lens, her work explores how religions such as Yoruba IfĂĄ, Haitian Vodou, and Hoodoo of the American South are
Polina Porras Sibolovoba, 2012 Polina Porras Sivolobova is a Russian-Mexican multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work includes visual arts and performance. She explores narrative using ritual, iconography, technology and nature. She has performed at the Venice Biennale and has been supported by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Rebecca Nagle, 2012 Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning advocate, writer, and citizen of Cherokee Nation. As the host of the chart-topping podcast âThis Landâ, Nagle told the story of one Supreme Court case about tribal land in Oklahoma, the small-town murder that started it, and the surprising connection to her
Sacred Walker, 2012 Sacred Walker is a master facilitator and the CEO and Lead Holistic Trainer of Kuumba Health LLC. Sacred’s creative writing and dance performances include gracing the stage of Alvin Ailey World Dance Festival, WOW Cafe, Second Stage Theater, Malonga Dance School, Union Theological Seminary, LGBT Community Center,
Samantha Galarza, 2012 Samantha Galarza (she/her/ella) is a queer, Puerto Rican, SAG-AFTRA actress, writer, performance artist, educator, podcaster, and director. Ultimately a storyteller, her dream is to bridge the gap between mainstream media and progressive âde-colonialâ art. Her work interweaves personal narratives of queer identity, internalized and systemic anti-black racism,
Santiago Venegas Duque, 2013 Santiago Venegas Duque is a Colombian fashion designer and performance artist, currently working at Brooks Brothers as a knitwear designer. He ultimately wants everyone to be happy including the animals and environment. IG @sanvene
Sara Lyons, 2012 Sara Lyons is a director who seeks to explode form/politic in new, critically embodied theatre and performance works. Working frequently in adaptation, social practice, and new media, their work has been presented by Los Angeles Performance Practice, The Wattis Institute, OUTsider, SFX Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE,
Carolina Tapias GuzmĂĄn, 2011 Carolina is a theatre teaching artist and cultural worker whose practice of theater and performance focuses on collective artistic creation that links the personal with its context. Victoria holds a Fine Arts degree from the National University of Colombia, and an MA in Applied Theatre and
Jadele McPherson, 2011 Jadele McPherson is an artist-scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of sound and healing, mutual aid, and performance in Florida, Haiti and Cuba. McPherson is currently a PhD student in the CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology Department and teaching fellow with the Mellon Seminar for Collaborative Research
Katrina De Wees, 2011 Katrina De Wees is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator and curator specializing in contemporary art. She currently works in Museum Education at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and is the current Curatorial Fellow at Danspace Project. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2010 with a concentration
Koby, 2011 Koby (she/they) is an artist, writer and social practice facilitator dedicated to dialogical arts practices, archiving as cultural activism, and public interventions for political engagement. She facilitates durational multi-stakeholder arts activist projects with collectives such as Montrealâs Immigrant Workers Centre, the Politics & Care project, and the Living
Lilian (Lily) Mengesha, 2011 Lily is a director, dramaturg and assistant professor of race and performance in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at Tufts University. Her research focuses on contemporary indigenous performance art of North and Central America, particularly on art that address legacies of violence against
Liz Andrews, 2011 Liz Andrews is an artist, curator, and scholar based in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, MA from Tisch School of Arts, NYU, and Ph.D from George Mason University. Her dissertation, Envisioning President Barack Obama, focused on the role of visual images in
Maria Schirmer, 2011 Maria Schirmer is a theater artist, writer and arts educator. She has received a Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellowship with the Jana Sanskriti Center for Theatre of the Oppressed in Kolkata, India and was an artist in residence at the Womenâs International Study Center in Santa Fe,
Mary Notari, 2011 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2014) I am a multidisciplinary theater artist, cultural activist, and dork. I firmly believe in live art and non-violent direct action as sites of world-making, radical empathy, and resistance. I have presented solo physical theater work and cabaret and I have appeared as
Noelle Ghoussaini, 2011 Noelle Ghoussaini creates expansive and genre-defying theatrical experience exploring the politics and spirit of liberation. She brings to light to the divine feminine and the resilient spirit of womxn living under patriarchal norms. She tells nuanced stories about the unexposed beauty and complexity of spiritual and social
PatrĂcia Faolli, 2011 The Brazilian artist PatrĂcia Faolli (she/her) received a Bachelorâs Degree in Performance Art from PontifĂcia Universidade CatĂłlica de SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil in 2009. Always exploring the interdisciplinary aspect of her artistic work, she started her career in theater but later focused on performance and dance using her
Racquel Mavecq, 2011 Raquel Mavecq graduated in ComunicaçaÌo e Artes do Corpo at PUC-SP. Through dance, performance art, video, installation and sound, her work understands the body as a catalyst for the micro and macro politics of human relationships. IG @raquelmavecq
Sahar Sajadieh, 2011 Sahar Sajadieh is a digital performance/media artivist (artist+activist) and scholar, interaction designer, and computer scientist, born and raised in Iran. Saharâs research and practice lie at the intersection of computational performance, media arts, interrogative design, performance/media theory, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. She is interested in the
Shelah Marie, 2011 With her authentic, rebellious and playful personality and her @curvycurlyconscious movement, Shelah Marie engages an online community of over a quarter million people. Her mission is to create a movement of total self love and liberation for women of color. Sheâs the creator of the Curvy, Curly,
Stephen Graf, 2011 After many years in the NYC theatre scene, Stephen began pursuing doctoral studies in 2017 at the New School for Social Research, with a major concentration in comparative politics and a minor in global politics. His research interests include the structure of political institutions, inclusiveness in public
Zavé Martohardjono, 2011 Zavé Martohardjono is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist born in Montréal, Canada. Their artistic practice explores geopolitics, social justice, queer glam, embodied healing, and modes of decolonization. Martohardjono studied political economy at Brown University, filmmaking at CUNY City College, and entered dance and performance art in 2009. IG
AimĂ©e Lutkin, 2010 AimĂ©e works as a writer in New York, and performed with Magnet sketch team Chico Splits and is now on team Just Karen, and has also performed her one person character show Peggy’s Orchard at the theater. She was on UCB Lloyd night team This Old House,
Ariel Speedwagon, 2010 Ariel Speedwagonâs work has been seen extensively on Broadway, Lafayette, Fulton, Chrystie, Avenue A, Leonard, and many other fine streets and avenues throughout New York City. Trained as a modern dancer, Arielâs inherently interdisciplinary work has taken many forms â interactive sculpture, modern dance and dance theater,
Clark Stoeckley 2010 Clark Stoeckley is an interdisciplinary artist and activist working in photography, drawing, mural painting, performance, video, and interactive media. His latest work includes photographs of stray cats in the Middle East and vibrant geometrical abstract murals. As a courtroom artist, he authored a graphic novel, The United
Claudia SofĂa Garriga LĂłpez, 2010 Claudia SofĂa Garriga-LĂłpez is an Assistant Professor of Queer and Trans Latinx Studies in the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies of California State University, Chico. After participating in EMERGE Claudia went on to be a part of the Art and Resistance course in San
Heather Morowitz, 2010 For the last ten years, Heather Morowitz has worked as a web and traditional based creative production designer and concept artist in the creative and advertising industry on projects ranging in size and complexity, published for national and global audiences. Heather has also worked with media companies
Jonathan McCrory, 2010 Jonathan McCrory (he/him) is an Obie Award-winning, Harlem-based artist who has served as Executive Artistic Director at National Black Theatre since 2012. He has directed numerous professional productions and concerts which include: A Drop Of Midnight, The Gathering: A Sonic Ringshout, How the Light Gets In, Klook
JuliĂĄn Mesri, 2010 JuliĂĄn Mesri is a New York-based Argentinean-American writer and composer who makes multilingual plays and musicals in the US and around the world. He is a current member of the Public Theater Emerging Writers Group and received a 2020-2021 EST/Sloan Commission. Recent productions include Immersion, Gauchos Americanos,
Kira Neel, 2010 Kira Neel is a New York City based performer, educator, and radio journalist. She is a recipient of the EMERGENYC 2010 Fellowship for emerging performers and activists. As a trained Theater of the Oppressed facilitator, she leads workshops around the world at schools, with community organizations and
Oraison Larmon, 2010 Oraison H. Larmon (they/them) is a doctoral student in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Larmonâs research centers around bodies, records and archives with specific focus on 20th century performance art in the Americas. Their dissertation âTrans Figural Records: Trans Bodies
Ricardo Gamboa, 2010 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2011) Ricardo Gamboa (They/ Them/ Theirs) is an artist, activist and academic. Ricardo is currently staffed on THE CHI for showtime, and is writing the pilot for YOSHUA at HBOMax with Issa Rae & Scott Free producing; they are also developing a feature project with Macro. Before
Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, 2009 Amelia (she/they) creates curriculum and performances influenced by decoloniality and Postmigranten subjectivities. Born in Peru, and raised in California, they have collaborated with Anna Halprin, the Tamalpa Institute, Tino Sehgal, Marina AbramoviÄ, Luna Dance Institute, NAKA Dance Theater, and CunamacuĂ©. They completed a BFA in Dance
Dylan Levers, 2009 Dylan Stephen Levers is an NYC-based filmmaker. His short film âthis is a film about tom and maddy.â screened internationally, was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick, and was curated on NoBudge.com. Prior to making films, Dylan worked as a theater director. His original works include Opus
 Flora Mendoza, 2009 Flora Mendoza, SAG-AFTRA, is a mezzo-soprano and voice actor. Graduating with distinction from Yale in Latin American Studies for a thesis on nueva canción, Flora studied at the Yale School of Music and co-founded Teatro de Yale. In the Bay Area, she performs with the SF
Juju Angeles, 2009 Occupying Ohlone Territory (Oakland, CA), Juju is mothering, homeschooling, working with plants, and supporting people through their pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum journey. She graduated with a degree and a lot of debt from a Creative Writing program and facilitated spaces encouraging âmarginalizedâ communities to tell their
Karina Claudio-Betancourt, 2009 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2010) Karina Claudio Betancourt is a Program Officer with the Open Society Foundations, where she is the project director for OSF’s Puerto Rico Project. She is a skilled community organizer with several years of management, advocacy, policy analysis, fundraising and grant writing experience.
Katharine LuciÄ (Elkington), 2009 Katharine LuciÄ (she/her) is a skilled marketer with passion for building inclusive products and diverse communities, championing access to education, and lifting up underserved groups. Her exceptionally executed experiences have increased lead generation by more than 100x previous performance. Her campaigns push boundaries and heighten brand
Liliana Padilla, 2008 Liliana Padilla makes plays about sex, intersectional communities, and what it means to heal in a violent world. Their play, How to Defend Yourself won the 2019 Yale Drama Prize and is a 2018-19 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist. It was produced in the 2019 Humana Festival
Luisina Quarleri, 2009 Luisina is an actress, singer and dancer originally from Argentina. She’s performed internationally; notable credits include: Carmen (directed by Franco Zeffirelli) at L’Arena di Verona, Italy; Shrek The Musical (Buenos Aires, Argentina); Midsummer Nightâs Dream (Madrid, Spain); Limitless (with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro); Coyote Lake
Marcela Barrientos, 2009 Marcela Barrientos is a proud immigrant born in Honduras and raised in New York City. She grew up in a household where art and politics went hand-in-hand, resulting in her love for theatre and activism. Ms. Barrientos is currently the Director of Training and Leadership Development at
Megan Paradis Hanley, 2009 Megan Paradis Hanley has worked in theater in New York and internationally for the past ten years. She is Co-Artistic Director of The Syndicate, an ensemble theater company that produces new plays by women, queer, and trans artists. As an international network, The Syndicate seeks to
Mieke D, 2009 MIEKE D (she/they) is a mixed-race genderqueer femme of Asian and European descent. She is an experimental dance, theater, and performance artist committed to making work that is personal, political, and playful. As an educator and cultural worker, they hope to destabilize rigid definitions of race, gender,
NIC Kay, 2009 NIC Kay is from the Bronx, NY. They make performances and organize performative spaces with an un disciplined approach. Their approaches to space and objects are led by choreographic motivations and they engage with the body with a sculptural eye. NIC is concerned with the process of
Aisha Jordan, 2008 Aisha Jordan is an Actor, Writer, and Producer in new media with a B.A. from The New School and M.A. in Arts and Politics from NYU. Sheâs a Podcast Producer at Lifetime and A&E for I Love a Lifetime Movie, The Table is Ours, and Origins of
Arun Storrs, 2008 Arun was five years old. She was cast as Wendy in her kindergarten’s production of Peter Pan and got to walk the plank off a boat built with furry blocks. Arun received a degree in Theater and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale, performing original works at
Ashley Marinaccio, 2008 Ash Marinaccio (she/her) iscurrently a Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY GraduateCenter, writing a dissertation on nonfiction/documentary theatre-making inwar zones. She is a multidisciplinary documentarian working in theatre,photography, and film. Ash is the creator ofDocbloc (docbloc.org), which brings together documentary artists workingacross genres. Learn
Beatrice Glow, 2008 Beatrice Glow (she/her) is an interdisciplinary and multisensory artist working in service of public history and just futures. Through diasporic and decolonial lens, she interrogates the visual languages of luxury and power derived through the exploitation of botanical life. Her solo exhibitions include Once the Smoke Clears,
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, 2008 (and Invited Alumni Faculty, 2015â16) Creator, showrunner, writet, and executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins debuts as TV creator of FX’s Kindred, a chilling adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s seminal 1979 sci-fi novel. Previous TV roles include consulting producer on HBO’s Watchmen and Prime Video’s Outer Range. Considered one
Clare Barron, 2008 Clare Barron is a playwright and performer from Wenatchee, Washington. Her plays include DANCE NATION, which was the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Relentless Award, and recently received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in New York City and the Almeida Theatre in
Fernanda Coppel, 2008 Fernanda Coppel (she/her) is a Mexican/American playwright and screenwriter. Her play King Liz received its world premiere at Second Stage Theater in 2015. King Liz was published by Samuel French and has recently been optioned by ABC Signature and 42 for television. Fernanda will be penning the
Frantz Jerome, 2008 An inaugural EMERGENYC cohort (2008) and 2050 Legacy ensemble member, Frantz Jerome collaborated with The Hemispheric Institute and participated in two Encuentros in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil (2013) and Montreal, Canada (2014). Frantz was invited to perform Spoken Word poetry by Harry Belafonte at The Interdependence Day Conference
JosĂ© PĂ©rez IV, 2008 JOSĂ PĂREZ IV (he/him) is a fight choreographer, playwright, and actor. He is currently the Resident Fight Director of Pittsburgh Public Theater. His artistic focus is primarily creating original fight productions and facilitating processes that support mental health. Artistic Director of Big Storm Performance Company. MFA
Kim Fischer, 2008 Kim is an actor based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Oakland, California, he’s been a lifelong performer, acting, dancing and drumming since before he can remember. After graduating from NYU Tisch and the Actors Theater of Louisville Apprentice program, he began pursuing a career as an actor,
Leslie Guyton, 2008 Leslie Guytonis a dance and theater director based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The MoveShop.  She choreographs, directs and teaches throughout the US and internationally. The MoveShop’s Racine D’or, toured the US in the fall of 2013 and was funded in part
