Academics, artists, and activists will come together to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing frontline communities today, including gentrification, mass incarceration, racism, and the criminalization of immigration. Panelists will discuss the power of the arts to effect change and the ways the arts can become political action. The exhibition Attica NOW will be open to the public for extended gallery hours from 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm. The panel will begin promptly at 6:00 pm and will conclude at 7:00 pm to allow for individual conversations and networking. The gallery will close at 8:00 pm.

Moderator:

Jasmina Tumbas ((PhD, Art History, Duke University) is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History & Performance Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo. Her first book, “I Am Jugoslovenka!” Feminist Performance Politics During & After Yugoslav Socialism has recently been published by Manchester University Press’s Rethinking Art’s Histories series (February 2022). Tumbas is also working on a second manuscript, Feminists of the Yugoslav Diaspora: Art and Resistance Beyond Citizenship and Nationhood. In Buffalo, Tumbas curated Bosnian artist of Romani origin Selma Selman’s first solo show in the United States at Dreamland in Buffalo, an exhibition which traveled to Vienna, Austria. She served as the guest-editor for the special issue of ArtLeaks Gazette #5: Patriarchy Over and Out: Discourse Made Manifest and her research has appeared in ArtMargins, Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Art Monthly, Art in America, ASAP Journal, and Art and Documentation, and in the anthologies Shifting Corporealities in Contemporary Performance and Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere.

Panelists:

Harper Bishop (he/him) is a Buffalo activist who worked with Our City on a public projection designed to hold WNY elected officials accountable. Our City is a broad coalition of community-based organizations and people in Buffalo, New York who have come together to create a policy agenda that centers on people instead of profits by building a multi-racial, multi-generational, intersectional movement for justice and equity.

Unai Reglero (he/him) is one of the founders of the Spanish-Colombian art collective CaldodeCultivo. He is visual artist, art director, and cultural organizer whose practice has led him to question the role of art in society, always vindicating it as a tool or device capable of impacting its social context. He is completing his MFA in Studio Art at SUNY Buffalo.

Mizin Shin (she/her) was born and raised in South Korea and she graduated from Hong-ik University with a B.F.A in Printmaking and received her M.F.A from SUNY at Buffalo. Shin focuses on both traditional and contemporary printmaking practices to promote a multidisciplinary approach to the medium. In 2021, she created Use Your Voice #StopAsianHate in response to rising hate crimes and as a way to speak out against racially motivated prejudice and violence.

Gabriela Córdoba Vivas (she/her) is one of the founders of the Spanish-Colombian art collective CaldodeCultivo.. She is an artist-scholar that works in the intersection between art, media, and social justice. Her research has revolved around epistemological justice, the right to the city, and cultural representations of transgender sex work. She is a fourth-year PhD student in Media Study at SUNY Buffalo.

Jerome R Wright (he/him) is an activist, organizer and Co-Director of HALT Solitary Campaign, which brings together advocates, formerly incarcerated persons, family members of currently incarcerated people, and concerned community members throughout the state to #HALTsolitary confinement in New York’s prisons and jails. Wright is a returning citizen who spent 30 years in prison. He has worked with community based intervention programs including Back to Basics Outreach Ministries and Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO). He has also worked training, teaching and supervising people on parole and probation on work assignments as well as providing mentorship, tutoring, and behavior modification training to at-risk youth in Buffalo and Rochester.

This event was made possible, in part, by the generous support of the University at Buffalo Department of Art.

Part of Navigating Identity Exhibition and Workshop Series, which is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.