Mi'Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D. is a 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist who moves between realms of oral history, art, media & ritual to produce forward-facing cultural projects and events. As a Huntington Library Short-Term Fellow, Mi'Jan is researching Octavia E. Butler's archives. She is also a 2023 Fulbright Specialist Awardee, a 2023-2024 New America Us@250 inaugural Fellow, and an expert speaker for the U.S. Department of State. 

Previously, Mi'Jan curated and hosted Unfinished Network's 2022 salon on the theme of multiracial democracy with CNN's Van Jones and MSNBC's Maria Teresa Kumar, and led the Gloria Steinem Initiative's public policy digital storytelling pilot at Smith College.

One of Mi'Jan's greatest joys is connecting to audiences through her story-rich talks at a range of institutions, from Carnegie Hall to the Institute of American Indian Arts to SXSW. Making history contemporary, personal and futures-dependent, she surfaces the stories that need to be heard.

large_mijan women image.png

medium_mijan women image.png

small_mijan women image.png

thumbnail_mijan women image.png

mijan women image.png

A small tin box with a sliding lid, partially opened to reveal a piece of paper covered in handwriting.

Tin box handmade and carried by Joseph Trammell to hold freedom papers.jpeg

Free Black Women’s Private Pleasures and Rest

Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is a Puerto Rican curator and writer, and currently Assistant Curator at the MSU Broad Art Museum. Previously, she was the 2018–2020 Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and has also worked at the Video Data Bank and The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. She has collaborated with several film festivals, and was selected to be the Inaugural Curatorial Fellow for the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 2021. She is a member of Blue Sky/The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts Exhibitions Committee and is Michigan state representative for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries. She holds an MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, and a BA from the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez.

Interior view, Treasury Department exhibits in the United States Government Building.

Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.16.18 PM.png

Panorama of Possessions: Film, Photography, and the War of 1898

Wendyliz Martinez is 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She earned a PhD in English and African American Studies at Penn State University. She is a City College of New York and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow alumnus. She is writing about how Black girlhood is represented in film, social media, and literature. Particularly, she is interested in how Afro-Caribbean women writers depict Black girlhood compared to U.S. Black women writers. She also researches Black portrait photography from the 19th Century and beyond and its influence on Black visual culture. 

large_Girl at Gee_s Bend, Alabama.jpeg

medium_Girl at Gee_s Bend, Alabama.jpeg

small_Girl at Gee_s Bend, Alabama.jpeg

thumbnail_Girl at Gee_s Bend, Alabama.jpeg

Girl at Gee_s Bend, Alabama.jpeg

A young girl looks out of the window of a log cabin. The window is covered with newspapers.

Reconstructing Black Girlhood: Reading Photos Alongside Journal Entries

Shweta Sachdeva Jha is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is an Associate Professor of English at Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her research lies within interstices of histories, archives and literature anchored by a feminist core. She did her doctoral studies as a Felix Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research publications range from studies of contemporary children’s picture books in India, history of tawa’if (courtesans and Nautch Girls) in colonial India to digital archives on college women and twentieth century genre fiction in Urdu by Muslim women. Recently awards and small grants have helped her begin a new journey into digital history, archives and writing on the visual arts. 

Tile depicting Khusrau Happening upon Shirin Bathing.jpeg

large_Tile depicting Khusrau Happening upon Shirin Bathing.jpeg

medium_Tile depicting Khusrau Happening upon Shirin Bathing.jpeg

small_Tile depicting Khusrau Happening upon Shirin Bathing.jpeg

thumbnail_Tile depicting Khusrau Happening upon Shirin Bathing.jpeg

Bathing Women: Desire, Wonder, and Water in Versions of a Persian Tale

Chin-Jie Melodie Liu is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is a Taiwanese-American artist/curator and writer based in Kamberri/Canberra, Australia. Her research and interdisciplinary practice is informed by her heritage with a focus on contested histories and collective memory. She is interested in varying forms of creative collaboration and the use of text as visual material. 

Liu is Publication Manager at _Art Monthly Australasia_, Australasia’s flagship visual arts publication, and the Events & Collections Officer at the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University (ANU), where she manages the centre's gallery and collection.  

She holds a Master of Museum and Heritage Studies and a double degree with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Arts (French & International Relations) from the ANU. Liu studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris on exchange in 2019. 

Pepohoan Female Head; Pepohoan Female Head; Pepohoan Female Head; Pepohoan Female Head; Pepohoan Male Head; Pepohoan Male Head.jpeg

Illustrating Taiwan: Travelogues and Their Visual Narratives

keondra bills freemyn is a 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a DMV-based archivist, writer, Wikipedian, and former diplomat originally from South Central, Los Angeles. keondra serves as Archives Director at Black Lunch Table, a radical archiving project centering Black visual artists and operates the small press 67th Street Storytellers. A poet, essayist, and scholarly writer, she is author of the poetry collection _Things You Left Behind_ and is founder of Black Women Writers Project, a digital archival initiative highlighting the contributions of Black women and gender-expansive writers to the literary canon. Her research interests include digital archiving, memory work, and Black cultural production.

Screen Shot 2024-08-19 at 11.48.14 PM.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-08-19 at 11.48.14 PM.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-08-19 at 11.48.14 PM.png

A sepia tone carte-de-visite of a young woman, captured at the Ball & Thomas Photographic Art Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Standing in front of an elaborate outdoor backdrop, a dark-haired woman poses before the camera, slightly smiling, dressed in a floor length checkered dress with her hair styled in a chignon. She holds a feathered dark hat in her proper left hand, with her proper right hand resting on the high back of an ornate wooden chair. The front of the chair, which faces the camera, features a patterned fabric seat, scroll and floral carvings, and an oval painting of a man and child on the chair’s back.

Bearing Witness: James Presley Ball, Black Image Making, and the Promise of Freedom in the American West

Nic Caldwell (he/they) is a 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. Nic is a librarian, curator, and printmaker, invested in making museums and libraries more accessible to marginalized communities. His approach to cultural criticism is to challenge the boundaries of who has access to knowledge, who creates history, and whose stories get to be told. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, Nic is currently located in New York City where he was most recently a 2023 Research Fellow at The Center for Book Arts and curated the 2022 exhibition “Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work in Community” at The Morgan Library & Museum. Nic is a graduate of New York University, with a Masters in Library and Information Science and a Masters in English Literature, concentrating in Special Collections and African American literature.

thumbnail_nic.jpg

nic.jpg

Large color lithographic poster published by The Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, African and Latin America (OSPAAAL) with the message "Retaliation to Crime: Revolutionary Violence" written in English, French, Spanish and Arabic below an illustration of a red-eyed black panther with its teeth bared and the words "Black Power" inside its open jaw.

2012_46_17_1_001.jpg

Black Power in Print: Iconography of the Black Panther Party 

Reina Gattuso is a content writer on the Curationist team, and an independent journalist covering gender and sexuality, arts and culture, and food. Her journalism connects analysis of structural inequality to everyday stories of community, creativity, and care. Her work has appeared at _Atlas Obscura_, _The Washington Post_, _Teen Vogue_, _The Lily_, _POPSUGAR_, and more. Reina has an MA in Arts and Aesthetics (cinema, performance, and visual studies) from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, where her research focused on sexuality in Hindi film. She writes and teaches writing to high school students in New York City.

Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.11.16 PM.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.11.16 PM.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.11.16 PM.png

Carved white marble bust of Anna Quincy Waterston.

Screen Shot 2024-03-13 at 10.41.09 AM.png

Women Artists and the Museum

Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.12.58 PM.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.12.58 PM.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.12.58 PM.png

In this intimately scaled crucifix, the artist depicted Christ alive on the cross, an iconographic type known as Christus triumphans.

Screen Shot 2024-03-18 at 6.10.31 PM.png

Women Artists and the Divine

medium_thumbnail dhagshri.jpg

small_thumbnail dhagshri.jpg

thumbnail_thumbnail dhagshri.jpg

thumbnail dhagshri.jpg

Screen Shot 2024-03-25 at 1.30.38 PM.png

Women Artists and Powerful Patrons

Screen Shot 2024-05-07 at 3.53.23 PM.png

Women Artists: Sovereignty, Kinship, and Care

A white woman in a flowing gown sits at a vanity table picking at flowers to put in her hair. Her skin glows white. The detailed image is painted on an oval miniature and framed in a rich dark wood.

Screen Shot 2024-05-16 at 12.34.31 PM.png

Women Artists, the Enlightenment, and Extraction

Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.09.47 PM.png

small_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.09.47 PM.png

thumbnail_Screen Shot 2024-08-14 at 12.09.47 PM.png

The Death of Cleopatra.jpeg

Women Artists, Modernity, and Modernism

aliwen is a 2023 Curationist Fellow. aliwen is a non-binary artist, critic, curator, and writer from Chile, currently based in Tokyo. Their research themes include the artistic representations and cultural heritage of queer, gender-variant or transgender people in regions such as Latin America and East Asia. They obtained their BA in Art Theory and History from The University of Chile, and received their MA in Art Studies and Curatorial Practices from Tokyo University of the Arts. Their first book Barricade Criticism. Body, Writing, and Visuality was published by Brooklyn/Santiago-based publisher Sangria Legibilities in 2021. Their recent projects include the Visual AIDS 2022 Research Fellowship.

aliwen.jpg

Gender Variations in Edo Japan

Sharon Mizota is a DEI metadata consultant who helps archives, museums, libraries, and media organizations transform and share their metadata to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the historical record. She has over ten years of experience managing and creating metadata for arts and culture organizations. She is also an art critic, a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers’ Grant, and a coauthor of the award-winning book, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art.

Jessica is the digital archivist at Curationist.

Image of a FigJam board covered with digital sticky notes that was collaboratively created during the Metadata Learning and Unlearning Summit.

Screen Shot 2024-01-17 at 1.59.37 PM.png

Metadata Learning and Unlearning Summit 2023

Awuor Onyango is a 2023 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a writer and multisensorial artist based in the pagan citadel of Nairobi, Kenya. Their multidisciplinary and multisensorial approach is rooted in the ephemeral, interactive and lived art traditions of East Africa, inviting, engaging, honouring and centering the voice of the side-lined, erased, in danger of amputation, aiming to integrate our ruptured histories, mythologies and philosophies into present technologies. 

A blackened bronze oil lamp in the shape of a man's head, the open mouth is where the flame would come out. 

Screen Shot 2023-09-27 at 5.09.25 PM.png

In the Shape of an African

Nebojša Ratković is a 2023 Curationist Fellow. He holds an MA degree in International economics (Graduate school of international economy in Belgrade, Serbia) and MA in International humanitarian action (Deusto University in Bilbao, Spain and University College Dublin, Ireland). Nebojša has been working in the non-governmental sector since 2010, mostly on projects related to education and culture. He has been Education Program Manager at Wikimedia Serbia since September 2016 where he works on promoting new technologies in schools, universities and cultural institutions, with a focus on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. He conducted more than 350 workshops for different groups. He also works as a psychotherapist and counselor.

medium_orthodox_icons.jpg

small_orthodox_icons.jpg

thumbnail_orthodox_icons.jpg

orthodox_icons.jpg

A decorative enamel pendant with purple and blue designs set into silver and a portrait of a saint in the middle.

pendant.jpg

The Power of Icons: Shaping Orthodox Christian Identities

Inji Kim is a 2023 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a PhD student in Art History at the University of Washington, where she is also pursuing a certificate in Cinema and Media Studies. She studies modern and contemporary art, with a special interest in museology, knowledge circulation, and cultural performance. Inji holds a Master's degree in Art and Museum Studies from Georgetown University, and worked at various museums, galleries, and cultural platforms. She is passionate about teaching and has been co-leading a contemporary art history study abroad program in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Recently, her writing has been featured in Art & Education and the Nasher Graduate Symposium Compendium.

medium_ivory.jpg

small_ivory.jpg

thumbnail_ivory.jpg

ivory.jpg

Oval miniature depicting a woman leaning on a tombstone or urn with foliage above and blue skies in the background.

injikimfeatureheroimage.jpg

Miniature Portraits Unveiled: Ivory's Legacy and Artistic Agency

Brianna Beckford is a 2023 Curationist Fellow. Brie is a transdisciplinary artist working to curate stories and sites that only ghosts can make. Looking at old internet, archival efforts, and obsolete technology, Brie balances fun and discomfort through multiplatform installations to communicate this study. These real and imagined artefacts contribute to the ethnographic map linking diaspora babies, meme culture, and museums.

Standing outside a barn, an African American laborer in work overalls listens to a young white man inside playing the fiddle in the presence of two white men. The laborer is smiling in pleasure at the music.

cmoa-1991.110.jpg

Sonic Struggles: Plunderphonics and A Case for Immaterial Repatriation

Tracy Molis is an artist and adjunct professor in Visual Arts and Archaeology based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work, which includes paintings and archaeological illustrations, has been exhibited in galleries such as Nagel Draxler Kabinett, Berlin, Kai Matsumiya, New York, Clima, Milan, and Night Gallery, Los Angeles. She co-teaches the interdisciplinary course "Science and Art in Archaeological Illustration" with Archaeologist Zoë Crossland at Columbia University. Molis has worked with students at the New York City Archaeological Repository to create illustrations for artifacts in their collection and question the ways we represent the past. 

medium_anatomy.jpg

small_anatomy.jpg

thumbnail_anatomy.jpg

anatomy.jpg

tracy hero image.jpg

Stories and Style in Early Modern Anatomical Illustration

Abbad is a 2023 Curationist Critic of Color. He is a free knowledge enthusiast who contributed to the Wikimedia movement for about fifteen years. As a volunteer, he contributed to thousands of articles on the Arabic language version of Wikipedia, co-founded and chaired Wikimedia Levant, and led Arabic language translation efforts on Khan Academy. He currently works as a Knowledge Manager with the Wikimedia Foundation, helping implement the Wikimedia 2030 strategy. He authored two e-books in Arabic: "Story of Wikipedia" (2017), and "Art of Translation" (2021). In his free time, he writes on his blog and works on the manuscripts of novels, yet to be published! 

Oil painting depicting a crowded market outside the walls of the city.

SAAM-1989.56_1.jpg

How Bazaars Shaped Trade in Islamic Cities Before 1900

Sam Bennett is a 2023 Curationist Fellow. She is a repair artist, ethnographer, and designer with expertise in the fields of space, materials, and objects. She believes in slow research that minimally impacts our planet and advocates for human well-being. Her personal research is focused on consumerism, accumulation, and repair of objects in the domestic space and in the waste stream.  She is the founder of The Things We Keep, a collection of stories about people’s most special things. She also runs Clever/Slice, a space for creatives to share in-progress work, while dismantling the classic critique.  Most recently she co-created Repair Shop with Rachel Smith, which explores the line between object-based mending practices and other modes of “making do.” Currently, Sam is a sustainability strategist at Hyloh, collaborating on projects focused on New York City’s reuse systems. In 2022, she was a Maintainers Movement fellow and completed residencies at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca and LMCC on Governors Island. In her free time, she darns and writes letters on one of her five typewriters.

An etching of dense, hand-drawn lines printed in black ink depicting a row of tenements from the vantage point of the sidewalk in front of the buildings. 

condemnedtenement sam.jpg

Dust Deferred: The Invisible Care and Humility in Maintaining Our Spaces

medium_atomicBomb.jpg

small_atomicBomb.jpg

thumbnail_atomicBomb.jpg

atomicBomb.jpg

A landscape-oriented, black and white photograph of a nuclear bomb being detonated in the South Pacific, off the coast of the Marshall Islands.

U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps..jpg

Art of the Atomic Bomb

medium_martialGodesses.jpg

small_martialGodesses.jpg

thumbnail_martialGodesses.jpg

martialGodesses.jpg

A painting of a woman in decorative armor of metal and fine fabric.

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), iBellonai.jpg

Martial Goddesses and Warrior Queens

Noa Rui-Piin Weiss is a dancer, writer, and arts administrator based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Culturebot and The Brooklyn Rail. Noa's most recent performance collaborations include works by Hope Mohr/Maxe Crandall, Emily Coates, Mia Martelli, and Adrienne Truscott. He has presented choreography in collaboration with his BFFL Miranda Brown at Pageant, Fertile Ground, WAXworks, Current Showcase (Take.5), The Tank, SERIOUS PERFORMANCE!!!!, and the Movement Lab at Barnard College. Noa is currently the Programming Manager at The Joyce Theater. His writing for Curationist focuses on the histories of dance, sexuality, and sex difference in artwork. Recently, Noa has discovered a passion for mash-ups, and would recommend "Nine Inch Nails - Closer But It's Funkytown By Lipps Inc." by William Maranci.

medium_bathHouses.jpg

small_bathHouses.jpg

thumbnail_bathHouses.jpg

bathHouses.jpg

A black and white photograph of an unidentified building facade in Manhattan. The entablature reads: PUBLIC BATH. Underneath this in a square portal it reads: ERECTED FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 1903.

islandora_64290_JP2_bc9e7b6481e249c1914b45e89379bfa6a7383e42de076e65671fc24b9d09de02.jpg

Histories of the Public Bathhouse

Colony Little (she/her/hers) is a Raleigh-based freelance writer and the creator of Culture Shock Art, a site dedicated to the synergies among art, music, and design. As a Black woman with familial ties to the South, Little presently writes with a particular focus on amplifying the artistic voices of Black creators who are influenced by and create work in the American South.  Freelance writing credits include Artnet News, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, ARTS.BLACK, CARLA, Hyperallergic, W Magazine, and Walter Magazine in North Carolina. Little was a 2020 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.

medium_beauty-remains.jpg

small_beauty-remains.jpg

thumbnail_beauty-remains.jpg

beauty-remains.jpg

A photographic portrait by James A. Palmer of a young Black woman wearing a floral dress. She is seated next to a table. Her arms rest on the chair's back and her hands are clasped in a prayer pose.

Verso center.jpg

The Beauty Remains: Decoding “The Wilde Woman of Aiken”

medium_mask.jpeg

small_mask.jpeg

thumbnail_mask.jpeg

mask.jpeg

A photograph against a gray background of a wood mask, in the shape of the skull with ears and eyeballs, representing the Mexica deity of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli. The skull is mottled with traces of white and black paint, with faint red splotches on the cheeks. He has a slit for a mouth, surrounded by the faint indentation of teeth. 

mask.jpg

Aztec Death Practices

medium_chocolate.jpg

small_chocolate.jpg

thumbnail_chocolate.jpg

chocolate.jpg

A round vessel in the shape of a male turkey.

Veracruz.jpg

How Chocolate Reached the Eastern Hemisphere

medium_Iron Women.jpg

small_Iron Women.jpg

thumbnail_Iron Women.jpg

Iron Women.jpg

heroinerani.jpg

Iron Women: Ancient to Early Modern Women in Armor 

Isoken Osagie is a contributor from the Curationist Content Team. She has worked on various curatorial projects including exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and Zoma Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a graduate of The New School in New York City. Her interests include African literature, cultural heritage and the intersections of art and technology.

large_Honoring the Dead1.jpg

medium_Honoring the Dead1.jpg

small_Honoring the Dead1.jpg

thumbnail_Honoring the Dead1.jpg

Honoring the Dead1.jpg

A 12th century fragment of Shaikh al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn al-Hasan's tombstone, inscribed in Arabic Kufic calligraphy. The center is carved to resemble a mihrab with arabesque designs surrounding it.

Ubaydallah Murra and Umar.jpg

Honoring the Dead: Funerary Ornamentation and Ritual in Islam  

Yasi Alipour is an Iranian artist/writer based in Brooklyn. Her tactile works on paper uses folding to explore mathematics as a language, with all the historical, social, political, mortal, and embodied ramifications any language holds. Alipour currently lives in Brooklyn and wonders about paper, counting, and silence, probing personal history to parse issues around political interruption and unstable histories. Her recent solo exhibition include 12 Gates Gallery (Philadelphia) and Bavan Gallery (Tehran). She is a recipient of Sharpe Walentas Studio Program Award (2019/2021), Rema Hort Foundation Emerging Artist Nominee (2018/2019), and the Triple Canopy Publication Intensive (2018). Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, spaces including the Geary Contemporary (2021), Secca (2020), Venice Biennale (2019, IT), Hercules Program (2019, NY), 17 Essex (2019, NY), Limiditi-Temporary Art Project (2018, MR), Practice (2018, NY), Museum of Contemporary Art Vijdovina (2018, SR), Art in Odd Places (2017, NY), and PPOW (2017, NY). Her writing has appeared at the Brooklyn Rail, Spot Magazine, Asia Contemporary Art Week, Photograph Magazine, Volume One/Triple Canopy, and the Dear Dave. Her recent featured interviews include Julie Mehretu, Dorothea Rockburne, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Okwui Okpokwasili, Sanford Biggers, Yto Barrada, Hans Haacke, Mark Dion, Aliza Nisenbaum, Jane Benson, and Kevin Beasley. Alipour holds an MFA from Columbia University and is on the faculty at Columbia University and SVA.

medium_monuments.jpg

small_monuments.jpg

thumbnail_monuments.jpg

monuments.jpg

A stonepaste bowl glazed in opaque white and luster painted, attributed to Iran. 

main-image-768x547.jpeg

On Refusing to Be a Monument

medium_womens-reflections2.jpg

small_womens-reflections2.jpg

thumbnail_womens-reflections2.jpg

womens-reflections2.jpg

Painted in loose and rapid brushstrokes, a woman wearing a white dress sits in front of her mirror. She adjusts her hair which is in an updo. Flowers and a glass jar sit on a small table beside her.

1924.127 - Woman at Her Toilette.jpg

Women’s Reflections in Renaissance and Modern European Painting 

large_Hair and Makeup1.jpg

medium_Hair and Makeup1.jpg

small_Hair and Makeup1.jpg

thumbnail_Hair and Makeup1.jpg

Hair and Makeup1.jpg

A New Kingdom funerary mask of a woman. She wears a braided wig, painted headband, and beaded necklaces and pendants.

Editorial Features

Search editorial features