Born in Nanjing, China, and raised in Portland, Oregon, Lianna Hamby holds a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art and a master’s degree in Museum Studies. Lianna is a public art administrator in Boise, Idaho and through her work she is able to support local, regional, and national artists, prioritize and uplift community input, and develop opportunities that result in artwork and experiences that can be enjoyed by all members of the public. Lianna is drawn to the fact that public art is not static – every interaction with public art adds to the growing and evolving story of the artwork, as well as the overarching story of Boise. By facilitating collaboration between artists and community members, she supports public art that reflects and shapes what Boise is, what Boise has been, and what Boise can be. In doing her part to help shape the cultural landscape, Lianna strives to uplift and amplify unheard voices. She hopes that in asking Boiseans to confront narratives that are unfamiliar and unlike their own, she encourages empathy, deeper connections, and ultimately a more equitable community.
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Lights Camera Discover |
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Lily Hope, LLC |
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Founder/Executive Director, AfroMundo I am a daughter of a man who at 19 ruptured ancestral links and converted to Christianity in 1937, the very year Dominicans who shared his polytheistic faith or were Black as he were massacred alongside an estimated 15,000 to 35,000 others profiled as Haitian. I am the daughter of an Afro-Indigenous Dominican woman who only on the sly admitted she inherited an ability to commune with spirits. From both parents I learned of the complexities of identity, of the plight of those who stray from the normative and prescribed, of the need for narratives that honor lived experiences and counter whitewashed histories. My art and cultural activism center the voices and histories of Afro-Latinx erased although 2/3 of an estimated twelve million who survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade were shipped to Spanish speaking America where slavery persisted for about 350 years. My novel Geographies of Home explores racial identities. My upcoming nonfiction book Beyond the Pale won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Beyond that I am a native of Quisqueya divvied by colonialism into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I am an immigrant and an American whose Latinidad and Americaniidad are called into question due to race. I am a sister, aunt, friend, scholar, cultural activist who believes in community. I also believe art is a form of restorative justice able to nurture the soul, spark informed dialogues, address inequities, and foster collective healing. |
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Discipline: Folklife/Traditional Arts Loida Maritza Pérez is the Founder and Executive Director of AfroMundo. A native of the Dominican Republic, she is an independent scholar, cultural activist and author of Geographies of Home, a novel published in the United States and abroad. Her upcoming book, Beyond the Pale, won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Latina, MaComere, Meridians, Edinburgh Review, Bomb, Callaloo and Best of Callaloo. A 2022-2023 National Leaders of Color Fellow, she has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts in collaboration with University of New Mexico and Rutgers University, IC3-Institute for Communities, Creativity and Consciousness, Djerassi’s Henry Louis Gates Fellowship, Ragdale Foundation for the Arts U.S.–Africa Writer’s Project, MacDowell Arts Colony, Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, Millay Arts Colony, Ucross Foundation and Villa Montalvo. |
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Los Descendientes Del Presidio De Tucson |
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Louise Cutler Studio |
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Artist (Amanalli Lu) was born in Mexico City. Vargas migrated to Los Angeles, California at the age of 11. She then moved to Santa Rosa where she works as a Professional Tattoo Artist. Inspired by Mexican and Native American Culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, and race in American society. Art has transformed her life and has helped her heal her trauma. She hopes to use the same process to help young people. Vargas strongly believes art is one of the best activities for anyone to heal the body, mind and spirit. |
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Chief Entertainment Officer, CASA ALTA LLC |
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