Tool Share Roundtable: Art and Activism gathered politically engaged members of our creative community to address activism, art practices and self-care in this time of deep uncertainty and resistance. Panelists will discuss and assess the current political landscape on global, national and regional levels and share “tools” regarding art production, political action and sustaining our communities and ourselves. Panelists include Tali Hinkis, Wazhmah Osman, Lizzie Scott and Douglas Everett Turner.

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TALI HINKIS is half of LoVid, an Interdisciplinary art duo with her partner Kyle Lapidus. Working collaboratively since 2001, LoVid works include a wide range of materials and processes from handmade electronics and video installations to textile work and participatory projects. LoVid’s works have been presented internationally, among many: Klaus von Nichtssagend (NY), Daejeon Museum (Korea), Smack Mellon (NY), Real Art Ways (CT), The New Museum (NY), Issue Project Room (NY), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Canada), Lampo (Chicago), International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), MoMA (NY), and The Kitchen (NY). LoVid’s projects have received support from organizations including: The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Eyebeam, Harvestworks, Wave Farm, Rhizome, Franklin Furnace, NYFA, LMCC, Experimental TV Center, NYSCA, and Greenwall Foundation. Tali Hinkis was born in Israel in 1974. After living in France for 7 years she moved to the US and became a US citizen in 2013. In 2015, Tali moved with her family from NYC to Suffolk county LI. After the 2016 election she quickly learned that she was living in the heart of a purple district. a district in which many republicans won, but that also has a history of Democratic leadership and as someone told her is a “hotbed of socialists”… She has since gotten involved in local politics as a supporter for the exciting new group of candidates running for election in Brookhaven Town and Suffolk County in 2017.

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WAZHMAH OSMAN is an assistant professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production and a faculty member in both the Master of Science in Globalization and Development Communication program and the PhD program in Media and Communication. Osman earned her PhD in 2012 from New York University, where she studied Media, Culture and Communication. She is also a graduate of the Culture and Media program in Anthropology. She is currently writing a book that analyzes the impact of international funding and cross-border media flows on the national politics of Afghanistan, the region and beyond. Osman is also researching how new technologies of war, violence and representation, predicated on old colonial tropes, are being repackaged and deployed during “the war on terror.” Her critically acclaimed documentary, Postcards from Tora Bora, has been shown in festivals around the world. Her research and teaching are rooted in feminist media ethnographies that focus on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce.

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LIZZIE SCOTT has been working with the intersections of textiles, painting and sculpture for nearly 20 years. She received her MFA from CalArts and attended the Whitney Independent Study program. She has had solo exhibitions at John Tevis Gallery (Paris), Galerie Gris (Hudson), The Jersey City Museum, and LMAKprojects (NY). Her performances, sculptures and paintings have appeared in group shows throughout the US and in Europe. Her work is in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and The RISD Museum. From 2010-2015, she ran Total Styrene, a roving performance laboratory focused on experimental collaborations. In January 2017, Lizzie started Public School Watchdogs, a rapid response political action group dedicated to protecting public schools from privatization and defending students, teachers and schools against threats to their equal protection. Click here for The Guardian's coverage of their work. 

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DOUGLAS TURNER is the founder and director of The Architecture of Tomorrow, (AOT), a nonprofit art and cultural organization, including an online journal and project gallery, dedicated to providing opportunities for underrepresented artists and artists at their various stages of emergence with exhibition space and resources. AOT creates arts-based education programming for children in underserved communities in Central Brooklyn, NY and fills a gap in arts programming and curatorial initiatives creating diversity through action that consciously works for all people and with/for people of color and communities of color, engaging in contemporary art dialogues beyond community-based initiatives that fail to challenge the status-quo. AOT is entrenched in creating positive solutions to longstanding issues of inequality, standing strong for vulnerable communities.