Summer Art Fest: Meet our five panelists and moderator

Take advantage of a 40% discount on tickets to our Immigrant Women Summer Art Fest, just for you blog readers! Use the promo code BLOGspecial when checking out on our Eventbrite page. 

 

What does it mean to be an immigrant, woman, and artist in this political landscape? 

In honor and celebration of Immigrant Heritage Month, join our Summer Art Fest on June 7 to hear the authentic voices and unique perspectives of five immigrant women:

 

Dru Blumensheid

Dru Blumensheid is an Australian-American photographer, filmmaker, and performance artist. She creates within mediums of fashion and textile design, new media art, dance, and photography.

Dru graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007 and then pursued her art in Melbourne, Australia, Mexico City, and then on to New York City. She also works within an international creative platform called the BUMESI Collective, working with everyday people, models, artists and dancers within her films, photography and sculptures.

Her works have been exhibited at Art Basel, SHOWStudio in London, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice, and The Armory Show, Afro Punk Fest, The Harlem Film Festival, The World Trade Center, and the Queens Museum in NYC.

Dru Blumensheid photographed, collected interviews, and curated the 2017-2018 exhibit Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York with New Women New Yorkers.

Learn more about Dru Blumensheid here.

 

Kweighbaye Kotee

Kweighbaye Kotee is the founder of the Bushwick Film Festival (BFF). Hailed as one of Brooklyn’s most celebrated events, BFF is recognized for its contribution to the borough’s artistic and economic growth. Dedicated to her community and the arts, Kweighbaye serves on The Bushwick Community Board and is co-chair of its Arts & Culture committee. In 2016 she founded the Media Culture and Communications Group, a minority & women-owned enterprise helping real estate developers positively engage with communities to create empowering opportunities for local residents. To date, her company has helped facilitate the distribution of over $400,000 in grants to local organizations and artists.

Born in Liberia, Kweighbaye immigrated to the US with her family at the brink of the Liberian Civil war. She attended public school in Newark, NJ where she was awarded a scholarship from the Wight Foundation to attend Blair Academy, a private boarding high school. She moved on to receive her Bachelor’s degree in Media, Culture and Communications from New York University.

‪ Kweighbaye has been featured on NBC, Fox News, Huffington Post, POPSUGAR, Delta Air Lines, Brooklyn Magazine, Indiewire, and Tribeca Film.

Learn more about Kweighbaye Kotee here.

 

Montserrat Vargas

Originally from Chile, Montserrat Vargas holds two university degrees, one in Acting and one in Arts Education. She is also a certificated Spanish teacher from Instituto Cervantes. Since immigrating to New York six years ago, she has worked with various theatre groups throughout the city and has facilitated workshops and productions in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Over the past four years, she has focused her professional development on special education, particularly teaching and tutoring students with ADHD, mental illness, Asperger’s, and autism. In her personal artwork, Montserrat explores the contemporary intersectional perspective of female and immigrant subjects, with such themes as belonging, objectification, and mental illness all explored using performance, photography, poetry, and embroidery, to share her experience as a woman and immigrant dealing with trauma.

Montserrat is one of the 16 immigrant women photographed and interviewed for our 2017-2018 exhibit Real People. Real Lives.

Learn more about Montserrat Vargas here.

 

Thahitun Mariam

Thahitun Mariam is a poet, activist, researcher, feminist and community organizer. Brought up in a rural village in Bangladesh for the first six years of her life, then settling in a working-class diaspora community in the Bronx has been pivotal to understanding the inspiration behind her creative work. From her immigrant background, she delves into topics of displacement, identity formation, migration and social justice. She is a 2018 recipient of the Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, participant of the 2017 Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program: Literary and Performing Arts with New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a founding member of the South Asian Diaspora Artists Collective (SADAC), and a former Advisory Board Member for BxArts Factory. Her work has been featured on SubDrift NYC, Roar: Literature and Revolution by Feminist People and Monsoonletters. Recently, her poem “Balady: Love of One’s Country” was featured on Global Citizen’s Women Poets series for April 2017 National Poetry Month.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from St. Lawrence University, and currently works as a Community Organizer with NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs.

Follow Thahitun Mariam on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Ximena Velez

Ximena Vélez is a Colombian journalist specialized in human rights. She worked for several years in her hometown in Colombia at a nonprofit organization, collecting the stories of children and women victims of war for the development of a theater play, which was performed in various communities.

In 2015 she immigrated to NYC to learn English and to challenge herself. Since her arrival, she has been working as a freelance journalist for the online Latin American media platforms LoPolitico and Hecho en Cali, producing multimedia and writing articles about immigration and asylum. She also volunteered in the Movement for Peace in Colombia and currently serves as a member of Por Colombia, an organization promoting Colombian culture, philanthropy, and networking opportunities for Colombians living in NY. She also works in the communications department of a medical office, to facilitate service provision to the Latino community.

Ximena is one of the 16 immigrant women photographed and interviewed for our 2017-2018 exhibit Real People. Real Lives.

 

Azadi Siemens (moderator)

Azadi Siemens was born in Turkey before immigrating to Germany, the United Kingdom, and most recently the United States.  Her personal experience with immigration and being raised by a single mother has inspired Azadi to support other immigrant women. She sits on the Board of New Women New Yorkers.

Azadi is currently based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is the Director of Marketing for Trusst Lingerie, an all-female start-up disrupting the lingerie industry.

 

Take advantage of a 40% discount on tickets to our Immigrant Women Summer Art Fest, just for you blog readers! Use the promo code BLOGspecial when checking out on our Eventbrite page.