Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

Cecelia Vicuña

Poet, Artist, Activist, Filmmaker

Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, activist and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military coup against the president Salvador Allende. In London, she was a co-founder of Artists for Democracy in l974.

She coined the term “Arte Precario” in the mid-1960s in Chile, as a new independent and non-colonized category for her precarious works composed of debris,...

Victor Vich

Writer, Academic

Widely esteemed as one of the most insightful and original writers and academics in Peru today, Victor Vich is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). His interdisciplinary approach to understanding Peru's complex literary, cultural, and political histories and current landscape has resulted in a number of groundbreaking studies, and he was instrumental in establishing at PUCP an interdisciplinary master's degree program in cultural studies.

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V. Vale

Cultural Historian, Writer, Keyboard Player

V. Vale is a San Francisco cultural historian, writer, keyboard player and, as Vale Hamanaka, was a member of the initial configuration of Blue Cheer. In 1977 V. Vale founded as sole proprietor Search & Destroy, San Francisco’s first Punk Rock publication. In 1980, V. Vale launched as sole proprietor RE/SEARCH. V. Vale is most likely the longest lasting (and still active) Punk publisher. Although Vale released books that include Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, and many other Punk notables, RE/SEARCH is actually best known for its impact on the total world of...

Martha Rosler

Conceptual Artist

Martha Rosler works in video, photography, text, installation, and performance. Her work focuses on the public sphere, exploring issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women.

Rosler has for many years produced works on war and the national security climate, connecting life at home with the conduct of war abroad, in which her photomontage series played a critical part. She has also published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on public space, ranging from...

Emiliano Valdés

Curator, Editor, Cultural Producer

Emiliano Valdés (Guatemala, 1980) is Chief Curator at the Medellin Museum of Modern Art. Until recently, he was Associate Curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) and Co-Director of Proyectos Ultravioleta (Guatemala), a multifaceted platform for experimentation in contemporary art based in Guatemala City. Prior to that, he was the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Curatorial Fellow at dOCUMENTA(13) and Curator/Head of Visual Arts at the Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala. Valdés has also worked for institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, (Madrid...

Luis Valdez

Playwright, Director

Luis Valdez is regarded as one of the most important and influential American playwrights living today.His internationally renowned, and Obie award-winning theater company, El Teatro Campesino (The Farm Workers’ Theater) was founded by Luis in 1965 – in the heat of the United Farm Workers (UFW) struggle and the Great Delano Grape Strike in California’s Central Valley.His involvement with Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the early Chicano Movement left an indelible mark that remains embodied in all his work even after he left the UFW in 1967: his early actosLas Dos Caras del...

Pedro J. Rolón

Ph.D. Candidate in the Comparative Literature Department at UC Berkeley

Pedro J. Rolón (B.A. in Literature, Yale University, 2014) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature department and the program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. He is interested in post-colonial theory, the history of the senses, poetics, and the relationship between aesthetic experiences and the epistemological fields opened up by poetic, visual and auditory experiments. Recently, he has been reading poetry and other aesthetic objects of the 19th through 21st centuries in Latin America and the Caribbean to think about the ways in which particular...

Favianna Rodriguez

Interdisciplinary Artist, Cultural Strategist, and Social Justice Activist

Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and entrepreneur based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual freedom. Her work centers joy and healing, while challenging entrenched myths and dominant cultural practices. Favianna's creative partnerships include companies like Ben & Jerry's, Spotify, Old Navy, and Playboy Magazine. She has completed a number of large scale public art commissions with the City of San Francisco and the Presidio...

Dario Robleto

Transdisciplinary Artist, Researcher, Writer, and Teacher
Dario Robleto was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1972 and received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997. He lives and works in Houston, TX. The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions since 1997, most recently at Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX (2024); the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2024); the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2019); Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2014); the Baltimore Museum of Art (2014); the New Orleans Museum of Art (2012); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2011). His work...

Tony Robles

Poet, Historian, and Social Justice Activist

Tony Robles, “The People’s Poet” was born in San Francisco and is the nephew of Filipino-American poet, historian and social justice activist Al Robles. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017 and the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission individual literary artist grant in 2018. His two books of poetry and short stories, Cool Don’t Live Here No More - A letter to San Francisco and Fingerprints of a Hunger Strike (both published by Ithuriel’s Spear Press) take on the issues of eviction...