Visual Arts

reelaviolette botts-ward

Poetry and the Senses Fellow and Postdoctoral Scholar in American Studies at UC Davis
reelaviolette was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2021 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

reelaviolette botts-ward is a homegirl, an educator, and a nontraditional multimedia artist from Philadelphia, PA. She is currently a doctoral candidate in African Diaspora Studies researching Black women’s healing spaces in Oakland. ree centers “everyday round the way Blackgirl methodology” to theorize creative innovation in the wake of displacement. Founder of blackwomxnhealing, ree curates healing circles and exhibitions for and by...

Natasha Boas

Contemporary Art Curator, Writer, Critic
Natasha Boas was a Visiting Lecturer who lectured at the Thinking Through the Arts and Design at Berkeley Spring 2017 Lecture Series and Art of Cultural Criticism Fall 2016 Lecture Series.

Natasha Boas is a French-American contemporary art curator, writer, and critic. She has taught art history and curatorial studies at Yale, Stanford, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her exhibition on the Modernist Algerian artist, Baya MahieddineBaya: Woman of Algiers in 2018 at the...

Lisa Blackmore

Researcher, Curator, and Educator
Lisa Blackmore gave a Visiting Lecturer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 14, 2024.

Lisa Blackmore is a researcher, curator and educator, working with art and water cultures in Latin America. Since 2018, she has been directing entre—ríos, a platform whose collaborative methodologies (re)connect diverse communities to bodies of water through curatorial, editorial and pedagogical projects. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley and Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies...

Peter Bittner

ARC Fellow, Multimedia Journalist, and Lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Journalism
Peter Bittner was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2017 – he was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Peter Bittner is the founder of The Upgrade and is passionate about making a difference through emerging media & technology.

His photography and videography have been published on the front page of The New York Times and in CNN, Bloomberg, NBC, Reuters, Vox, Business Insider, Hearst Digital, Al Jazeera, Popular Mechanics, VICE News, and other major outlets. Peter is a Fulbright Scholar and has covered science, sports, travel, politics, and culture — and has a special...

Evan Bissell

ARC Fellow, Artist, Researcher, Facilitator, and Administrator
Evan Bissell was an ARC Fellow in 2015 – he was chosen in the graduate and faculty category.

Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the...

JD Beltran

Artist/Filmmaker, Inventor, Journalist, Writer, Designer, Educator, Creativity Cheerleader, and Founder/Director of Center for Creative Sustainability
JD Beltran was a Visiting Curator Panel Participant at the "ART/CITY" Symposium at the Arts Research Center on March 16, 2012. JD Beltran is an award-winning creative, journalist, and policymaker with extensive experience in design & technology, sustainability, culture, and art. She is the Founder & Director of the Center for Creative Sustainability consultancy in San Francisco and is a professor in Design at San Francisco State University. Beltran's work has won myriad awards, having been exhibited worldwide including at the Walker Art Center, the...

Sigrun Åsebø

Professor of Art History at University of Bergen
Sigrun Åsebø was a Visiting Lecturer Panel Participant at the Nordic Time Zones Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 26, 2014.

Sigrun Åsebø works as an Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen. Her research interests are feminist historiography and theory, and questions of gender, sexualities, women artists from modernity until today, and gender, diversity in art museums and curating. She is the co-founder of the “Network for Gender and Diversity in Nordic and Baltic Art...

Menat Allah El Attma

ARC Fellow, Educator, Writer, and Visual Artist
Menat was an ARC Fellow in 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – she was chosen in the Undergraduate Fellow category.

Menat Allah El Attma is an Egyptian Muslim woman, educator, writer, and visual artist. Menat graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English literature and is pursuing her teaching credential. She is a logophile and linguaphile, working to affect a similar love for words/languages in her students through the practice and art of storytelling. She believes art is in the telling of the story as much as the story itself.

Bahaar Ahsan

Writer, Artist, and Translator
Bahaar Ahsan gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Bahaar Ahsan is a writer, artist, and translator based in the Bay Area, with familial origins in the port city of Abadan in the south of Iran. Like any other tgirl, Bahaar’s work is both speculative and deeply embedded in lineage(s) and aims to interrogate ontologies which separate the ideological from the somatic, the aural from the visual, rage from softness, homeland from host-land, past from present from future. Bahaar serves as a...

Katherine Agyemaa Agard

Writer and Interdisciplinary Artist
Katherine Agyemaa Agard gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in Fall of 2021, part of the Flash Reading Series.

Katherine Agyemaa Agard is the eldest daughter of a zoologist and a botanist. At 18, she won, and declined, an Open National Scholarship in the Natural Sciences from the government of Trinidad & Tobago. Her interdisciplinary work is rooted in painting, performance, and writing. She holds an AB in Visual and Environmental Studies and Social Anthropology from Harvard College and an MFA in Writing from UC-San...