Confirmed artists and filmmakers in attendance are listed below.

Amy Sillman was born in Detroit, MI in 1955 and is currently based in New York City, NY. The artist received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1979, and later her MFA from Bard College in 1995. In her decades-long career, Sillman has developed a practice that defies neat categorization as she builds tensions between binaries, mediums, histories, and styles. Encompassing painting, drawing, printmaking, animation, zine-making, and writing, the artist both borrows from and complicates art historical periods and schools. Known for her process-based paintings that move ambivalently between figuration and abstraction, the artist approaches the medium as an endeavor that is simultaneously intuitive and formal, bodily and thought-based, material and conceptual.

Andrea Yu-Chieh Chung, Art21 Associate Producer, is a Taiwanese documentary filmmaker based in the New York metropolitan area. Raised by a family full of wanderers and having lived and produced films across four continents, she is passionate about telling stories of people who are in between both physical and metaphorical places. Andrea holds an MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University and her short films have screened internationally at festivals including Riga International Film Festival, Sharjah Film Platform, and Cinequest Film Festival.

Drake Carr was born in 1993 in Flint, MI, and currently lives and works in New York City, NY. The artist received a BA in Graphic Design from Eastern Michigan University in 2015. Attuned to the diverse contexts in which he creates, Carr employs drawing, painting, and collage, approaching his practice with a versatility that encompasses commissioned portraits drawn in the intimate settings of subjects’ homes, paintings that oscillate between fine art and decoration in the gritty and communal atmosphere of a Bushwick dive bar, and immersive live drawing residencies spanning multiple weeks. Inspired by the fashion illustrators of the 1970s and ’80s like Antonio Lopez, he works with his subjects to style and pose them in dynamic ways. In all of his work, Carr paints a portrait of the communities he moves through that is simultaneously humorous and earnest, exaggerated and true-to-life.

Drew de Pinto is a director and editor based in Queens. They are interested in participatory filmmaking, experimental nonfiction, and independent trans cinema. Their recent short film Compton’s ’22 was nominated for an International Documentary Association award and selected for The New Yorker Documentary series. Drew is a recipient of Netflix and NewFest’s New Voices Filmmaker Grant and holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Stanford University.

Haimy Assefa is an award winning, Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and journalist. As a director and cinematographer, her filmmaking approach centers on the human experience, aiming to tell stories that are evocative, cinematic, poetic and unique. Her work has premiered at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival and has aired on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BET and beyond. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Haimy has been integral to digital storytelling startups at NBC News and CNN. Haimy co-directed a forthcoming Starz documentary series, Down In The Valley.

As a producer and director, Ian Forster creates documentary content for Art21’s various digital and broadcast programs. Since joining the organization in 2009, he has worked on six seasons of Art21’s PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century. Most recently, he directed its “Everyday Icons” episode, which premiered nationally on PBS in April 2023. Previously he directed the ”London” and “Johannesburg” episodes. He also oversees Art21’s ongoing digital series Extended Play, which has garnered two prestigious Vimeo Staff Pick honors and has twice been recognized by the Webby Awards. His films for Art21 have featured some of the world’s most notable contemporary artists, including Amy Sherald, Anish Kapoor, Kara Walker, Sarah Sze, Julie Mehretu, Barabara Kruger, and many more. His documentaries have screened at film festivals around the world, including DOC NYC in New York; Artecinema in Naples, Italy; DC Shorts in Washington; and Dart Barcelona in Spain. He graduated from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University with a B.S. in Television, Radio, and Film.

Ilana Harris-Babou was born in 1991 in Brooklyn, NY where she currently lives and works. The artist received a BA in Art from Yale University in 2013 and later received her MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2016. In her work, Harris-Babou investigates the forms and functions of what she calls “aspirational media,” which range from beauty tutorials and cooking shows to home improvement television and advertisements. While drawing from the overwhelmingly positive and impossibly pristine aesthetics of her sources, the artist creates videos, sculptures, and installations that trouble these formats through the usage of absurd narratives and grotesque materials. Capitalizing on concepts like good taste, authenticity, and personal optimization, Harris-Babou contemplates and complicates the products, routines, and lifestyles that present the promise of becoming healthier and wealthier.

Jurrell Lewis is an artist and curator, who joined Art21 in November 2020 and is currently the Assistant Curator. Prior to joining Art21, Jurrell completed his Master of Fine Arts from Northwestern University’s Art, Theory, Practice Department and worked as an artist, administrator, and writer in Chicago, IL. Jurrell has taught courses on contemporary art, curated artist-centered programming, exhibited work in the United States and Europe, and most recently co-directed and performed in a production of The Measures Taken, written by Bertolt Brecht.

Naudline Pierre was born in 1989 in Leominster, MA, and currently lives and works in New York City, NY. The artist received her BFA from Andrews University and later her MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Through painting and sculpture, Pierre crafts an alternate reality filled with burning landscapes and otherworldly creatures. Drawing inspiration from personal history, religious iconography, and medieval and Renaissance works of art, the artist reframes tradition through a more secular and personal lens, centering themes of community, transcendence, and transformation.

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo) was born in 1989 in Dallas, TX, and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist received her BA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010 and later her MFA from Yale University in 2014. Kuriki-Olivo’s work is rooted in a conceptual practice that takes many forms, including performances, installations, sculptures, drawings, paintings, and community organizing. The artist’s work questions standard notions of what is and isn’t art, blurs lines between the personal and public, and explores the performance of identity, particularly as it’s mediated through the media and commodities we consume and surround ourselves with.