Fostering a Healthy Art World Ecosystem
December 3 at 7:00pm EST via Zoom
View the discussion on the Internet Archive

Alicia Grullón is from and based in New York City. Grullón's works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions including The 8th Floor, Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC House for Arts and Media, School of Visual Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Columbia University, Socrates Sculpture Park, Performa 11, Old Stone House and Art in Odd Places. Her art activist work led her to be one of the initial and current organizers for The People's Cultural Plan (The PCP), a collection of artists and cultural workers addressing inadequacies with the city's first proposed cultural plan. The PCP's 17-page plan is divided into 3 planks: Housing & Displacement, Cultural Funding Equity & Labor Equity. It launched in July 2017 at Artists Space and in September, The PCP's response to the city's plan was published in Hyperallergic.

Shawn Escarciga (he/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and organizer exploring the intersection of performance, design, and activism. Shawn's work examines labor, class, and queerness, while speculating on what non-oppressive, anti-capitalistic structures of art-making/valuing might look like. Shawn uses objects and technologies that are readily accessible and low-fi to make work about access, monotony, and struggle. Shawn thinks a lot about classism, queer visibility, mutual aid, the internet, intimacy amongst faggots, and what it would be like to live in a country that supports non-commercial artists and the working class.

Antonio Serna is a Mexican-American artist, activist, and educator living in New York. His current artistic visual research project, Documents of Resistance: Artists of Color Protest (1960-2016), is an extension of his real life anti-racist politics, pedagogy, and activism. This project and others have recently been included in Making and Being: Embodiment, Collaboration, & Circulation in the Visual Arts, 2020. Art As Social Action: An Introduction to the Principles and Practices of Teaching Social Practice Art, 2018. Reflecting on Reconstructing Practice: Toward an Anti-racist Art & Design Field, 2018. He is currently co-organizer of Museum Workers’ Happy Hour/BIPOC Workers Working group, a by-and-for worker empowerment and solidarity group.

Christina Freeman is an interdisciplinary artist and curator based in New York City. Her practice employs pause and interruption as a method for contemplative looking. Intervening in systems often taken for granted, she approaches culture as something we actively shape together. Freeman's UltraViolet Archive has been supported by Creative Time (2019), Queens Museum (2018-2019), Culture Push (2018-2019), National Coalition Against Censorship (2018-2019), and Danish Arts Foundation (2018).