Biography
Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, activist and researcher whose work exposes the layers of oppression, resistance and refusal that make up the aggregate of society's foundation stones.
Brown is a co-founder of Blights Out, a collective working to demystify the post-Katrina gentrification in New Orleans. She is a core member of Occupy Museums, whose project ‘Debtfair’ was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and the founder and artistic director of Fossil Free Fest, New Orleans. In 2013, Brown took part in the Winter Holiday Camp, the democratic takeover of the Ujazdowski Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw in support of a labour union strike against the former director. Winter Holiday Camp’s uninvited intervention was ‘accepted’ into the Center for Contemporary Art’s permanent collection in 2013.
Brown has received recognition as a Visionary for the Grist 50 (2018), and she has also been awarded a Goldsmiths International Postgraduate Scholarship (2018–2019); Future Leaders Connect Fellowship, The British Council (2016) and Young Cultural Innovators Fellowship, Salzburg Global Seminar (2015). She has participated in residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, US (2018); The Luminary Arts, St Louis, US (2018) and Ujazdowski Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2017).
She served as a board member at the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, New Orleans (2017–2018); Director of Programs, Antenna Works, New Orleans (2016–2018); Curatorial Associate and Manager of Publications, Prospect.3: Notes for Now, New Orleans (2014–2015) and Executive Assistant, Judd Foundation, New York (2010–2013).
Focusing on forensic architecture, Brown is currently a master’s degree candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London (2019). She received her bachelor’s degree in visual arts and anthropology from Columbia University, New York (2010).
Raised in New Orleans, Brown currently lives and studies in London.
SAF participation:
March Meeting 2019
