Meet our 2024/25 Fellows
Tracia “trae” Banuelos-Rovaris (she/they) is an artist, social researcher, and facilitator based in Harlem with roots in Wichita, KS, where she developed a foundational, reproductive justice approach that guides all of their work. As an artist, they collaborate with other poets and creatives to build and facilitate community workshops, zines, and co-creating spaces for arts practitioners rooted in liberation from advanced capitalism, systemic healing, and compassionate community values. In 2023, she self-published her autobiography “Abuelita Rising”, a 90-page body of poetry, visual art, and critical essays. Equipped with a MS in Applied Social Research, she enjoys using mixed research methods to contribute to sexual violence prevention research and program evaluation. As a facilitator, she enjoys investing in social justice practitioners and violence preventionists through capacity-building workshops and strategic planning. She organizes with the Audre Lorde Project as a Safe Outside the System Member and also serves as the Vice President of Abortion Conversation Projects, a 501c3 organization that provides seed grants to abortion stigma-busting, grassroots projects. You can connect with her work at traciabanuelos.com and traelabaestudios.com.
Cindy Hwang (she/her) is an artist and organizer who lives and works on unceded Lenape land (Brooklyn, NY). She organizes both autonomously and with Art Against Displacement, a collective of artists and cultural workers that opposes predatory development in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. To subsist under capitalism, she has worked primarily as a full-time graphic designer. Born and raised on unceded O’Odham and Piipaash land (Phoenix, AZ), she received a BA from Yale College and an MFA from the Yale School of Art.
Bella Stenvall (she/her) is a queer, mixed Filipino movement artist based in the unceded homeland of the Lenape people (colonially known as Brooklyn, New York). She considers herself a life-long student of many movement practices. Bella is the cofounder of eMBody, a collective that revels in spaces where disciplines crossover, facilitating moments where different styles can learn from each other. Their work explores communal experiences of catharsis and celebration, ones that are participatory in nature and can exist anywhere from a proscenium stage to a park jam.
Bella received her B.A. in Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is invested in movement art as a critical instrument for creative placemaking and has curated national and international panels about dancers’ role in shaping public space. She is currently leading a dance and disability field study for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her creative practice centers this understanding of dance as a powerful tool for reimagining our intertwined personal, social, and political futures.
Dena Igusti (they/them) is a queer Indonesian Muslim writer born and raised in Queens, New York. They are the author of CUT WOMAN (Game Over Books, 2020), which has been listed as a 2022 Perennial Award Winner, Entropy Mag Best Of 2020-2021, and 2020 Harvard Bookstore Staff Pick. Their work has been featured in BOAAT Press, Peregrine Journal, Teen Vogue, and several other publications. Their work has been produced and performed at The Brooklyn Museum, The Apollo Theater, Signature Theater, and other venues internationally. They are an Asian American Writers’ Workshop Open City Fellow, NeXt Doc Fellow, Sundress Arts Resident, Best of the Net Nominee, Baldwin For The Arts Resident, Converse All Stars Artist and more.
Tatiana Lahera Kalainoff (she/her) is a multidisciplinary designer, data visualization artist, environmental/3D maker and educator. With experience at the intersection of data + design, she transforms complex information into impactful narratives, using data analytics + visual design. Her work ranges from the physical — print, objects, exhibits; to the digital — experiences, websites, visualizations; and everything in-between. Her work has been exhibited in New York at BRIC House and Allen Street Gallery and will be exhibited this fall at The University of Virginia’s Architecture School.
She believes that equitable access + understanding of information is key to empowering marginalized groups and creating systemic change. With backgrounds in architecture and data viz, she focuses on the intersections of data, design, technology, fabrication, the built environment and storytelling with an emphasis on equitable access to information, demystifying bureaucratic processes, visualizing hidden connections + networks and providing opportunities for underrepresented voices to be heard. Tatiana believes information is power, but it has little to no value without context and a compelling story.
Growing up, Tatiana moved around a bunch and was brought up in a multiracial household (Filipino and German American). Being mixed race and a Third Culture Kid significantly shaped her design perspective and how she engages with the world. She now resides in Brooklyn, NY with her dog Prudence and is currently teaching at Parsons.
Wenjun Chen (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist working on new media, focusing on exploring the mixed relationship between real and virtual. His work involves the fields of self-identity, internet and technology, data and personal data. Born in China, he is currently based in New York City. He was a self-taught photographer and received an MFA from the Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice Program at the City College of New York.
His current work is a self-exploration based on his personal data with internet-based technologies, utilizing the web, video, virtual reality, and installation. He is using keywords from his memories shared online and figures of his health data captured by his smartwatch to reconstruct himself through virtual avatars, a story of his growth, and new bodies in which to hold these avatars and stories. This also reflects his identity as a newcomer from China, migrating to an open new world that blends analog and digital.
Camille-Louise “Cam” Kouba Mbayo (she, they, we) is a queer Congolese-born Brooklyn-based abolitionist, nerd-artist, daughter, sister, friend, process becoming.
Cam is committed to living fully in the present moment and believes there is an artistry in that. With the engineering tools they’ve acquired through academia and their Indigenous knowledge systems Cam works at the intersection of art, tech, culture, and education.
Living themselves at the intersection of many identities, as they continue to figure out their place in the world and their relationship to land, belonging, and being good kin, they are learning how to build communities rooted in love, care, and right relationships. In the making of those communities, Cam is interested in exploring art as a healing process.
In between napping, Cam can be found in trees, on wheels, reading books, engineering, dancing, meditating, adventuring, talking about colonialism, painting, playing board games, and loving and laughing with community.
Cal Fish (they/them) is a cross-disciplinary artist from Sea Cliff, NY based in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn. Their work is multi-modal and immersive, often employing interactive sonic tools/sculptures, experimental pop music, video, sewing soft and social sculpture. Cal performs regularly around NYC and has toured to share work all across North America and parts of Europe. Graduating from Bard in 2018 as a joint major in music/studio art, Cal has since shared work at venues including Chaos Computer, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Flux Factory, The Shed, Citipunkt, ISSUE Project Room, the Joyce Theater, BAM, and Newtown Creek Nature Walk Park. Currently Cal sews and sells up-cycled clothing, manages the Living Gallery, hosts Anthroapology on Newtown Radio, and works in collaboration with Kyle Marshal Choreography.