Define American Fellowship

Ana Armengod is a Mexican illustrator and film artist currently living in Braddock, Pennsylvania, born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico. Her work is tied with nature and its death, as well as the small details that get lost in the bigger picture. Focused on accentuating the overlooked and unimportant, she gives magnitude to human reactions, history, emotion, and the environment while questioning how these things push us to evolve.

Jason Fitzroy Jeffers is a filmmaker from Barbados whose work focuses on giving rooted and nuanced voice to the Caribbean and its ever-expanding diaspora. He has produced award-winning shorts such as Papa Machete that have screened at festivals such as Sundance, BlackStar, TIFF, and more. More recently, he produced T, the 2020 winner of the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at Berlinale, and co-directed Drowning by Sunrise for The Intercept. He is also a co-founder of Third Horizon Film Festival, which celebrates cutting-edge cinema from the Caribbean, its diaspora, and the Global South.

Ju is a public administrator, entrepreneur, and lifelong immigrant rights activist. Ju came to the United States from South Korea at 11 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ju works at a local government and serves as the NAKASEC Board Chair and the Immigrants Rising Leadership Council. Ju often shares his personal story at conferences and colleges to inspire people to take action on immigration. Ju also has a personal documentary called Halmoni. He is currently working on his passion project – ImmigrAsians Podcast, where he captures the stories of Asian undocumented individuals living in the United States.

Nicole Solis-Sison is an artist, creative director, producer and educator. Her work focuses on cultural equity, diversity and sustainability across the art, media and film industries. Nicole is a proud founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, a nationwide organization that tackles systemic inequities facing undocumented immigrants in the media field. Solis-Sison is a co-producer to Undocumented Justice, a film about Luis Cortes-Romero, the first undocumented attorney to argue a case in the Supreme Court. Nicole received her BFA at University of California, Berkeley. She is the recipient of the 2016 Eisner Award for the Highest Achievement in the Arts.

Tracy Chahwan is a cartoonist and illustrator from Lebanon. Since 2016, she has been working closely with the Beirut music scene, designing posters and visuals for numerous venues and concerts. In 2018, she published her first graphic novel Beirut Bloody Beirut with Marabulles in France. Her latest work includes the collective book Guantanamo Voices, published in 2020 by Abrams books, and Where to Marie? Stories of Feminisms in Lebanon. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in the USA, Italy, France, Belgium, Lebanon, Germany, Egypt, and Algeria.

Yehimi Cambrón is a DACAmented artist and activist based in Atlanta and born in Michoacán, México. She became undocumented at seven years old when she immigrated to Georgia, where she grew up on Buford Hwy—the multicultural heart of Atlanta. Cambrón’s work centers immigrants and predominantly reflects the experiences of Undocumented Americans. Her landmark murals in Atlanta historically assert the presence and humanity of immigrants, depict the intersectionality and complexity of their stories, and challenge the white male-centered history that dictates who is worthy of a public, monumental celebration.

Safwat Saleem is a multidisciplinary artist who gives visibility to immigrant narratives, with a focus on cultural loss resulting from assimilation. Safwat’s body of work weaves together themes of preservation, desire to belong, resistance and brown joy as an immigrant father raising a multiracial child in the American Southwest. Safwat’s practice ranges from graphic design, illustration and writing to film and sound. Humor is a critical element of his work, and he uses satire as a tool to challenge perceptions. Safwat believes in using his art for social impact and has collaborated with non-profit and change-making organizations like Fine Acts, 18 Million Rising, RUN AAPI, SAADA and TED. He is the founder of the former online Pakistani music magazine Bandbaja, which advocated for using pop music as a tool for activism and change. He lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.

Vinnoth Krishnan is a filmmaker, producer and a photographer. He believes in the sovereignty and self-sufficiency of every living being; a prefigurative view that focuses on reframing and redeeming our voices through underrepresented narratives that focuses on character-driven stories that explores various corners of immigrant narratives. He is currently in production for a short film and experimenting with photogrammetry projects in the Midwest, where he is writing and producing multiple short films.

Nour Al Ghraowi is a Syrian poet, writer, activist, and educator, born and raised in Damascus, Syria. She has received a BA in English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in poetry at Texas State University. She currently works as a Storyteller and Communication Coordinator at Karam Foundation. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Dame Magazine, Mizna Literary Journal, Porter House Review, World Literature Today, and others Nour writes in hope of changing the Western view of the Middle East and the Arabic language that is often viewed as inimical. She also writes about Social Justice, migrant identity, and what it means to be an immigrant, and finally, she writes about feminism and what it means to be a feminist Middle Eastern woman. 

Pages Matam is an award-winning multi-hyphenate and agent of imagination born and raised in Cameroon, Central Africa, then blossomed in the DMV (Piscataway Land).  Their work as a poet, creative director and high-concept Drama screenwriter is fueled by the words of Toni Morrison: “the function of freedom is to free someone else,” employing elements of Central-African folklore and magical realism, their immigrant experience, and organizing centered in a Queer Black Liberation politic. They hold multiple poetry & screenwriting fellowships with: DC Commissions Arts and Humanities, TRIBE at SuperSpecial, The Disruptors, and Circle of Confusion Writers Discovery. Additionally, they are a National Poetry Slam Champion and Cultural Ambassador for the National Fair Housing Alliance who loves fried plantains & battle-horror anime.

Ash Goh Hua is a filmmaker and cultural worker from Singapore, based in New York. She creates documentary and experimental based work informed by the politics of abolition and autonomy; their filmmaking practice imagines future acts of collective liberation. Ash is a Jacob Burns Creative Culture Fellow, a NeXtDoc Fellow, a Points North Institute North Star Fellow, and a Common Notions collective member.

Brian Herrera is a queer, undocumented immigrant and graphic artivist. He was born in Veracruz, Mexico and raised on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois. His passion is to uplift the voices of queer POC communities through various forms of illustration, print media, and marketing. His latest project focused on giving a platform to other undocumented artists in the United States. Organizations and clients he has worked with include: The National Museum of Mexican Art, Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, Illinois Humanities Council, Free Street Theater, and Red Bull.

Charlotte Abotsi is an interdisciplinary writer, educator, and filmmaker who lives in Providence, Rhode Island. As a spoken word poet, she has competed in several international slams, placing in the top 20 poets at the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam, and winning the 2017 Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam competition. Her poems have been written about in The Huffington Post and Mic.com. As a filmmaker, Charlotte has focused on documentary film, debuting her experimental short documentary Process at the 2018 Ocean State Film Festival. She is a 2014 Pink Door fellow, a 2019 Poetry Foundation Incubator fellow, a 2020 Tin House Writer’s Workshop Fellow, a 2020 DreamYard Radical Poetry Consortium Fellow, and a 2021 AIR Serenbe Focus Fellow. Her work seeks to discuss and disrupt the complexities of Black womanhood by bringing Black immigrant stories to the forefront.

Christian Arteaga is a classically trained actor born in Mexico, and raised in California’s Central Valley. He has studied various disciplines including musical theatre, circus, Shakespeare and Classical texts. He has worked with several award winning theatre companies such as PCPA, Sierra Repertory Theatre, and Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and has originated several bilingual roles. He finds his passion in using theatre as a form of activism, especially using verbatim theatre, in a cycle of productions called “Community Speaks.” He hopes to travel the country, interviewing people to highlight the narrative and stories surrounding “The Wall” and hopes to inspire compassion for immigrants in the process.

Danyeli Rodriguez Del Orbe (pronounced Dan-Jelly) is a Dominican, Bronx-raised community organizer, writer, and spoken word performer. Her work raises awareness around issues of race, gender, and migration. She was one of four members of the first Bronx-based all Latinx poetry slam team, project x and her poetry has traveled as far as Aruba’s “Poetry is an Island” festival. She has been featured by Bronx Museum of Arts, San Francisco’s Museum of African Diaspora, and People En Espanol Magazine. On December 2019, she self-published her first collection of poetry, periodicos de ayer, a lover’s archive. Danyeli is also the co-founder and co-host of loose accents, a Latinx podcast that highlights the immigrant experiences of the East and West coast. In addition to performing, Danyeli has been an avid advocate for immigrant rights, receiving the 2010 New York State Dream Activist Award and becoming a recipient of and Immigrant Justice Corps Fellowship and New York Immigration Coalition’s DREAM Fellowship. Currently, her community and artistic work centers the nuances of being both Black and immigrant.

Daveed Baptiste is a multidisciplinary maker working in fashion design, photography, and textiles. His migration from Haiti to America inspires most of his work. As an immigrant and queer person, his work examines the multidimensional identities of the Caribbean diaspora living in the United States. Through collaborative projects and various mediums, his work aims to decolonize notions of race, gender, and class within the Haitian community and greater Caribbean diaspora. He is a recent Parsons graduate, with a BFA in Fashion Design. His photographs have been published in The New Yorker, American Vogue, and has exhibited at Red Hook Labs and Aperture.

Elnaz Javani is an Iranian artist, researcher, and educator who creates sculptures, drawings, installations, and videos that explore themes of female body, trauma, and cultural identity. Her practice embraces conceptual strategies and handwork using everyday materials – mostly fabric, cloth, and thread. She received her BFA from the Tehran Art University of Iran in 2009, and her MFA from the School of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 with a full merit scholarship. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in: the USA, Spain, Iran, France, Colombia, Turkey, UAE, Germany, and Switzerland. Such as at the CAC Ses Voltes International Residency Program (Spain), the Luminas’ Cultural Foundation of Visual Arts (Chicago), the Mottahedan Projects (Dubai), the Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal USA Presidential Award Exhibitions (Chicago), The Munich cultural center at Pasinger Fabrik (Germany), “Le Commun”, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), San Telmo Museum (Spain) Arts Santa Mónica Barcelona (Spain), and at Espacio El Dorado Bogotá (Colombia).

féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, México) was raised in Inglewood, CA. They are a trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer. féi is the author of Hood Criatura, published by Sundress Publications, 2020. Their writing has been featured in Poetry, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier, NPR’s Code Switch, Immigrant Report, Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (Columbia University Press, 2019), Haydens Ferry Review Issue 64, BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT, and PANK Magazine, among others. féi is a certified Reiki and Akashic Records practitioner who utilizes a decolonial approach to celestial ancestral energetic healing. They collect Pokémon plushies. féi is the Board President of Gender Justice Los Angeles and is a Co-Founder of the ING Fellowship.

Fernando Lopez is a community and cultural organizer, self-taught photographer, and indigenous “migrant” from Michoacán, Mexico. Fernando’s work focuses on the human struggle for justice, equity, and dignity. He has experienced firsthand various aspects of the immigration enforcement machine — from being placed in deportation proceedings himself, to organizing across the U.S. Gulf South with fellow migrants in deportation proceedings. Prior to full-time photography work, Fernando worked as a lead organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers, an immigrant and workers’ rights organization based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Currently, he is part of Ascendance, a collective of six Black and Brown people who host a monthly zodiac-themed party that centers and uplifts Black and Brown culture and Black and Brown bodies of all genders. Fernando’s photography is informed by an indigenous migrant perspective, honoring the culture, beauty, and struggles of his surroundings. Fernando uses photography to capture the dignity of Black and Brown life in the U.S., focusing on the power of details to document and uplift the unfolding history of a Black and Brown New Orleans. In his own words: “I try to document the struggles and joys of hustlers, artists, poets, workers, lovers, revolutionaries, and any special being – these are my people."

Goolam Saber is a multi-disciplinary visual artist from Johannesburg, South Africa, currently living in Phoenix, Arizona. ⁣His mediums include: printmaking, mural painting and design, paper sculptures, typography, artist books and installations. Each piece he creates is process driven using found and rescued materials, each piece relative to the space in which he finds himself. His work acknowledges the past that shaped the present using ancient elements and combining them with contemporary practice. He creates public workshops and works extensively within underserved, marginalized communities, collaborating with community members to create artworks that promote change whilst making art accessible.

Grecia Huesca Dominguez is the author of the children’s book, Dear Abuelo, finalist of the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award and recognized by Bank Street College of Education as one of the Best Children’s Books of 2020. Her poetry has appeared in The Acentos Review, Crossin’ Borders Zine, and the Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4 LatiNext Anthology. In 2019, she founded Latinx Writers Co. with the goal to create a resource for writers of all levels, guided by the principle that all writing is valid, and a writer is someone that writes. Her mission is to encourage immigrant writers to explore beyond their trauma, by reclaiming their narratives, embracing their triumphs, heartbreak, and joy. At the age of ten, she moved from Veracruz, Mexico to the Hudson Valley, where she lived for 21 years. In 2021, she moved to Querétaro, México where she currently resides with her daughter.

Julie Yeeun Kim was born in Korea and raised on the other side of the world in Los Angeles, CA. She teaches English and Asian American Studies at California State University Long Beach by day, and by night Julie is a singer and songwriter. In 2018 Julie collaborated with jazz musician John Daversa’s Big Band in the album “American Dreamers,” which was awarded three Grammy awards in 2019, including the category for “Best Large Jazz Ensemble.” As an art fellow at Define American, she worked on a collection of songs about the fruitful and frustrating experiences of dating as an undocumented woman. In addition to the quotidian realities of romance, she is also interested at the intersections of faith, community, and politics, particularly politics surrounding issues of race and immigration. One of her developing projects is a national church tour bringing together music and conversation.

Karla Daniela Rosas is a self-taught visual artist and activist born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Karla grew up in the Gulf South and currently lives in New Orleans. Karla considers herself first and foremost a story-teller. Tired of media tropes of helpless and passive immigrant mothers, Karla uses her art to tell stories about migrant women that she wants to hear — stories about being powerful, young, defiant, sexual, angry, joyous… and sometimes petty. Karla works with a mixture of digital illustration tools as well as traditional inks, markers, acrylic, and gouache. In addition to their own work, Karla regularly works on collaborative art projects with members of Congress of Day Laborers, an immigrant and workers’ rights organization in New Orleans, Louisiana. Karla has also had their work featured in various independent publications including: Antigravity Magazine, St. Sucia, and Roots Rising, the official Take ‘Em Down NOLA zine. Currently, she is illustrating a forthcoming poetry collection for Detroit-based writer and poet, Christiana Castillo. As part of their Define American Undocumented Artists Fellowship, Karla worked with Fernando Lopez on a collaborative multimedia portrait series. The project, Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos, spotlights key members of the New Orleans community who are shaping its history from the bottom-up and represent the corazon or “heart” of the city. The project aims to both document the histories ignored by mainstream narratives of New Orleans, and also honor the beauty and full personhood of the individuals who are a part of these histories.

Kenia R. Guillen (b. 1994, El Salvador) is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist based in New York. She was born in Los Achiotes, a rural town of Chalatenango, where she was raised before migrating to Long Island, New York. Her cinematic practice is in conversation with processes for personal integration, using narrative to acknowledge intergenerational trauma. Inspired by myths and legends, she’s interested in the power of personal memory as archive, how to write rural life and peoples into cinematic memory, and how to honor the mystical and supernatural as reality. A 2019 Open Society Fellow, her work has been exhibited in Tragame Luz Festival, Galería de La Raza, El Museo de Los Sures, Open Society Foundations, Icaro Film Festival, and by QKED Media and NYU APA Institute. Guillen is also a co-founder and producer at Tierra Narrative, a Central American multi-media production house, creating spaces for transnational conversations and collaborations between the Central American diaspora and the homelands.

Lilian Shtereva is a Brooklyn-based painter who got her start in the arts growing up in Haskovo, Bulgaria. She studied at The Faculty of Fine Arts in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. She employs oil paint as a medium, gravitating towards colors and textures inspired by nature. The variations of texture and density within her practice, from heavy impasto to thin washes and drips, emphasize the tactile nature of the medium. In her work there is a great sensitivity to the imaginal realms that allows fantastical visions to unfold and find form. Lilian is a proud recipient of the Define American Artist Fellowship 2019. Most of her work can be seen in local Brooklyn group shows.

Maryam Faridani is an Iranian artist currently living in Chicago. By using moving images, installations and performance, she tries to explore how technologies today lead to creation and maintenance of a particular set of social conditions as the environment of that technical system. Humor is an important aspect of her work as she finds it to be an effective way to talk about matters that are usually dark and bitter. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and holds a BFA in Theater from the Art University of Tehran.

Yao Xiao is a cartoonist and illustrator living in New York. Yao was born in China and emigrated to the United States in 2006. After graduation with a degree in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts, Yao documented her experiences as a queer immigrant in and developed a series of comics incorporating illustration and writing. As an illustrator, her work has been featured in TIME Magazine, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, National Geographic, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. Yao has shown her work at galleries in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Her debut graphic novel, Everything Is Beautiful, And I’m Not Afraid was published by Andrews McMeel in 2020. Her debut children’s book How To Solve A Problem, written by Ashima Shiraishi, was published by Penguin Random House. Her work has been nominated for the Ignatz Award and recognized by the Society of Illustrators.