Students

Areeha Ahmad graduated with distinction from the National College of Arts, Lahore, earning a B.S. (Hons) in Cultural Studies. She currently works on a project with the Lahore Biennale Foundation in collaboration with the National College of Arts focused on Mall Road's ecosystem. Areeha has also served as a member of the South Asian Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE), addressing issues of religious minority women in Pakistan.

Her research interests lie in cultural studies, particularly women and gender studies in South Asia. Areeha’s work critically examines secular-liberal frameworks of women's agency, as exemplified by her thesis on the 'Haya March'. She is passionate about social activism and the nuanced understanding of women's roles within feminist politics.

Pinar (she/her) is a designer from Ankara, Turkey. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Middle East Technical University. Her intellectual pursuits are deeply rooted at the intersection of design and social sciences, with a particular focus on material culture. Pinar is especially fascinated by the cultural landscapes of Anatolia and the Middle East, intrigued by the interactions between different cultures and ethnicities. She is passionate about how design and the material world both shape and reflect societal behaviors, cultural traditions, and political dynamics. She aspires to explore how design influences and is influenced by the fabric of societies and cultural narratives in her future work.

Sam Box is a writer that strives to unravel the mechanics of storytelling, creating work that plays with both its audience and the complexity of its own form. Sam received their B.F.A. from the University of Maine at Farmington in Creative Writing and English, utilizing the space between generative and analytical writing practices to fuel an interdisciplinary perspective on composition—whether creative or critical.

Focused on the study of screenwriting, Sam explores the surreal and the empathetic in comedy, designing narrative spaces that can examine reality through the creation and deconstruction of incongruity. These interests have led to research in literary monstrosities, contemporary disseminations of local legends, and comedy as a double-edged sword that rejects and reaffirms social boundaries.

April Lei Liu is an art researcher actively exploring the ever-changing landscape of art and its interaction with society. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, majoring in Cultural Management with minors in Archaeology and Business. She furthered her expertise by receiving professional training in economics and business at the University of Geneva during the exchange program.

Currently, April’s research mainly focuses on 20th/21st century Chinese art and the art market. Notably, she recently co-curated the exhibition “Cast for Dignity: Early Chinese Belt Hooks from the De-Neng-Tang Collection” at the CUHK Art Museum in Hong Kong. She also gained valuable experience through internships at Christie's, Pace Gallery, Long March Space and TANK Shanghai.

Originally from mainland China, Fletcher received his B.A. from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey with majors in Philosophy and Art History and a minors in Classics. Although he generally enjoys reading about analytic philosophy and art history, his interests were mainly in ethics, metaphysics for the former, and the Italian renaissance for the latter. While he holds that justice, fairness and equality are ever so important, he also believes that every art historical period is spatiotemporal specific, grounded by the social and political environment in which the artistic movement took place, and therefore agglomeration based on stylistic similarities is wrong. Outside of academics, his main personal interests are (primarily) cooking and (to a lesser extent) rock and classical music.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Mary received her B.A. in Spanish from Stanford University with minors in Art Practice and Modern Languages. Her lifelong interests in art, languages, and museums guided her academic and professional experiences at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford’s Art and Art History Department, and various organizations that support the Bay Area’s Spanish-speaking community. After graduating, Mary moved to Elche, Spain, where she worked as a linguistic and cultural representative in a Spanish public school. Her time exploring museums, libraries, and bookstores across Europe further developed her interest in the relationship between language, art, and interpretation. In her free time, Mary loves going on walks, reading books and graphic novels, and trying new restaurants in Providence.

Daniela Ruiz Perez is an artist and geographer from the Baltimore- Washington metropolitan area whose academic and personal interests have guided her towards cooperative curatorial work and aesthetic journalism. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a B.A in Studio Art and B.S in Geographical Sciences. Her research interests lie in the dynamics of ethical transcultural exchange in the age of new media; using her interdisciplinary education and methodologies to sculpt an understanding of the interconnectedness in today’s globalized world. Daniela is fascinated with how different environments form the interplay between time, space, and perspective. She aspires to create dialogues and narratives by actively engaging in cultural institutes and community-based collaborations.

Rachel Zheng is a Chinese graphic designer and curator with a Bachelor’s degree in Art and Technology from the China Academy of Art. Past research interests are in content and genealogy design in the context of social and strategic. Her graphic genealogy series has been collected by the Zhejiang Art Museum and she has participated in many exhibitions. Nowadays, Rachel tends to shift her identity from designer to curator and writer.

Given that her expertise lies in the design of spaces and exhibits, Rachel tries to combine more diverse forms of contemporary art and promote the exhibition space to realize the interactions between artworks and the audience. She will focus on critical analysis of the prevalent use of the White Cube exhibition space model, focusing on the issue of inherent homogeneity, and explore more possibilities in innovative solutions for exhibition spaces and social narratives.