Jasmine Wahi

Co-founder, Project for Empty Space, New York

In 2010, shortly after graduating from a master’s degree in art history, Jasmine Wahi co-founded Project for Empty Space: a non-profit arts organisation that hosts residencies, an incubator programme and subsidised studio spaces for artists whose work is oriented towards activism. This set the tone for the future career of the curator, educator and activist, which has included a stint as the inaugural Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, where she curated exhibitions such as ‘Born in Flames: Feminist Futures’. She later co-curated the touring show ‘Abortion Is Normal’ (2020), which featured artists including Marilyn Minter, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Hank Willis Thomas and Catherine Opie; the exhibition raised funds for charities including Planned Parenthood. During Women’s History Month this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave Wahi an award for her contribution to social impact in the arts through the work of Project for Empty Space. She is a former faculty member of Yale University at the School of Visual Arts and lives in New York, where she now teaches at Brooklyn College.

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