About Movements

MOVEMENTS is a new arts journal published by the Brown Arts Institute, which brings together multidisciplinary artists to respond to urgent questions in society and culture.

This intersectional platform traces pathways between aesthetics, place, and activism. Rooted in Moshassuck (otherwise known as Providence), the ancestral land of the Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc people, developed through slave labor and Indigenous erasure, we hope to center the legacies and voices of those who have historically been excluded from scholarly and artistic spaces. Our contributors are students, academics, journalists, activists and artists connecting theory and embodied creativity. Through ethical, empathetic, and community-led research practices, we foster integrity, experimentation, and engaged cultural criticism. Articles are commissioned and edited through an intensive and collaborative process, in response to wider intellectual and artistic conversations.

We welcome your thoughts! Please email us at artinstitute@brown.edu with your questions, comments and suggestions.

What existence has spread all around, discourse organizes. Or better: what the folding has concealed, poetics unfolds. From folding to unfolding, the movement is unceasing.
Édouard Glissant, Treatise on the Whole-World, 1997
Art should never be an auxiliary to the movement, but at the heart—at the very heart—of our struggles.
Angela Davis

Team

Avery Willis Hoffman

Brown Arts Institute,
Artistic Director

A writer, artistic director, creative producer and curator of public programs, Avery Willis Hoffman joined Brown University in 2020 as the inaugural Artistic Director of the Brown Arts Institute and Professor of the Practice of Arts and Classics.

Shirine Saad

Founding Editor

Shirine Saad is a Beirut-born writer, programmer and DJ exploring feminism and decolonization through the arts. They are a PhD candidate in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought at the European Graduate School. They run the Gyal Tings! DJ learning series for BIPOC womxn and LGBTQ folks and Hiya Live Sessions, a platform amplifying radical feminist and queer SWANA artists. Photo: Gregg Richards

Minkyoung Kim and Marie Otsuka
MK + MO

Creative direction, website design and development

Minkyoung Kim and Marie Otsuka (MK+MO) are designer-developers who create dynamic platforms that embrace interactivity as an expressive medium, built on a customized system that catalyzes an organization’s capacity to evolve. They have collaborated with a range of teams, specializing in working with higher education, non-profit, and cultural institutions.

Qiwen Ju

Web editor, Brown Arts Institute designer

Qiwen Ju is a multidimensional graphic designer and illustrator with a Master’s degree in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently serves as a visual designer at Brown University. Qiwen is passionate about pushing the boundaries of traditional 2D design and exploring multiple angles and mediums to bring depth and dynamism to his designs.

Jazzmin Imani

Editorial Fellow

Jazzmin Imani is a painter, author, illustrator, and sculptor. Her work centers Black and Latine people, using their traditions in order to uplift their futures. In 2019, she wrote, illustrated, and self-published the children’s book, When Art is Loved, and she has received awards from the YoungArts Foundation, AXA Art Prize, and more for her figurative paintings.

zuri arman

Editorial Fellow

zuri arman (he/him) is a student, writer, thinker, and tinkerer across various disciplines and mediums. As a PhD student in the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University, their research explores a critical orientation of methodological “mistrust” across Black politics, art, and self-making at the intersection of black radical feminist and queer thought. zuri is the co-founder and editor of (De)Cypher: Black Notes on Culture and Criticism. He also has a chapter in the forthcoming Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies published by PM Press, and is the co-author of an essay in the latest edition of Ufahamu Journal of African Studies.

Tara Dhaliwal

Editorial Fellow

Tara Dhaliwal is a PhD candidate in the Religious Studies department at Brown University. Her research interests include storytelling, folklore, non-human animals, and gender. She explores how stories help us make sense of the world.

About The Site

This website launched on October 27, 2023, accompanying the opening of The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University. It features a variable typeface called Movements Variable, designed in partnership with Occupant Fonts. Movements Variable was inspired by the architectural features of the performing arts center, incorporating its material structure and reflectivity. The angle of the type evolves over the time of day, and its animated weight evokes the passage of light.

About BAI

Established in 2021, Brown Arts Institute (BAI) is a university-wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown that creates new work and supports, amplifies, and adds new dimensions to the creative practices of Brown’s arts departments, faculty, students, and community. Through year-round programming, research-focused courses, initiatives, collaborations, and partnerships, along with rigorous artistic and academic programs, BAI commissions and presents new work on campus, across Providence, Rhode Island, and beyond, from students, faculty, and on-campus arts groups, as well as in collaboration with forward-focused visiting artists and other performing arts organizations.