Participant

The Black School (Joseph Cuillier & Shani Peters Cuillier)

Joseph Cuillier (b. 1988, Marrero, LA), Co-Founder and Creative Director, is a multidisciplinary artist who explores Black radical pedagogies through social practice, installation, textile, and design, with a practice at the intersections of education, visual art, and design that centers on deconstructing histories to build counter-narratives. Currently based in New Orleans, LA, Cuillier received a master's from Pratt Institute and previously held faculty positions at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute in New York City. His work has been exhibited, collected, and presented internationally at the New Museum, The Museum of Modern Art Library, Bauhaus Dessau, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery at Pratt Institute, among others. Cuillier has been an artist-in-residence/fellow at Sweet Water Foundation via the Chicago Architecture Biennial, IdeasCity New Orleans, Spillways Antenna, the New Museum, The Laundromat Project, and A Blade of Grass. He is the co-director of The Black School and Black Love Fest with Shani Peters, and his work is deeply connected to a lineage of Black educational and community-building practices that inform the development of The Black School.

Shani Peters Cullier (b. 1981, Lansing, MI) is a multi-disciplinary artist/administrator based in New Orleans, LA, who holds a B.A. from Michigan State University and an M.F.A. from the City College of New York. Her multi-disciplinary art encompasses activism histories, community care, and the creation of accessible imaginative experiences. Peters has presented work in the U.S. and abroad at the New Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, Seoul Art Space Geumcheon in South Korea, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, and the Bauhaus Dessau. Selected residencies include those hosted by the Mississippi Museum of Art (MS), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Laundromat Project (NY), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (NY), and Project Row Houses (TX), and her work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Creative Capital, the Rauschenberg Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She has served as a faculty member of The City College of New York, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design, and in 2016 co-founded The Black School with her partner, Joseph Cuillier. Her practice contributes to a broader lineage of Black cultural and educational work centered on care, access, and collective imagination.

Mabel O. Wilson