The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) is pleased to host a conversation between artist Lizania Cruz and two guests, Yvette Ramirez, and Samah Sisay, who have been involved in past iterations of Cruz’s project, We the News. This five-year iterative project culminates with the current exhibition at ISCP, Lizania Cruz: Every Immigrant Is a Writer / Todo Inmigrante Es un Escritor, on view through August 26, 2022. Their discussion delve into individual and collective experiences of Black immigrants and first-generation Black Americans.

Yvette Ramírez is an archivist and researcher from Queens, New York. She is inspired by the power of community-centered archives to further explore the complexities of information transmission and memory within Andean and other diasporic Latinx communities of Indigenous descent. With nearly a decade of experience as an arts administrator, Yvette has worked alongside community-based and cultural organizations including The Laundromat Project, PEN America, Make The Road New York and New Immigrant Community Empowerment. Currently, she is working towards her PhD at the School of Information at The University of Michigan where she also holds an MSI in Digital Curation and Archives. Yvette is also a co-founding member of the collective Archivistas en Espanglish.

Samah Mcgona Sisay is a Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, where she specializes in international human rights and challenging inhumane immigration policies and abusive police practices. Previously, Samah worked as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at African Services Committee. During her two-year fellowship, Samah provided legal representation on immigration matters to undocumented Black immigrant women, both transgender and cisgender, who were impacted by gender violence. Samah was born in Liberia and immigrated to the United States with her family at a young age during the country’s civil war. This experience informs her work as an attorney and propelled her to become the first person in her family to attend and graduate college. Samah earned a B.A. in International Affairs at the George Washington University and is a 2018 graduate of New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow.

Lizania Cruz is a Dominican participatory artist and designer interested in how migration affects ways of being and belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience participation, she creates projects that highlight a pluralistic narrative on migration. Cruz was an artist in residence at ISCP in 2022.

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Lizania Cruz: Every Immigrant Is a Writer / Todo Inmigrante Es un Escritor is supported in part by Vision Fund; Hartfield Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature; Wilhelm Family Foundation; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; and Woodbury Foundation.