Dyllan Nguyen is a queer, Vietnamese-American artist and educator based in Boston, who works at the intersection of art, design, education, and advocacy. Dyllan seeks out opportunities to build community and actively engage with the world – using hands and mind to imagine and fabricate, embracing curiosity by continuously learning, and fostering empowerment through facilitating creative spaces for others. Dyllan’s interests in distraction, systems of value, play, and empathy form the primary themes in recent works. Dyllan is co-founder of Non Issue Studio, creating custom objects and workshops for all ages. Fair Play is an interactive installation in development, which uses the object language of table tennis to explore individual differences, acceptance, and empathy-building through playful experiences.

Eden Attar is a Dominican-American artist, educator, and researcher who creates tiny utopian moments. Eden’s past work includes the St. Louis smolnet, a publicly accessible digital installation that challenges the centralization and commercialization of the web, and Moon Swap, an educational space for unlearning mindsets of scarcity and transactionality, held in outdoor spaces in Boston each full moon. Eden works as a welding instructor and mutual aid organizer at Artisans Asylum, a makerspace in Allston. Eden’s ArtLab project, Bohio (home), explores narratives of Antillean colonization, diaspora, and memory through an art installation, which activates the “cubby” lockers at ArtLab. Bohio features manifestations of zemí’no, Taino ancestor spirits and deities, who take the form of floral and light installations, puppets, and foodstuffs.

Joseph Zeal-Henry (curation, 2024 Loeb/ArtLab Fellow) is a designer, urbanist, and curator whose practice advocates for a more equitable built environment through policy and cultural production. Joseph has written for Dezeen, Casabella, and Architectural Review. In 2022, the British Council selected him to co-curate the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 alongside Jayden Ali, Meneesha Kellay, and Sumitra Upham. Their pavilion, Dancing Before the Moon, explores the need for architecture to look beyond buildings and economic structures and toward everyday social practices, customs, and traditions to meaningfully reflect how people use and occupy space. Joseph co-founded the social enterprise platform Sound Advice alongside Pooja Agrawal to explore new forms of spatial practice through music. Joseph is a trustee of UD Music, a charity that empowers and harnesses opportunities for young people through Black music culture. Photo: Malakhai Pearson.

Grisha Coleman (choreography) works in choreography, performance, experiential technology, and sound composition. Coleman earned an MFA in music composition and integrated media from the California Institute of the Arts and worked full-time as a dancer with the acclaimed dance company Urban Bush Women. She later created the music performance group Hot Mouth, which toured internationally and was nominated for the NYC Drama Desk Award for ‘Most Unique Theatrical Experience.’ She works in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University as Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media. Her work has been generously supported by The National Endowment for the Arts in Media grants, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Project [MAP] Fund, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant, the MacDowell Arts Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pioneer Works, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Stanford University’s Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship and through a Radcliffe Fellowship (’21-22). Photo: Maurice Gunning.

Aiden Marshall (dancer) is a Boston-based dancer originally from North Carolina where he trained at Graceful Expressions Dance Education. He graduated in May 2023 from the University of North Carolina Greensboro School of Dance, studying under artists such as Robin Gee, Janet Lilly, BJ Sullivan, Maurice Watson, Clarice Young, and has performed works by Maleek Washington, and Helen Simoneau. He currently dances with Jean Appolon Expressions and enjoys studying queer and Afro-Diasporic histories in dance.

Marissa Molinar (dancer) is a contemporary dancer, arts administrative activist, and Founder/Director of Midday Movement Series, a grassroots initiative cultivating a new generation of dance leaders. She holds a Bachelors in Environmental Science from Brown University with a focus in Urban Conservation and Environmental Justice, and she holds a certificate in Contemporary Dance from the Professional Training Program at Gibney Dance in NYC. Marissa is passionate about using dance as a tool for social storytelling and cultural transformation.

Jennifer Roberts (dancer) is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she began her formal training in dance. Throughout her career, she’s practiced numerous forms of dance and studied different pedagogies for engaging and teaching movers. Jennifer found a Boston dance home performing as a member of Weber Dance, Ruckus Dance, and Continuum Dance Project. When not in the studio, Jennifer can be found indulging in good fiction, good food, or a good nap.

This event is part of ArtsThursdays, a university-wide initiative for free, public art events every Thursday evening. It is supported by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).