Chelsea Adewunmi is a doctorial student in Englsh Literature at Princeton University, focusing on African American literature, performance studies, and visual culture. She received an M.A. in Performance Studies at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (2008), and her B.A. in English at Vassar College. Her scholarly writing has been published in Reading Contemporary Performance (Routledge, 2015), and she is a member of the editorial collective of the academic journal Women and Performance. She has taught as a lecturer at Princeton University and Rutgers University, and spoken internationally on women, performance, and the arts at the University of Sussex and the Royal Irish Academy. In addition to her academic work, she has worked as a dramaturg for visual artist/choreographer Jill Sigman, and as a performer for the Performa Biennial’s restaging of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, which won the AICA (International Association of Art Critics) Award for Best Performance under the direction and curation of Andre Lepecki. Most recently, she has applied her love for art, culture, and African American studies to the role of Associate Producer for a forthcoming documentary film on African American art. She will be speaking on art and club culture at the Smithsonian’s Hirschhorn Museum in May of 2019.

This summer, as the Lila Harnett ArtTable Diversity Fellow at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Chelsea will be working with the curatorial staff iassisting with the research, writing, and organization of the upcoming Lorraine O’Grady retrospective to be presented in early 2020.