THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING: J Triangular Curatorial Residency Final Event

Participant Biographies

J Triangular is an independent curator, queer poet, experimental filmmaker / DIY video artist, and photographer making art projects that speak about resistance, gender dynamics and memory landscapes. Their work often consists of poetic portraits of the unresolved social violences of history, and the rupture of identity in a culture of manufactured fear and legally institutionalized discrimination. J is the 2019 Visual AIDS/Residency Unlimited Curatorial Resident.

Wanda Hernandez-Parks is a leading advocate for women living with HIV/AIDS and poor and working New Yorkers more broadly. In 2009, she participated in the first-ever White House summit on HIV/AIDS and homelessness. She recently helped lead the successful campaign to win a 30% rent cap affordable housing protection for over ten thousand homeless and at-risk New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS, including testifying during City Council and state legislative hearings. She is both a member and serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of VOCAL-NY, which builds power among people affected by HIV/AIDS, drug use and mass incarceration to create healthy and just communities. She is also working towards a publication of her poetry and works as a Peer Educator at Harlem United.

Juanita Imran is the mother of Jahanara and Shah, YaYa (to her three grandchildren, Pharah, Kiomara and Jonathan). In 1989, she was part of the production for Women's AIDS Video Enterprise produced by Alexandra Juhasz. She produced numerous videos for Gay Men's Health Crisis's "Living With AIDS Show" and is a former Mother of the House of Moshood, from the ball community. She has spoken at community group venues, Lesbian and Gay Centers, the New York Public Library and schools. She now works for NYC's Human Resources Administration as a caseworker. In addition she produces documentary videos and volunteers with her life partner Henry Szczepanski around issues involving disability, homelessness, and HIV.

Marguerite Van Cook's work utilizes an amalgam of low and high tech to create cinematic images that open spaces for the imagination and enable the viewer to experience color as a vehicle for exploration. She invites the viewer to enter the "untold" stories in the sequential imagery of her "unmade" film series. Van Cook came to New York with her punk band The Innocents after touring with The Clash. She stayed, opened a gallery Ground Zero and curated numerous events and shows. Her own work as an artist and filmmaker placed her in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard. Her other credits include poet (she was awarded the Van Rensselear Prize while at Columbia), writer, critic, comic book artist and actor. Her current graphic novel in collaboration with James Romberger is a generational autobiography entitled "The Late Child and Other Animals." Her collaborative project with David Wojnarowicz and James Romberger, "Seven Miles a Second," a graphic memoir of Wojnarowicz‘s life and death is in its second edition in America.