Judith Tolnick Champa is founder and president of the Providence Biennial, and has long cultivated the complementary practices of curating and writing. She is a committed independent curator launched by Brown University’s History of Art graduate program, where teaching with objects became her passion and the impetus for a curatorial career.

​

As a contemporary art curator, Judith is recognized for her range of numerous focused group exhibitions occurring in unexpected locations, from alternative to traditional venues. These have included a multi-sited exhibition in Queens called Transpositions along the Queensborough Bridge and the National Members' exhibition for A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, Facing Disjunction, to ReSeeding the City: Ethnobotany in the Urban for the Rhode Island State House under the aegis of the Biennial, part of the Year of the City: The Providence Project. Upcoming is the exhibition Go, Figure! for the WaterFire Arts Center Gallery, a prelude to The Body Politic: Concerning Contemporary Figuration, for the Nancy Devine Gallery in Warren, Rhode Island.

​

Judith's earlier career of academically affiliated curatorial work in modern and contemporary art took place in public and private institutions. Following her BA from Brandeis University and her MA from Brown, both in the History of Art, she returned to Brown as Associate Director, Curatorial Affairs, for Brown’s David Winton Bell Gallery and later Director/Curator for the University of Rhode Island's former Fine Arts Center Galleries. An experienced art writer, Judith also served as Editor-in-Chief of Art New England, Boston’s long-standing regional art magazine.

​

Through the Providence Biennial she became a founding organizer of the Curatorial Coalition, a network uniting contemporary art curators from across Southern New England, formed to propel understanding of curatorial agency today.

​

photo credit: Kris Craig

Walter Edward Harper Jr. PhD was born and raised in Chicago. He matriculated at Loyola University where he was elected President of his Senior Class. After receiving a History BA with an Education minor Walter earned an MA in Counseling Psychology at Loyola, and a Teacher Education Program Certificate from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He has worked as an elementary school teacher, child care worker, college/university admission officer, college/university financial aid officer, counselor/therapist, public health community educator, and social services agency program administrator.

 

As a graduate student in Anthropology at Brown (PhD '06), Walter's doctoral dissertation was entitled "Educational and Social Worlds in Context: An Anthropological Study of an Urban Elementary School Fifth-Grade Classroom." He was also a Mellon Scholars Program Graduate Student Volunteer; A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions Futures Project Special Research Assistant; Leadership Alliance Graduate Student Advisor; Meiklejohn Advising Program Advisor, and Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning Graduate Student Department Representative/Teaching Consultant. Additionally, Walter completed two graduate student teaching certificate programs and was recognized by an Honorable Mention in the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

 

While dissertation writing Walter received a Rhode Island Foundation Fellowship to conduct a comparative study of urban children in three US metropolitan cities (Chicago, Providence, and Berkeley) and Roma children in Budapest, Hungary. Following graduation he became an Adjunct Professor at Salve Regina, Tufts, and URI, and completed a three-year appointment as Visiting Anthropology Department Scholar at Brown.

 

Walter is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bridgewater State University. Scholarly research interests focus on the anthropology of childhood, anthropology and US culture, educational anthropology, ethnicity/race studies, gender, psychological anthropology, social/educational inequality, and urban anthropology. He has served on the boards of Brown Club of Rhode Island (Past President), Community Preparatory School, Providence Black Repertory Company, and the Stone Soup Foundation.

Scott Lerner is a sculptor, art educator, and curator based in Providence, Rhode Island. He currently teaches art history at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) as well as painting and drawing for RISD's continuing education program. He received his MFA in Painting from RISD and his BA in art history from Oberlin College. 

​

In his recent work, Lerner explores retrofuturism, fusing ancient styles of art with more futuristic ones by using laser engraving, 3D printing, and digital image generation. He works across ceramics, plaster casting, and painting. He regularly exhibits across New England. His work was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York for their exhibition In Response: The Sassoons.

​

In 2023, Lerner founded East Manning Projects, an apartment gallery where he curates exhibitions and invites guest curators to showcase work. As a non-commercial space, East Manning Projects offers informal and experimental opportunities for artists to exhibit their work and connect with one another. Past exhibitions include Do That Again, which explored the theme of repetition in art, and Best in Show, a celebration of pet-related artwork. The exhibition New Digs took place at Jordan’s Jungle, a plant nursery in Pawtucket. For the show, Lerner collaborated with staff to pair plants with a selection of pots and vases created by Providence-based artists. The gallery has also hosted local artists such as the Arts Book Collective, PVD, for their Geese Goose exhibition and Matthew Napoli, who curated True Ecology.

Mitra Nadjmi is an attorney and compliance leader with expertise in regulatory compliance, contract law, and risk management. She is Vice-President and Board Treasurer for the Providence Biennial. She brings financial oversight, strategic governance, and fiduciary stewardship to board leadership. Mitra has advised healthcare organizations on liability issues and currently leads information security compliance for an education technology company. A highly effective collaborator and negotiator, she excels in aligning compliance frameworks with business objectives, fostering partnerships, and driving successful contract negotiations.

​

Mitra earned a JD from Boston University School of Law and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a dual BA in Public Policy and Sociology. She is a results-driven professional committed to upholding corporate integrity, driving operational excellence, and advancing risk-aware business solutions.

Tehran-born, Providence-based artist Saman Sajasi works primarily in large-scale woodblock printing on silk, using maps as both subject and structure. Her work explores mapping, pattern, feminism, and the cultural tensions between East and West, informed by her experience navigating life between two cultures.

 

Saman’s practice draws on historical and contemporary maps, which she alters, fragments, and reimagines through carved woodblock patterns. By reshaping borders, streets, and geographies, she creates invented landscapes that reflect memory, displacement, and restricted mobility. These works reference places she can no longer access, using mapping as a way to preserve cultural connection and personal history.

 

Saman Sajasi received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has taught for over six years and currently serves as Education Coordinator at the Providence Art Club.​

Lisa Scull is Secretary to the Board of the Providence Biennial and Distinguished Critic, Rhode Island School of Design.

​

She is a designer of woven textiles, focuses on structural/material developments and innovations explored on Jacquard and Dobby looms. Her work in the textile industry investigates and reveals how interacting systems of woven structure, pattern, and color can interact with the physical properties of material to create new visual/tactile experiences involving phenomena of light, shadow, texture, and dimensionality.

​

Lisa taught Jacquard Design and Complex Structures at RISD for 36 years, guiding students in innovative work with woven structure and material, alongside deep conceptual development. Throughout these years she designed and developed textiles for the field of interiors as an independent designer, having previously worked for Jack Lenor Larsen.

​

Since 2022 she has created fine arts work exploring ways of enacting the elements of weaving to capture the overlapping play of forces that occur within the experience of observation. She is investigating how the layering of interferences and shifting conditions brings in a profound depth to the act of seeing, creating work that captures a richness and complexity of visual experience that does not rely on clear separations, simplifications, and reductions. Lisa strives to develop a visual and material language and experience that both supports and questions the intelligence of seeing.

​

photo credit: Kris Craig

Hyperion Çacatzin Yvaire lo Saga is an Afro-Indigenous (Atakapa Ishak) and Louisianan Kréyòl artist, Field Cosmologist, public art curator, and single father based in Providence, Rhode Island. He serves as Public Art Curator and Program Manager at The Avenue Concept, where he develops civic-scale artistic programs that engage ecology, governance, and collective care.

​

Working across social practice, spatial design, writing, and ritual performance, li interdisciplinary practice operates through The Fyrthyr Institute for Unsettling Technologies and advances a long-term artistic and governance framework known as the Fyrthyr Star Rescue Cosmology. Ha work investigates alternative sovereignties and emerging territories shaped by climate instability, centering multispecies jurisprudence, jurisdictional art practice, and a sovereignty of belonging grounded in reciprocal relation among human and more-than-human worlds.

​

As a kinmaker and designer of civic imaginaries, Çacatzin develops projects that prototype ecological care, mutual aid, and new forms of collective responsibility through exhibitions, public programs, research platforms, and participatory ritual. Li work has been presented through residencies and research affiliations including the Partnering Lab, Studio at the Edge of the World, Queer.Archive.Work, Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park, and the Center for Arts, Design + Social Research. Ha writing and creative research appear in Writing the Land: Foodways and Social Justice, the New York University Environmental Law Journal, and other literary and interdisciplinary publications, and he has been invited to speak at gatherings including Rethinking Landscape, SDNow4, the New Moon Mycology Summit, and Spirituality and the Arts.

​

Li holds an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and leads research advancing multispecies jurisprudence and jurisgenerative arts through the Lak Yapùhne Center for Jurisgenerative Arts.