Artists, architects, and historians discuss how our bodies relate to land and space, exploring themes of displacement, rootedness, and identity.

Speakers include Monica Chadha, Renee Royale, and Yasmin Spiro. The conversation is moderated by Dr. Gervais Marsh.

Monica Chadha, AIA, LEED AP, is a visionary architect with over 20 years of experience, known for her innovative approach to community-focused design. As the founder and principal of Civic Projects Architecture, Monica has transformed the Chicago-based firm into a leader in social impact design with a focus on high quality design and long-term strategic thinking.

Acting as the catalyst the firm’s approach is highly participatory to create spaces that resonate with their communities. Her work at Civic Projects spans diverse scales and sectors, from multi-family residential to community centers. Projects include the museum design for the Obama Presidential Center, an adaptive reuse project for Steep Theatre, and an arts center in a converted fire station for Yollocalli. Monica’s early career at the Vastu-Shilpa Foundation with Balkrishna Doshi laid the foundation for her commitment to socially engaged design. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Graham Foundation and has been an Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Monica has a unique understanding of practice as a female and minority architect.  Monica’s dedication to community engagement, innovative design, and mentorship has established her as a leader in social impact design, continually pushing the boundaries of traditional architecture to create inclusive, functional spaces that serve and uplift communities.

Dr. Gervais Marsh is a writer, curator and scholar based in New York City, whose practice meditates on questions of relation, intimacy, and the limits of reconciliation. Guided by a desire to foster emotional resonances through texts, exhibition making, public art and programming, they seek to ignite ongoing reflection rather than definitive answers. They think alongside artists across all mediums, nurturing an interweaving of texts from expansive areas of thought. With a commitment to citation influenced by Black Feminisms, they believe that knowledge is created collectively, and lean into the vulnerability of uncertainty, recognizing that not everything can be known. Affirming modes of meaning making that circumvent the grips of racial capitalism, they prioritize listening, introspection and thoughtful dialogue as critical to intentional study. They received a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and are the Artist Research Manager on the curatorial team at Creative Time, where they manage the Research & Develop Fellowship,  support artist commissions and the Creative Time Summit. They were a recent Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow with the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. They grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, a home that shapes their understanding of self and relationship to the world.

Renee Royale (b. 1990, Brooklyn, NY) is a research-based and process-oriented visual artist whose practice operates at the intersections of media, philosophy, and ecology. Her work examines how film-based artworks and artifacts contribute to and are permanently altered by engagement with ecological degradation and colonial histories. By foregrounding media materiality and its entanglement with ecological systems, she addresses broader questions about temporality, belonging, and the legacies of Black ecologies.

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica by a family from multiple geographies, the interdisciplinary artist Yasmin Spiro approaches cultural identity with a unique perspective. Through her sculptures and installations, she addresses issues of socio-economic imbalance within the framework of urban development and architecture, often through the lens of Caribbean culture. Spiro works in a variety of media from wood, ceramic, natural and synthetic fibers and textiles to performance and video, exploring materiality while investigating the relationship between the body, nature, and the built environment. She attended Pratt Institute and held residences at the Dora Maar Foundation, The Kohler Arts and Industry residency, Vermont Studio Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, and Hyde Park Art Center. She currently resides in Chicago.