Artist / Co-Founding curator, Don’t Delete Art

Savannah Spirit (b. Los Angeles) is a New York based photographer, curator and activist. Savannah’s work has been seen in selected publications such as Forbes, Artsy, The Abolitionist, The Nation, LA Weekly, BOMB, Vice, W, Dazed, Billboard, and Huffington Post. Savannah has been photographing civil rights issues from Occupy Wall Street in 2012 to BLM 2020. A selection of these works are in the collection at the Henry Ford Museum. Savannah’s private collectors reside in Rome, Sao Paolo, London, Miami, New York and Los Angeles. She also is in the permanent collection at Tom Ford's Houston flagship store.

In her series “I Am My Own Muse” Savannah reclaims her body & power on social media through voyeurism and objectification by setting her own body politic. She subverts the power dynamics of photographer and subject. Spirit believes that the body is not inherently sexual, so when her self-portraiture was flagged and banned from social media in 2015, she was disturbed by the implication: Instagram and Facebook labeled her body “unsafe and pornographic.” Unlike the exploitative images served to audiences every day, on every platform, Spirit's work does not depict the sexualized muse of a predatory artist or viewer. She just released her book based on the work in collaboration with Quiet Lunch and their collection of artists books titled The Archive

Since 2008, Savannah has been helping emerging artists showcase their work in exhibitions in real life and online as a curator - from intimate art studio shows - to the independent gallery in New York City.

Artist / Co-founding curator, Don’t Delete Art

Spencer Tunick has been documenting the live nude figure in public, with photography and video, since 1992. Since 1994, he has organized over 100 temporary site-related installations that encompass dozens, hundreds or thousands of volunteers, and his photographs are records of these events. In his early group works, the individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a substance. These group masses, which do not underscore sexuality, often become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy. The work also refers to the complex issue of presenting art in permanent or temporary public spaces.

Spencer Tunick stages scenes in which the battle of nature against culture is played out against various backdrops, from civic center to desert sandstorm. In 2002 he started to work with standing positions for his group formations referencing traditional group portraiture. Now, for some installations, he adds objects that the participants are often holding or wearing and has included body paint. Spencer has and continues to make group installations & photographs elevating awareness of HIV/AIDS, LGBTQ rights, equality and climate change, among other issues.

Spencer Tunick's temporary site-specific photographic installations have been commissioned by the XXV Biennial de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002); Institut Cultura, Barcelona (2003); The Saatchi Gallery (2003); MOCA Cleveland (2004); Vienna Kunsthalle (2008) and MAMBO Museum of Modern Art, Bogota (2016), among others.

Artist / Editor-at-Large, Don’t Delete Art

Emma Shapiro (b. 1988) is an American artist and feminist activist based in Valencia, Spain. She is the founder of the international art project and movement Exposure Therapy, and editor-at-large for the Don’t Delete Art campaign (of the NCAC).

Her work includes the use of video, collage, performance, and photography, while primarily utilizing her own body and image. She seeks to represent the human and female form as a timeless event, ephemeral yet fixed through genealogical and physical memory. She sees her body as a vessel for ancestral history -- a link to family lost to anti-semitism and the Irish Famine -- and thus a primal act of resistance against injustice, and a representation of hope.

Her background as a professional art model allowed her to experience her own form as not only subject but also concept. Through her use of layered video projection, self portraiture, and repeated encounters with her own image, Emma deconstructs and questions the meaning of our bodies, how we know them, and what they could be.

Frustrated with how women's bodies are regularly shamed and sexualized, regardless of intent, context, or consent, Emma began The Exposure Therapy Project which has now reached over 40 countries. Through her activism she seeks to empower women to see their bodies as beautiful, valuable and worth fighting for.

She holds a degree from The Rhode Island School of Design and has received multiple fellowships, awards, and residency opportunities to pursue her artistic and activist work.

Director, Arts & Culture Advocacy Program, NCAC

As Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Arts & Culture Advocacy Program, Elizabeth Larison leads initiatives in advising and educating artists, writers, playwrights, as well as curators, institutions, and other cultural intermediaries, in how to address the presentation of controversial works. Elizabeth is also an active member of Don’t Delete Art, supporting its administration, projects, and with curating the online gallery.

With academic degrees in Human Rights (BA) and Curatorial Studies (MA), and over fourteen years of working with and in support of artists and curators, Elizabeth brings a depth of understanding to the fundamental importance of defending artistic expression. Prior to joining NCAC, Elizabeth worked in curatorial, programmatic, and directorial capacities for arts organizations and venues such as Flux Factory, the Park Avenue Armory, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the 5th Moscow Curatorial Summer School, and apexart.

Program Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)

Jake Neuberger is the Program Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) at PEN America working closely on providing assistance to persecuted artists. He graduated from the George Washington University with a double major in Political Science and International Affairs and minors in Spanish and Sociocultural Anthropology. Before his role with ARC, Jake served as a research and international advocacy intern with AsiLegal, a civil society organization in Mexico City, focusing on marginalized communities and reform within the Mexican prison system. His experience also includes work concerning policy research and advocacy, database and archive management, graphic design, and more. He hopes to further serve communities at risk through direct service and research work.

Communications and Editorial Assistant, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)

Valentine Sargent is the Communications and Editorial Assistant for the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) at PEN America. She grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and has a history of working with international companies in the editing, publishing, and journalism sectors. She holds an MFA from Chatham University where she studied creative writing and was awarded The Fourth River Editorial Fellowship. As a fiction writer, her work has been published in various literary magazines. She is based in New York City.

Independent Consultant / Co-Founding Curator, Don’t Delete Art

Svetlana Mintcheva is a strategy consultant working on issues related to artistic freedom and cultural expression in the United States and internationally. She assists with program activities at the National Coalition Against Censorship (ncac.org), where she was formerly Director of Programs. Dr. Mintcheva writes on emerging trends in censorship, organizes and participates in public discussions and helps mobilize support for individual artists, curators, authors, teachers and librarians. She is the co-editor of Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression (The New Press, 2006) and of Curating Under Pressure: International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity (Routledge, 2020). An academic as well as an activist, Dr. Mintcheva has taught literature and critical theory at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria and at Duke University, NC from which she received her Ph.D. in critical theory in 1999, as well as at New York University. Current projects include an interactive visualization of needs and resources in the field of artistic freedom globally and research on the challenges to the concept of free speech posed by rapidly developing technologies, geopolitical conflicts and political polarization.

Director, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC)

Julie Trébault is the director of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), a project of PEN America. ARC safeguards the right to artistic freedom by connecting threatened artists to support, building a global network of resources for artists at risk, and forging ties between arts and human rights organizations. She has nearly two decades of experience in international arts programming and network-building, including at the Museum of the City of New York, the Center for Architecture, the National Museum of Ethnology in The Netherlands, and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. Trébault holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Management from Sorbonne University, a Master’s Degree in Archeology and Cultural Heritage from the University of Strasbourg, and taught at Fordham University. She is co-author of Freedom of Artistic Expression Through the Lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (Springer, 2021) and A Safety Guide for Artists (ARC, 2021), and has been instrumental in the creation of numerous reports on the state of artistic freedom of expression. These include but are not limited to Arresting Art: Repression, Censorship, and Artistic Freedom in Asia and Art under Pressure: Decree 349 Restricts Creative Freedom in Cuba. Julie and ARC have also been featured in numerous media outlets such as Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, Artnet, BBC News, The Financial Times, Al Jazeera, Diario de Cuba, NPR, among others.

Artist

Gala Garrido (1987) is a Venezuelan visual artist and poet based in Caracas. Her work inquires the tension between fiction and reality through photographic representation. The central axes of her work are power and eroticism from the feminine perspective. She places the identity from a gendered perspective, incorporating the critical reflection on art history, popular culture, and mass media imagery. The connections between photography, the poetic act, and self-representation explore the body as an individual and collective metaphor.

Garrido has exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum of Zulia; Mendoza Gallery; El Hatillo Art Center; Panoramic Emerging Art in Venezuela 2000-2012; TAC Gallery; Trasnocho Cultural; MAD Gallery, Los Galpones; UCAB Cultural Center; No Place Contemporary Art (Ecuador); Féroces International Photography Festival (France), Rhizome (Spain), Festival Hybrid (Spain), among others. Garrido has participated as a speaker in several seminars and panels. She has given workshops about her personal research, photography, and contemporary art
both in Venezuela and internationally. Highlights include the Multinational Workshop (Mexico, 2011), Cisneros Foundation Seminar in the Aula Magna at the Central University of Venezuela (Caracas, 2013), Cultural Space El Palomar (Spain, 2015), Librería La Caníbal (Spain, 2015), among others.