Jessica Brown

Jessica Brown is a multidisciplinary multimedia spectacle generator, Afrofuturist mermaid cosmonaut explorer, community builder and creative connector creating disruptive and discursive work centered in social justice, diversity and equity. Known around town as Lady J, she’s a visual and performance artist, activist, designer, entertainer, musician, producer, party thrower and world builder—curated and unscripted. She operates through a lens of joy and justice in order to empower, uplift and encourage discourse across audiences. She is fierce and unapologetically Black.

In her work, she uses multiple mediums and mixes music, light, sound, props and pop culture images from her childhood—offering a heavy dose of nostalgia in order to connect with her audience. Her work amuses all of the senses and, as a means to educate and inform, offers layers of engagement in order to engage in ways that feel comfortable to the viewer.

An associate professor of industrial design at RISD, she uses a liberatory design framework, creating flexible environments that facilitate safe and inclusive space for all people to explore, investigate, reflect and discuss intersectional topics of race, class, gender, environment, politics and human rights through the lens of her own lived experience as a Black woman of African American heritage living and thriving in the US.

She is stationed in the Industrial Design department and also teaches in Graphic Design, offering courses in toy design, activism and social engagement. She serves on the college’s Board of Social Equity & Inclusion (SEI) and Community Engagement Steering Committee, to name a few of her community engagements. In her classes, she has a high level of expectation from her students—mainly that they be good community members and supportive of one another, critical thinkers who keenly observe/examine/question everything around them, risk takers willing to fail repeatedly, and empathic people who contribute greatly to the world.

Sháńdíín Brown

Sháńdíín Brown is a curator, creative and citizen of the Navajo Nation from Arizona. Joining the RISD Museum in 2021, she was the first Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art. She leads the museum’s America’s Research Initiative, a program supporting the study of Native North American museology, art and works of cultural heritage. While at the RISD Museum, she co-curated Being and Believing in the Natural World: Perspectives from the Ancient Mediterranean, Asia, and Indigenous North Americ (2022–23) and Take Care (2022–23). Brown’s newest exhibition, Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh (2023–24), explores the intersections of Diné apparel design, weaving and womanhood. She has co-taught in RISD’s Apparel Design department, where she is a recurring critic.

Brown’s research interests include multitemporal Native North American fashion and jewelry, global contemporary Indigenous art and Indigenous feminism and futurism. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned her BA in Anthropology and Native American Studies and minored in Environmental Studies. Previously she held positions at the Heard Museum, Hood Museum of Art, Penn Museum, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) and School for Advanced Research (SAR) Indian Arts Research Center (IARC). Her jewelry can be viewed on Instagram @T.Begay.Designs.