Events

Between funding challenges, AI saturation, shortening attention spans, and political volatility, artmaking can feel more challenging than ever. So why do it? 

Dean of the School of the Arts Sarah Cole leads a conversation with four trailblazing artists on the essential impulse of artmaking and the enduring importance of art, even in the face of a changing world. 

This event is open to invited applicants and CUID-holders.

Panelists:

Adjunct Assistant Professor Hannah Lillith Assadi '13 is the author of the Women's Prize long-listed novel Paradiso 17 (Knopf 2026), inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father. Her debut novel Sonora (Soho 2017) received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her second novel The Stars Are Not Yet Bells (Riverhead 2022) was named a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. She is also the co-editor of an anthology of the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, which will be published by Everyman’s Library/ Knopf in November 2026. She teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute. In 2018, she was named a '5 under 35' honoree by the National Book Foundation.

Laurena Finéus '24 is a Haitian-Canadian artist born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. Her practice explores representations of Black geographies, maroon ideologies, and migratory patterns. She investigates themes of statelessness, land, and emotional fugitivity, beginning with the Haitian migration crisis that has unfolded from the 1980s to the present.

Finéus holds an MFA from Columbia University (2024) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa (2020). Her work has been exhibited at The Shed, New York (2025); the Brooklyn Museum (2024); the Hudson River Museum (2023); the Ottawa Art Gallery (2021); and Art Mûr (2019), among others.

Her work is part of several private and public collections internationally, including the Canada Council Art Bank,  RBC Bank, the City of Ottawa Art Collection, Manulife Global, and Google. She has received numerous awards, including the 2024 Saunderson Prize, the 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Grant, the 2022–2023 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, and the 2022 Ottawa Arts Council IBPOC Emerging Artist Award, .

Finéus’s work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Essence, Hyperallergic, Forbes, and Sheer Worldwide Magazine. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

Michel Hausmann '14 is a Venezuelan-born theater director, producer, and writer. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Miami New Drama, the largest bilingual theater company in the country and resident and operator of the historic Colony Theatre on Miami Beach. Under his artistic leadership, Miami New Drama has produced world premiere plays that are as diverse, multicultural, and multilingual as Miami’s extraordinary community.

Alexander (Sasha) Molochnikov '25 is a director and writer of theater, film, TV, opera, and ballet. His Bolshoi ballet The Seagull won a Golden Mask Award. After working at the Moscow Art Theater and creating hit works like Tell Her and Monastery, he left Russia for Columbia University after opposing the war in Ukraine. His latest award-winning, Extremist, is inspired by the true story of Sasha Skochilenko, a Russian artist and musician who was arrested and imprisoned for seven years for replacing four price tags with anti-war messages. It explores the personal cost of dissent expressed on a sticker in a time of rising censorship and authoritarianism. The short was filmed in Europe with a Russian cast and crew, many of whom, including three time Camerimage-winning cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, are living in exile for their safety. Alexander's latest project is  Seagull: True Story, a new adaptation of the classic Chekhov play which will premiere at The Public Theater on March 22, 2026.