Choreographing Balance | Diane Willow & Sarah Abdel-Jelil

Diane Willow is a multi-modal artist and creative catalyst who creates art by any medium necessary. She calls upon technological modes of extending our senses and the intangible ways that our bodies intuit space and presence to invite people to become choreographers of their experience of art. Since receiving her graduate degree in art from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, she has been artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab, Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, guest professor at the Beijing Film Academy, China. She exhibited at: Apex Art, NYC, MIT Museum, Dayton Art Museum, Boston Harbor, New Media Art Triennial, Beijing, Kaihua Temple, Shanxi, China, and School of Creative Media, Hong Kong. She is Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Participatory Culture, UMN Department of Art.  

Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a Mauritanian-American filmmaker, dancer, and multi-media artist based in Minneapolis, MN. Having grown up in eight different countries in a multicultural home, her artwork explores notions of home, movement, and liminal spaces. She holds a BA in cinema and media studies from Carleton College and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Minnesota ('25) where she is exploring movement, soft focus, and kaleidoscopes. She is a recipient of the 2019/20 MCAD-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Early Career Artists and the 2017 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She has completed residencies at Rosy Simas Danse three thirty one space (Minneapolis, MN), Caldera Arts Center (Sisters, OR), and Château de La Napoule (Mandelieu-La Napoule, France).