Scheherazade Tillet

Scheherazade Tillet is a photo-based artist, curator, and feminist activist who explores the themes of Blackness, play, freedom, trauma, and healing. She is currently the Executive Director of A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit she founded with her sister, Salamishah Tillet, in 2003. She uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women and has dedicated her life’s work to Black girls. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Project of Empty Space, Columbia University, and Rutgers University-Newark, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Cut, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, Teen Vogue, ELLE Decor, Gagosian Quarterly, and Vice. She was the lead organizer of the #MuteRKelly campaign in Chicago, and curator of the Rekia Boyd memorial project. In 2022, she co-curated the Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility, the largest exhibition on Black girls and genderqueer youth, and was recently awarded by The Field Foundation and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her exemplary leadership work. She is a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa’s Center for Gender, Race, and Class. Tillet is globally recognized for raising public consciousness, changing cultural narratives, and advancing policy.