Past Residents
2022 - 2023 Fellow, /womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh l. drake
/womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh l. drake
/womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh l. drake (they // them) is an unapologetic queer, black, trans non-binary baddie & abolitionist organizer, who has been reimagining life in Chicago for the past 8 years. they are a mixed media drawing and sculpting artist & writer, who is often laughing, chanting or freestyling healing hymns.
/womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh uses art to tenderly unearth trauma & imagine new worlds where we strive to put things as right as possible to heal. their work has a strong sense of texture & movement, while utilizing earth-based materials. /womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh works in collaboration with radical grassroots organizations and creates public installations to ensure their work is rooted in community.
their work has been featured in Gallery 400, Depaul Art Museum, Hairpin Arts Center & numerous Chicago grassroots abolitionist campaigns & actions, on top of being archived at the Newberry Library.
/womenscenter/feminist-in-residence/current-resident/jireh at the June 2022 Garden Party:
2021 - 2022 Feminist in Residence Fellow,
Je Shawna Wholley
Feminist in Residence 2020-2021
We are pleased to welcome Hankyeol Song as the inaugural fellow in our new Feminist in Residence program.
Hankyeol Song is an artist-filmmaker, writer, scholar, and community organizer. Her research interests include film/media, postcolonialism, feminism, and Queer Theory. Song is the co-founder of the Ana Cha collective, a coalition of scholars, artists, and filmmakers who interrogate the cultural world through a critical feminist lens. She was politically activated through campus anti-rape activism and is currently active as a member of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (). Hanky is involved with the campaign to free incarcerated CPD torture survivors (CFIST) and to stop police crimes (SPC/CPAC).
Song joins our community with a wealth of ideas for working with student activists and building ties between the Women’s Center and spaces of “feminist collectivity and liberation politics” across Chicago. Song also will be engaging the communities through film and capturing the experience in documentary form.