Jennifer Ifil-Ryan is a New York based multidisciplinary artist, arts educator, and systems disruptor. Grounded in community, Jen’s two decades of socially engaged work is activated through the transference of creative agency through artistic expression. Working largely within schools and cultural spaces, Jen has produced large scale participatory arts initiatives that have touched over 200,000 students. Further broadening the dissemination of creative power, Jen has produced social interventions such as the #INEED Project, engaging over 3,000 intergenerational participants in a visual dialogue highlighting collective care, compassion and generosity; Love Letters to the People Series featuring over 1,000 paintings that affirm belonging and acceptance. These projects have been aptly positioned in communal spaces such as Montefiore and Washington Square Park, Columbus Circle, Harvard school of the Arts, and the NYC MTA subway system. Driven by the pursuit of collective well being, Jen has  led transformative structural changes through her work at The High Line, The Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, the Queens Museum, and Development Without Limits. 

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In tandem with her resolution for social-engagement and cultural connectivity, Jen’s own body of work cerebrates intersectional identities as in relation to race and queerness. The materiality of her work challenges notions of socially imposed standards of worth. Jen’s work is an inquiry and practice of unlearning and reconstruction of self as a form of healing.