Tatyana Brown

About Tatyana

Tatyana Nieves Brown is an African American and Afro-Puerto Rican researcher, artist, and community organizer who recently graduated from New York University Abu Dhabi. After studying, working, and traveling in nearly 20 countries, she found a passion for the Global South, art as resistance, and Gen-Z’s means of building solidarity across oceans on and off the internet. Her B.A. in Social Research and Public Policy with a minor in African Studies allowed her to research these themes; her art in photography and poetry helps her to untangle them; and her organizing work allows her to advocate for them. She has participated in movements across the Americas, Europe, and Southwest Asia for land rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ liberation. She also led several institutional reckoning initiatives at NYU Abu Dhabi, directed programming at the Black Feminist Project, and co-founded AZIZA, an organization centering Black women and gender expansive people living in Abu Dhabi. After becoming a Truman Scholar and interning with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Tatyana decided her path is to continue fusing political advocacy with international arts and culture institutions advancing critical thought in the everyday public. She intends to pursue a dual M.F.A. and M.A. in Africana Studies in graduate school, with the hope of working in curation and public programs. With feminisms and abolition as her north star, her long-term vision is to use the arts and culture world as a platform to invest in global Gen-Z, our spaces for strategizing, and dreams for social justice—all while dancing salsa and eating at every hole in the wall she can find along the way.