Asha Iman Veal is Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her exhibitions Beautiful Diaspora/You Are Not the Lesser Part and LOVE: Still Not the Lesser brought together cross-diasporic conversations between global artists Xyza Cruz Bacani, Widline Cadet, Cog•nate Collective, Sunil Gupta, Kelvin Haizel, Ngadi Smart, and more; and celebrations of love and desire by Jorian Charlton, Jess T. Dugan, Mari Katayama, and others. She has also curated exhibitions for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the MSU Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum by Zaha Hadid (forthcoming), and Hyde Park Art Center. Her biennial exhibition and radio-broadcast public program series RAISIN vol 1. commissioned several new artworks and generated community among more than 30 global artists including Işıl Eğrikavuk, Amanda Williams, and Tintin Wulia; and was featured by international cultural organizations such as Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam and Istituto Italiano di Cultura Chicago. She has separately worked on projects and arts research in New York, Tokyo, Havana, Vietnam, Edinburgh, Darby/London, Berlin, Juárez, and Chicago.
Asha Iman is also Associate Professor Adj at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy, where she has expanded direct curricular links to global arts, culture, and multimedia discourses by inviting and hosting more than 100 virtual and in-person discussions with guests such as Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, the late Bisi Silva, and ballet dancer, movement adviser for robot technology David Ennio Minor. Additionally, Veal bridges interdisciplinary relationships between the arts, government, corporate and nonprofit sectors through her role as a Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action (EU/UK/US), member of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network (Global Table), and a Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Emerging Leader. She is also a board member of Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.
