Every Day Is Migrants Day

Join the Segal Center to mark International Migrants Day by showcasing the work of a diverse group of artists, scholars, and organizations with projects that foreground migrant narratives. The presentations will highlight the essential role migrants play in the creation of culture. After the presentations, participants will convene for a panel discussion followed by a Q &A.

Participants include Achilles Kallergis, Director of the Project on Cities and Migration, The New School; Asisé Mateo, Senior Liaison Officer, UN Network on Migration; Alex Strada, multimedia artist, NYC; Yang Sun, choreographer, NYC; and others.

Reception to follow. With the participation of the United Nations Network on Migration.

International Migrants Day, observed globally on December 18, provides an opportunity for us to collectively reflect on the experiences and contributions of the millions of people living outside of their home countries.

It is a day for honoring the myriad ways migrants and displaced people forge and sustain communities across borders. The Segal Center is proud to be part of marking this important day.

Photos: Elyse Mertze @e.mertz.photography 

Achilles Kallergis is an Assistant Professor at the New School for Social Research and the Director of the Cities and Migration Project at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. His research focuses on urbanization, migration, and mobility in rapidly growing cities. Specifically, it explores environmental mobility and how locally-generated data can provide new evidence on mobility patterns and contribute to improving living conditions in low-income destination areas through better provision of housing and services. In his research, he has collaborated with transnational community networks Slum/Shack Dwellers International and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. At Zolberg, he directs the research program on cities and migration and coordinates the Research Platform on Cities and Human Mobility. Previously he was a Research Scholar at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. He has taught at New York University at the New School. His work has been published in academic journals and edited books. 

Asisé Mateo is the Senior Liaison Officer of the United Nations Network on Migration in NY.  She has been involved in the United Nations institutional architecture on migration since the negotiations to adopt the Global Compact for Migration in 2018. Prior to joining the UN, Asisé held various advisory roles on migration and asylum policies in the European Union institutions. She is French and Uruguayan and spends most of her time off in theaters, woods or the mountains.

Alex Strada is a multimedia artist and educator based in New York City. Through film/video, installation, sound and orality, performance, and public art, her socially engaged projects explore collectivity, critical legal studies, and political transformation. Transdisciplinary collaboration is at the core of her practice. Since 2022, she has served as the inaugural Public Artist in Residence with the New York City Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Cultural Affairs, where she is working on a new collaborative public art commission while developing art programming in shelters throughout the city and mutual aid initiatives that serve people experiencing homelessness.

Recent exhibitions include the Queens Museum, NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, CT; Times Square Arts, NYC; and Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy. Strada has received awards and grants from the Graham Foundation, Artadia, NYFA, NYSCA, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, BOMB, New York Times,  and on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show. Strada holds an M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Columbia University and is a studio alumnus of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. She is faculty and the Civic Engagement Fellow at the Pratt Institute.

Yang Sun (she/her) is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, and director, working in the intersection of movement, color, and poetry. Her strong bond with movement begins with improvisation practices in the field, cafeteria, corridor, riverbank, and other non-traditional spaces. Growing up in China and finding her path in the U.S., Yang holds a Summa Cum Laude Bachelor of Arts in Theater and Dance from Amherst College. She is also an alum of the Trinity/LA MAMA Performing Arts Program in New York and the NUOVAX program in Torino, Italy. She is now a 2024-2025 resident artist with Hi-Arts, NY.

As a dancer, she won 3rd place in ImpulsTanz "Freedom is a Dancer" Dance Battle in 2023, Vienna Italy. Yang has worked with choreographers such as Shen Wei, Jonathan Frederick, Alleyne Dance, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Jenna Riegel, Elena Puchol Sola, and Michael Getman. She currently performs with Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hardknocks.

As a choreographer/director, Yang curated a series of public interactive installations called Project 2020 in spring 2021 in Amherst , MA. From 2021 to the present, she presented choreographic works at Hi-Arts, Arts on Site, Kirby Theater, ADF Informal Concert, ACDA Northeast Regional Gala, Queens Outdoor Dance Festival, CraftNYC, among others. In 2024, her dance film Poet was selected by various international festivals including the American Dance Festival Movies by Movers, Portland Dance Film Festival, London Contemporary Exhibition, Cinédanse Sept-Îles Prix Lumière nomination, and more.  On Nov. 7th 2024, she debuted her artist collective Yang Sun & Poets at Hi-Arts with her most recent evening length work The Stranger.