Organization

The conference founder and main organizer, Tijen Tunali is an art historian, artist and curator. She completed her  BFA in studio arts (State University of New York at Binghamton), MA in visual studies (State University of New York at Buffalo) and Ph.D. in contemporary art history, theory and criticism (University of New Mexico, 2015).  Her academic work focuses on democratizing and decolonizing art, culture and space. Her performances, videos, installations and mixed media paintings explore the question of human-nonhuman relationships from the phenomenological,  decolonial, feminist, and post-anthropocentric perspectives.

She has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the aesthetics and politics of contemporary art.  She edited the book Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (Routledge 2021). With Alla Myzelev she edited the book Contemporary Arts Across Political Divides: Difficult Conversations (2023). With Prof. Brian Winkenweder she edited Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History (Routledge, 2025) and with Josepha Wessels she edited Art and Authoritarianism in Southwest Asia and Africa ( I-B Tauris, 2025). 

She also edited special issues on art's relationship to the politics of urban space, published by the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Urban Creativity Journal, Street Arts Journal, and Public Arts Journal.

Currently, she is working on editing Routledge Companion to Art and the City that will come out in 2026.

CONTACT: ttunali.artandthe city@gmail.com