Biography
T. J. Demos is an award-winning writer on contemporary art, global politics and ecology. He is Professor in Art History, Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, as well as founder and director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at University of California, Santa Cruz.
His research focuses on the intersection of visual culture, radical politics and political ecology, particularly where art, activism and visual culture oppose racial, colonial, and extractive capitalism, and where they work towards social, economic and environmental justice.
Demos has curated a number of exhibitions and film screening series, including Beyond the World's End, Santa Cruz' Museum of Art and History (2020–2021); Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas, Nottingham Contemporary (2015); Specters: A Ciné-Politics of Haunting, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2014); and Beyond the World’s End, Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz (2019).
He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing (Duke, 2020); Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and Political Ecology (Sternberg, 2016); and Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today, (Sternberg, 2017).
He was a Getty Research Institute Fellow (2020), working on a new book project on radical futurisms, and directed the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar research project Beyond the End of the World (2019–2021).
Demos has served on the Art Journal editorial board (2004–2008), and currently sits on the editorial board of Third Text, and on the advisory board of Grey Room.
He earned a PhD from Columbia University (2000). Born in 1966, Demos currently lives in the US.
SAF participation:
March Meeting 2022