Sage Ni’Ja Whitson – inaugural permanent chair (they/them) – is an international multiple award-winning Queer Transgender artist, writer, and futurist, noted by Brooklyn Magazine as a culture influencer and the Park Avenue Amory as a “trailblazing XR artist to know”. They are a Herb Alpert/MacDowell Fellow, United States Artist Fellow, Creative Capital and two-time “Bessie” Awardee who engages anti-disciplinarity through a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual in science, technology, and art. Their multi-form works on dark matter and dark energy, via The Unarrival Experiments, have been commissioned across the world and media, including recently at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Black Speculative Arts Movement – Denver, and an upcoming solo exhibition at the California African American Museum. Their manuscript, Transtraterrestrial: Dark Matter in Black Divinities is slated to be published by Wesleyan University Press, 2025. Whitson is a sought-after speaker, consultant, presenter, and masterclass facilitator, whose offerings have been shared among notable institutions and arts organizations: Princeton, Cornell, LAX Festival, Movement Research, 2020 keynote of the Collegium for African Diasporic Dance conference, and UNESCO.
