Bio

Public Art as Social Intervention

Affirming Collaboration

Advancing climate justice and community resilience by centering beauty in the built environment.

Devora Neumark, PhD, is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator, and community-engaged practitioner who uses participatory art to address displacement and advance climate justice and community resilience. Recently relocated to Ottawa after seven transformative years in Iqaluit, Nunavut in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, Neumark brings over 30 years of experience spanning academia, policy work, and creative engagement, grounded in contemplative practice.

Neumark was a Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg, where they explored aesthetic dimensions of refugee housing in Germany, and is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sustainability & Social Justice at Clark University.

Certified as a Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner by the Yale School of Public Health, Neumark is in the process of completing the Wilfrid Laurier University's Graduate Diploma in Emergency Management.

From July 2003 to May 2021, Neumark was a faculty member at the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program, where they co-founded the Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. A Canadian federal employee since 2018, Neumark has experience as an Economic Development Officer and Senior Strategic Policy Analyst with the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and as a Senior Analyst/Researcher with the Department of Justice Canada's Indigenous Rights and Relations Portfolio (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Implementation Secretariat).

Their PhD research, titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explored this intersection further, examining how trauma from forced displacement intersects with aesthetics in the built environment and the intentional beautification of home. In collaboration with Stephanie Acker, MPA, Neumark has published a related series of working papers and policy briefs:

At present, Neumark continues to collaborate with Stephanie Acker and continues developing two bodies of artwork: one focuses on wellness and the cultivation of joy as a radical practice; the other addresses environmental trauma and climate justice. Their artwork has been exhibited most recently in South Korea and Switzerland, where their scholarly pursuits inform their artistic projects. Throughout their work, Neumark is guided by an unwavering belief that beauty in the built environment is not a luxury, but a vital tool for resilience and justice.