Bio

Public Art as Social Intervention

Affirming Collaboration

Currently residing in Iqaluit, Nunavut (in Eastern Canadian Arctic), Devora Neumark, PhD, is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator, and community-engaged practitioner with over 30 years of contemplative practice. Neumark is a Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg and 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 Office 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 the relationship between trauma from forced displacement and aesthetics in the built environment / 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 is also continuing to develop 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.