MONICA HUERTA

the::sense::archive is a collaborative curatorial experiment Ava Shirazi and Monica founded in 2023. the::sense::archive is not a thing or a place, but a way of working to un-learn and remake aesthetic inquiry. Our core mission is to center artists’ practices. After that, we let morphing sensoria take the lead.

In the near future, we are curating exhibitions of archivally-based contemporary art for the Princeton University Art Museum (Spring 2026) and the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College (Spring 2027).

WOC* STUDENT-FACULTY CORNERS

Monthly gatherings offering a space on campus for women* of color students and faculty to gather around topics of interest to students, including navigating campus, graduate school, mentor-mentee relationships, and interdisciplinary research. Hosted by Rockefeller College and New College West at Princeton from 2018-2023.

ORGANIZING STORIES

Organizing Stories created new avenues of exchange between Princeton University and community-based, social-justice work to support students’ exploration of a scholarly-activist praxis from 2020-2023.

PERSONAL LIMITS

A virtual conversation series -- presented by Magical Habits, Labyrinth Books, and Princeton Public Library -- about contemporary experiments in personal-critical writing. Guests included Lili Loofbourow, Namwali Serpell, Sarah Chihaya, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and other incredible folks from 2021-2022. 

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POETICS OF MATERIAL LIFE

An experimental symposium bringing historians, economists, poets, and critics to think together about what the study of poetics, broadly construed, contributes to our evolving understandings of modern market societies at Princeton University in November 2019. Co-organized with world historian C. N. Biltoft.

SPIRIT PICTURES

A symposium about 19th century spirit photography at Duke University co-organized with Cheryl Spinner in March 2016. Invited guests: Louis Kaplan, Dana Luciano, Shawn Michelle Smith.

IMPOSSIBLE ACCOUNTS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY

An art exhibit in East Duke Hall at Duke University featuring students’ final projects for “Imagining Slavery and Gender,” which Professor Huerta taught at Duke in 2015.