VLC Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is excited to announce the Vera List Center Forum 2026, presented at The New School on October 9 & 10. An annual international convening of key participants in the field of art and politics, this year’s VLC Forum is organized within the framework of the center’s two-year focus theme, Matter of Intelligence, a multiplatform research program exploring the origins and implications of intelligence across species, systems, and societies through art and critical inquiry. The VLC Forum 2026 honors Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino, recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, through an exhibition of her prize-winning project, ¿História Natural?. Over two days, the program convenes and celebrates artists, curators, writers, scholars, and technologists to explore the many forms intelligence can take. 

Anchored by her landmark artist book of the same name, Rosana Paulino: ¿História Natural? is presented at The New School, October 9–November 1, 2026. The exhibition traces Paulino’s critical examinations of the entanglements between science, race, knowledge, and power. Published in 2016, ¿História Natural? challenges and transgresses the foundations of “natural history” and the claims to objectivity that underlie Eurocentric science’s influence on racial imaginaries, the dispossession and extraction of life on the African continent, and their aftermath in Brazil and across the diaspora. Bringing together new works and a selection of recent paintings, drawings, prints, notebooks, and rarely seen materials drawn directly from the artist’s studio, the exhibition showcases her expansive practice as an artist and educator, situating her work's significance in Brazil and in an international context. 

Alongside Paulino, the VLC Forum 2026 also assembles the Jane Lombard Fellows, who are nominated finalists for the prize: They are the Nepalese artist collective ArTree Nepal for Tikā Chedna Angana; New York-based artist Stephanie Dinkins for Conversations with Bina48; Hawaiian and Samoan digital media theorist and poet Jason Edward Lewis from Canada for Abundant Intelligences; and Finnish artist Jenna Sutela for nimiia cétiï. 

Other participants include Neta Bomani, Prabal Gurung, Mashinka Hakopian, Kite, Diane Lima, Jessica Lynne, Moniki, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Elvia Wilk, and Robbie Wing.

See the full VLC Forum schedule below. All programs are free and open to the public with registration.

The Vera List Center Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence is presented as part of the VLC’s 2025–2027 Focus Theme “Matter of Intelligence.” It is curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira and convened with the support of Tabor Banquer, Re’al Christian, and Adrienne Umeh.

VLC Forum 2026 program (EDT)

Friday, October 9, VLC Forum day one 
Various locations, The New School

4–5:30pm: Black Feminist Study Group I
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries—Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design
66 5th Avenue at 13th Street
Hosted within Rosana Paulino’s exhibition ¿História Natural?, the Black Feminist Study Group convenes across four sessions, featuring invited writers reading from paired texts by seminal authors, followed by a collective discussion. Hosted by Re’al Christian, VLC Assistant Director of Editorial Initiatives, writer and editor Jessica Lynne leads session I, with a text by Beatriz Nascimento.

5:30–6:30pm: Exhibition opening—Rosana Paulino: ¿História Natural?
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries—Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design
66 5th Avenue at 13th Street 

6:30–8pm: Prize ceremony and conversation
Tishman Auditorium, University Center
63 Fifth Avenue, 1st Floor
Opening with a welcome by university president Joel Towers and an introduction by Carin Kuoni, VLC Senior Director/Chief Curator, the prize ceremony features a conversation between Rosana Paulino, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Diane Lima. They discuss their ongoing collaboration, situating Paulino’s practice within broader inquiries into epistemic violence and the role of art in challenging its effects.

8–10pm: Dream Futures: VLC Community Dinner
The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Commons Cafeteria, University Center
63 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor
This year’s VLC Community Dinner explores dreaming, divining, and futuretelling as forms of intelligence, featuring a new performance by Oglála Lakȟóta artist and VLC Board member Kite, Tȟokátakiya Owótȟaŋla na Awíyuškiŋphiča [A Just and Joyful Future] (For the Vera List Center), with soloist Robbie Wing and an ensemble of New School students; Campfire Cards, an artistic provocation by Jane Lombard Fellow Stephanie Dinkins; and a DJ set by Moniki.

Saturday, October 10, VLC Forum day two
Starr Foundation Hall, University Center, The New School
63 Fifth Avenue, Lower Level

11 am–12pm: Keynote lecture—Chus Martínez, “What Should We Do with Intelligence? What Forms of Intelligence Are Still Producing the Social?”
Chus Martínez, chair of the 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize jury, delivers the forum’s keynote lecture, examining intelligence not a thing we possess, but a capacity that we activate. A capacity to perceive, interpret, relate, respond, imagine, and give form. The lecture includes welcome remarks and conversation with Eriola Pira, VLC Curator and Programs Director.

12–5pm: Conversations with the 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Fellows

12–1pm: Jenna Sutela in Conversation with Elvia Wilk
Jenna Sutela joins writer and collaborator Elvia Wilk to discuss Sutela’s prize-nominated project, nimiia cétiï—a work that brings together biological organisms and neural networks to imagine new forms of language and relation. 

1pm: Lunch

2–3pm: Stephanie Dinkins in conversation with Neta Bomani
Stephanie Dinkins revisits her landmark project Conversations with Bina48 in a dialogue with abolitionist and educator Neta Bomani. The two discuss Dinkins’ ongoing exchange with the social robot Bina48, along with technological future histories, Afro-now-ism, and more-than-human knowledge. 

3–4pm: Jason Edward Lewis in conversation with Mashinka Hakopian
Jason Edward Lewis speaks with scholar, artist, and 2025–2027 Vera List Center Fellow Mashinka Hakopian about Abundant Intelligences, an Indigenous-led research program and network. Drawing on anticolonial approaches to technology, their conversation asks what becomes possible when AI is designed for human and non-human kin alike.

4–5pm: ArTree Nepal in conversation with Prabal Gurung
ArTree Nepal members Lavkant Chaudhary, Mekh Limbu, and Subas Tamang are joined by Nepali American fashion designer Prabal Gurung for a conversation on ArTree’s Tika Chhedna Angana (“A Garden of Body Markings”)—a project centering on Indigenous tattooing practices and embodied knowledge in Nepal.

About the VLC Forum
The Vera List Center Forum is an annual international convening of leading voices in the field of art and politics and a signature program of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. A platform for in-depth research and shared learning into the VLC’s biennial Focus Themes, the VLC Forum showcases exemplary politically engaged art practices from around the world, including those of the Vera List Center Fellows, the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice recipient, and the Jane Lombard Fellows. The VLC Forum was established with, and continues to be supported by, an endowment gift from VLC board member Jane Lombard. Learn more about the VLC Forum and the Vera List Center on our website.