THE COURAGE TO BEGIN AGAIN - A PANEL ON CREATIVE REINVENTION
Led and moderated by Lo Harris
Some artists spend their careers refining a single language. Others keep inventing new ones.
The Courage to Begin Again brings together artists whose creative journeys have been shaped by reinvention.
From neuroscience to public art, illustration to floral design, athletics to visual art, and dance to painting, each participant has crossed disciplines, challenged an established identity or discovered an entirely new creative language.
Rather than treating those changes as departures, the panel asks whether reinvention might actually be one of the fundamental conditions of a creative life.
What happens when the medium that once defined you no longer feels sufficient?
How do you begin again when people already know you for something else?
And how much of the original artist remains when the language changes completely?
Through personal stories of risk, uncertainty and transformation, Lo Harris and the participating artists explore the courage required not simply to become successful, but to continue becoming.
The current programme identifies the panel as one of Sunday's principal public events and describes reinvention across disciplines as its central theme.
MODERATOR
Lo Harris
Lo Harris is an artist, illustrator, creative director and storyteller whose own trajectory makes her particularly suited to lead a conversation about creative reinvention.
Originally trained in journalism at Northwestern University, Harris developed a multidisciplinary creative practice spanning illustration, animation, visual storytelling and creative direction. Her distinctive visual language centers bold, expressive characters and explores themes including identity, confidence, representation and personal agency.
Her work has moved fluidly between independent artistic practice, publishing, cultural storytelling and collaborations with major organizations and brands.
For The Courage to Begin Again, Harris brings not only the perspective of a moderator but that of an artist who understands what it means to allow a creative identity to evolve rather than remain fixed.
PANELISTS
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya · Brooklyn
A neuroscientist turned multidisciplinary artist, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya has built a practice spanning sculpture, textiles, murals and large-scale public installations.
Her work explores cultural identity, gender, belonging and social change, often taking art beyond traditional exhibition spaces and placing it directly into public life.
Her widely recognized public art has contributed to conversations around Asian American identity and representation, while her work has been presented at institutions including MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Her journey from science to contemporary art opens one of the panel's central questions: does changing disciplines mean abandoning what came before, or finding another language through which to investigate the same questions?
Shanée Benjamin · Brooklyn
Shanée Benjamin is an illustrator, art director and creative whose practice has expanded from making work to making space for others.
Alongside collaborations with Google, Meta, Adobe and Old Navy, Benjamin founded Studio 1514, a Brooklyn community space conceived as a gathering place for queer artists and creatives.
Her trajectory introduces another form of reinvention: the artist becoming host, organizer and community-builder.
Rather than simply asking what an artist can make, Benjamin's practice asks what an artist can make possible for others.
D'Ara Nazaryan · Los Angeles
Originally known for commercial illustration and collaborations with clients including Google, Sephora, Postmates and Refinery29, D'Ara Nazaryan later translated her visual instincts into an entirely different material: flowers.
Her floral practice transforms color, composition and form into living, three-dimensional arrangements.
Moving from illustration to botanical design, Nazaryan offers a fascinating example of how an artistic language can survive a radical change of medium.
Laci Jordan · Los Angeles
Laci Jordan offers a different answer to the idea of reinvention.
Rather than moving from one discipline to another, she inhabits several simultaneously.
Her practice spans illustration, filmmaking, creative direction, writing, design, architecture and cultural storytelling, alongside collaborations with brands including Nike, Disney, Adobe and Jordan Brand.
Jordan represents the contemporary creative who refuses the pressure to choose a single professional identity.
Her work asks whether reinvention always requires leaving something behind, or whether a creative life can expand by allowing multiple identities to coexist.
Dwight White II · Chicago
Before becoming an artist, Dwight White II was a Division I athlete.
A career-ending football injury abruptly changed the trajectory he had imagined for himself and ultimately led him toward visual art.
Today, White works across painting, muralism, public art and community engagement, developing projects that combine storytelling with civic and cultural participation.
His journey from physical discipline to visual expression gives The Courage to Begin Again perhaps its most literal example of starting over: what happens when the future you prepared for disappears, and another has to be imagined?
Marc Chicoine · Brooklyn
Marc Chicoine came to visual art through movement.
With roots in dance and particularly House, Chicoine has expanded his creative practice into contemporary visual art while retaining a deep relationship with rhythm, physicality and performance.
His work considers what happens when an artist carries the knowledge of one medium into another.
Rather than abandoning dance, Chicoine's evolving practice suggests that our previous creative lives remain present, quietly informing whatever comes next.