How Healing Happens: At the Intersection of Art and Care
Featuring Rashida Bumbray, Patrisse Cullors, Staci K. Haines, and Prentis Hemphill
January 20 and 21, 2026
Free Admission
RSVP for each event at the links below.
Timed as a one-year remembrance of the L.A. fires, How Healing Happens is a multi-part series featuring performances, workshops, and conversations with artists and somatic practitioners that explore the transformative power of the arts as a vehicle for healing. The series highlights emergent perspectives on how artistic practices can nurture personal and collective well-being and provide space for reflection and connection.
A Lineage of (F)Light:
A Collaborative Performance by Patrisse Cullors and Rashida Bumbray Featuring Vocalist Li(sa E.) Harris
Tuesday, January 20, at 6:30 p.m.
USC Fisher Museum of Art, Fisher Courtyard
INFO & RSVP
Through movement, voice, ritual, and sonic textures, A Lineage of (F)Light weaves the threads of past and present to illuminate Biddy Mason’s radical legacy. The first-ever collaborative performance between groundbreaking artists Patrisse Cullors and Rashida Bumbray will incorporate a multi-hyphenate performance—part procession, part invocation, part resistance—featuring vocalist Li(sa E.) Harris. Grounded in Black feminist traditions of care, survival, and remembrance, it calls forth the names of Black women who have built cities, healed nations, and dreamed freedom into being, yet remain unrecognized in dominant histories.
Somatic Grounding Workshop with Staci K. Haines
Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 12 to 1:30 p.m.
USC Fisher Museum of Art
INFO & RSVP
Join somatics and social justice practitioner Staci K. Haines for a workshop on embodied transformation. Participants will explore what embodiment and practice have to do with activism and social change, with relationship and complexity, and with healing from the impacts of trauma and oppression. This interactive workshop will include somatic practices, body awareness processes, and good conversations.
The Intersection of Art and Care: Patrisse Cullors and Prentis Hemphill in Conversation, Moderated by Rashida Bumbray
Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 6:30 p.m.
Gin D. Wong Conference Center, Harris Hall, Room 101
INFO & RSVP
Timed as a one-year remembrance of L.A.’s wildfires, this extraordinary panel will explore the transformative power of the arts as a vehicle for healing. Renowned abolitionist artist and author Patrisse Cullors and New York Times–bestselling author Prentis Hemphill, in a potent conversation moderated by New York–based curator/critic Rashida Bumbray, will discuss how art and embodiment address trauma, build community, foster personal and collective healing of wounds created by structural violence, and lead to a future rooted in transformative justice.
ARTIST & SPEAKER BIOS
Photo: Rayon Richards
RASHIDA BUMBRAY
Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer. In 2022, she curated Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a three-day global symposium focused on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor as part of Simone Leigh’s exhibition Sovereignty at the American Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. As Director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations from 2015 to 2022, Bumbray spearheaded the development of the foundations’ first global program dedicated to advancing diverse artistic practices and strengthening locally led cultural spaces globally.
Photo: Jamal-Akul Marshall
PATRISSE CULLORS
Patrisse Cullors is an artist and abolitionist from Los Angeles who has long been drawn to the unseen and is inspired by the beauty of freedom found in different planes and dimensions. A graduate of the USC Roski School of Art and Design’s MFA program, Cullors draws from her background as a visual and performing artist to leverage the power of art and community organizing to catalyze social change. As a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and founder of The Center For Art and Abolition, she has popularized a new phrase for artists and cultural workers: abolitionist aesthetics.
STACI K. HAINES
For 30 years, Staci K. Haines has been experimenting at the intersections of personal and social transformation through the work of somatics, trauma healing, embodied leadership, and transformative justice. She is the author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice and Healing Sex: A Mind Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma. Haines is an innovator in the field of somatics, focusing on how it can bring transformative capacity to social and climate justice movements and help heal the impacts of trauma and oppression.
LI(SA E.) HARRIS
Li(sa E.) Harris is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and researcher who uses voice, theremin, electronics, movement, improvisation, and new media to explore healing as performance and practice. Trained as a classical voice/opera singer, she is a certified facilitator of DEEP LISTENING®, the sonic philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Harris made her Carnegie Hall debut in Pauline at 90 (2023) and returned in 2025 as a soloist in Cosmic Music: The Celestial Songs of Alice Coltrane. She is the founder and creative director of the socially engaged creative arts studio, Studio Enertia.
PRENTIS HEMPHILL
Prentis Hemphill is the bestselling author of What It Takes to Heal, a groundbreaking exploration of healing, justice, and transformation. A therapist, somatics teacher, facilitator, political organizer, and writer, Hemphill is also the founder of the Embodiment Institute and a leading voice in embodied leadership and collective healing. For over a decade, Hemphill has worked with individuals and organizations through their most challenging moments of change—navigating leadership transitions, conflict, and the alignment of practice with values. Grounded in an embodied approach, their work ensures that our intentions aren’t just ideas, but are fully lived, felt, and practiced.
Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Sherin Guirguis (Professor of Practice, USC Roski School of Art and Design). Co-sponsored by the USC Roski School of Art and Design.
