Free Artist Panel: The Future is Collective (Southern Exposure)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Nilooufar Khonsari

Please join us for a conversation between author Niloufar Khonsari; Sholeh Asgary, curator of the exhibition Love Letters to Aliens; and Sharmi Basu, Executive Director of Vital Arts; about the ways in which we, as artists and arts workers, can show up for each other at this moment. In conjunction with the exhibition at Southern Exposure and in partnership with Medicine for Nightmares, we will unpack ideas from Khonsari’s new book The Future is Collective.

The Future Is Collective offers a practical and visionary guide for transforming how we lead, work, and govern together. Drawing on two decades of advocacy and real-world experience, it speaks to the challenges leaders face in times of growth and uncertainty, and uplifts practices rooted in clarity, care, and community.

Niloufar Khonsari (she/they) is a Bay Area consultant, facilitator, and former movement lawyer with deep experience supporting groups to build more just, caring, and participatory ways of working together. They co-founded Pangea Legal Services, a worker-led immigrant justice organization, and now lead Bala Rising, advancing organizational development, capacity building, and collective leadership. Outside of work, Nilou finds joy in dancing, poetry, the outdoors, time with loved ones, and raising her radiant young daughter.

Sharmi Basu brings to their executive directorship of Vital Arts a deep understanding of the challenges artists face in sustaining their lives and practice. They are committed to creating inclusive environments and promoting social justice, diversity in arts, and mutual aid. They played a crucial role in organizing community responses to the Ghost Ship fire, including raising and distributing funding to the friends and family of Ghost Ship victims and survivors. As an artist, activist, and administrator, they have been actively engaged for over a decade in managing operations, events, fundraising and finances at a variety of local organizations including Southern Exposure, St. James Infirmary, SFMOMA, and Gray Area Foundation. Sharmi Basu serves on the board of several organizations, including Safer DIY Spaces, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, and California FM. They hold an MFA from Mills College and a double BA from UC Davis in Political Science: Public Policy and Technocultural Studies.

As an artist and activist, Sharmi Basu hosts workshops internationally centered on sound healing, decolonization, transformative justice, and technical skill shares. They have performed throughout the US, Canada, and Europe, including SFMOMA, YBCA, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Cluster Festival, Ableton Loop, the International Symposium of Improvised Music, Soundwave SF, Human Resources LA, and the Kitchen NY. They co-founded the groundbreaking Bay Area Black and Brown Punk Festival, the Multiverse is Illuminated. Sharmi Basu also serves as volunteer Executive Director of Ratskin Records, an archival imprint that supports decolonial artists in the Bay Area.

Sholeh Asgary (b. Tehran, Iran) is an artist whose practice engages sound, hybrid art forms, and performance to investigate, memorialize, and express the complexities of joy and survival inherent in diasporic and refugee experiences. Asgary’s primary material and deepest conceptual concern is sound. Through site-specific installations, sound sculptures, performances, archival projects, and collective collaborations, her work challenges colonial assumptions about what is heard, proposing new futures.

This event is part of the exhibition Love Letters to Aliens, on view at Southern Exposure through February 7, 2026.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.