Alison Cornyn is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator. She is a founding partner and the Creative Director of Picture Projects Studio Cornyn is also the Creative Director of the Guantanamo Public Memory Project and States of Incarceration. She was a

TED TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depa ...

Resident in 2017 and gave a TED Talk that was released in November 2017. In addition, Cornyn teaches at SVA, in the Design for Social Innovation MA program. She has also taught at Parsons

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

's Humanities Action Lab and New York University's interactive Telecommunications Program. Her work revolves around combining traditional media and modern technology to foster dialogue concerning social justice issues, especially around the criminal justice system. She and her partner,

Gilles Peress Gilles Peress (born December 29, 1946) is a French photographer and a member of Magnum Photos. Peress began working with photography in 1970, having previously studied political science and philosophy in Paris. One of Peress' first projects exa ...

, live in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

with their three children. Over the course of her career, Cornyn has created many exhibitions, web platforms, and physical installations that focus on modern

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...

issues. Cornyn has received multiple grants and awards for her work in social justice and media, including a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

Education

Cornyn received her bachelor's in

Fine Arts In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...

and

Art History Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...

at Connecticut College. She also received a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

as well as a

Master of Professional Studies Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

's Tisch School of the Arts in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). She then went on to complete the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program (ISP) in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Exhibitions and web platforms

Cornyn's projects have been showcased at exhibitions around the world as well as on the web. Her projects include ''Incorrigibles'', the Sonic Memorial Project, and ''360 Degrees- Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System,'', which is a web documentary that examines incarceration from multiple perspectives. Another one of her works is ''The Sand Counting Lab,'' which was a large-scale project focused on counting over two million grains of sand in an effort to represent the number of people

incarcerated A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correcti ...

in the United States. ''Incorrigibles'' is a long-term project about the history of young women's incarceration. Other art projects by Cornyn can be seen on the artist's website.

Awards and grants

Cornyn has received several awards for her work. Among these was the first Peabody Award to go to a

web documentary A web documentary, interactive documentary, or multimedia documentary is a documentary production that differs from the more traditional forms—video, audio, photographic—by applying a full complement of multimedia tools. The interactive multim ...

, the 62nd Annual

. She has also been awarded with the

Gracie Allen Award The Gracie Awards are awards presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWM) in the United States, to celebrate and honor programming created for women, by women, and about women, as well as individuals who have made exemplary cont ...

for Women in Media and a Webby Award for

net.art net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel Gar ...

. Cornyn's has also received several grants and fellowships over the course of her career. Among these was a

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

grant, a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation, a fellowship from the

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (

NYSCA The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996), ...

). She was a grant recipient in the inaugural round of New York City's groundbreaking "Made in NY" Women's Film, TV & Theatre Fund from the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting.

Education

Exhibitions and web platforms

Awards and grants

References

External links