Janeil
Janeil Engelstad’s public and community art projects have given voice to some of the most important issues of our times, including youth and gang violence, homelessness, peace, and ecology. Working in partnership with foundations, universities, government agencies, NGOs, and major corporations her work has led to and created positive environmental and social change in communities throughout the world.
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An innovative photographer, artist, educator and curator, Janeil’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. Her projects have been broadcast on television and radio and featured in books and in publications, such as Art News, Metropolis, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times. Guns + Violence, a project that she co-produced with New York based graphic design firm World Studio, was selected for the prestigious “ID Forty” award, an annual listing of leading innovators in design by ID: The Magazine of International Design.
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Voices From the Center, documents people’s reflections about life during and after communism in a web-based project that also includes exhibitions and discussions at art centers throughout Central Europe and the United States. The project includes Janeil’s interviews with performing and visual artists, villagers, former dissidents and other people from Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. For many of the participants this was the first opportunity to publicly speak about their lives before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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In 2010 she founded Make Art With Purpose (MAP) an innovative organization that produces international projects and partners with artists and organizations who are making work that creates positive environmental and social change. The MAP website is an open-source, interactive virtual resource center for projects that are creating positive change throughout the world.
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Janeil has taught and lectured at universities throughout the world. In 2006 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. She has a Masters Degree in photography from a joint program between New York University and the International Center of Photography and BAs in English and Political Science from the University of Washington, Seattle.