Artist eL Seed fuses the beauty of Arabic letters with the modern art of graffiti — an art form he calls calligraffiti. He paints colorful, undulating messages of hope and peace on buildings all over the world — from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to the bridges of Paris (the city where he was […]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture was worth all the words I had — it rendered me speechless. It’s an image of six Black women, smiling and hugging, taken by Ryan Lash at the TED2015 conference. There we were — LaToya, Somi, Aomawa, Camille, Danielle and myself — in all […]
Alice Miller was born in a body that didn’t feel like hers. Every day, Yee Won Chong has to debate whether to use the men’s restroom or the women’s. Geena Rocero found success as a fashion model — but kept her birth gender a secret for nearly a decade, fearing what others would think. All […]
A 12-year-old boy in a Stormtrooper helmet – and a tutu. A hulking man wearing a pre-Raphaelite collar of Barbie dolls. A bride standing wistfully in a garden, her face obscured by a wrestling mask. Russian photo-based artist Uldus Bakhtiozina’s whimsical and surreal images — which feature models as well as herself — raise an eyebrow at identity, gender and cultural stereotypes […]
Geena Rocero did a pretty bold thing at TED2014: She came out. The transgender fashion model chose Vancouver to reveal to the world that she was assigned male at birth. “I am here exposed … to help others live without shame and terror,” she says in today’s talk. The trans community has had a spotlight […]
When creative scientist Kate Stone gave her talk at TED2013, her biggest worry was whether her paper DJ decks would work onstage. Something she didn’t think twice about: being “outed” as transgender. She didn’t want to detract from her work, and figured that her gender identity was her own personal business. But now, one year later, […]
The extraordinary and eloquent Andrew Solomon closes TED2014 with a talk that brought the theater to its feet. Popular wisdom, begins Solomon, is that we find meaning, that it is an external truth to seek. But after a lifetime as a student of adversity, he has found that meaning, in fact, is forged. Solomon recalls […]
Artist Sharmistha Ray has spent her life moving between India, the Middle East and the United States, discovering, layer by layer, her own sense of self, sexual identity and artistic vision in contrast or harmony with each new environment. Now, as her latest exhibition Reflections + Transformations is set to open at the Aicon Gallery in […]
“I don’t know how to introduce this, so I’ll just say, ‘Hetain Patel,’” says TED curator Chris Anderson. So no one knows what to expect, and that’s as may be, because this is some crazy right here. Patel walks onstage and crouches in a chair next to the dancer Yuyu Rau. He speaks a few […]
Almost twenty-three years ago, Joshua Prager experienced a moment that could only be described as “a great hinge in my life,” one that divided it “like the spine of an open book.” Just 19 years old then, Prager was in Israel for a year after high school. He was sitting in the backseat of a minibus […]
The name says it all: this session took a look at everything that human beings do, think and know. From thoughts on what makes a civilization decline to the roots of our morality, these speakers shared some of the stats and stories that point to our collective identity. Here, the speakers who appeared in this […]