Biography

Hannah Brancato (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, whose art practice is grounded in collective storytelling, and the creation of public rituals to bring people’s stories together. Her current practice centers on Dreamseeds, socially engaged art, music and workshop series featuring community healing spaces centered on dreaming for a more just future. For this collaborative work with Sanahara Ama Chandra, Brancato is a recipient of the Ruby's Artist Grant and was recently an artist in residence at Montgomery College and Visarts in Rockville, MD. A professor of art since 2011, Brancato is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in American Studies at University of Maryland. She is writing and researching about the role of art and material culture in anti-sexual violence movements, with a theoretical grounding in Material Culture, Women of Color Feminisms and Disability Studies. Brancato lectures and holds workshops related to her art practice and her research about trauma informed spaces and pedagogy, most recently presenting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the Colgate University Women’s Center, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hannah is best known as co-founder FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, an art/organizing collective that produces creative interventions to create a culture of consent. FORCE created the Monument Quilt, a collection of 3,000 stories from survivors of sexual violence on quilt squares which toured the US and Mexico in 50 public displays between 2013-2019 which culminated in a massive installation on the National Mall. Hannah co-founded FORCE after her own experience of identifying as a survivor while working at the domestic violence shelter, House Of Ruth Maryland. There, she co-created Advocate Through Art, an awareness campaign by and for domestic violence survivors. Her work with FORCE has received widespread media coverage and awards. Hannah was a 2015 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow to launch FORCE’s Baltimore based survivor collective, Gather Together and as part of FORCE, is the recipient of the 2016 Sondheim Artscape Prize and Art Matters Grant.

Today, FORCE's work continues through their effort to archive the Monument Quilt in dispersed locations, as a way to keep the project and stories alive. With 600 quilts remaining, to date, 150 sections of the Monument Quilt are in permanent collections at National Museum of the American Indian, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as more than a dozen university archives and private collections.

Brancato’s work has received widespread media coverage, including Voice of America, WYPR Future City Afterimage, Ms Magazine, Voice of America, Bmore Art, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Surface Design Journal, and Fast Company. Her TEDx talk, Grief Can Connect Us, is viewable here.