2025 Next Level Visual Arts Panelists

Teri Henderson

Teri Henderson is a Baltimore-based independent curator, author, and editor with a distinguished talent for crafting compelling narratives and shaping critical discourse in contemporary art and culture. As the visionary behind the @blackcollagists platform, which she launched in 2020, she established a vital global hub for artists of the Diaspora, fostering community and re-charting art historical narratives. Her authority in the field is cemented by her acclaimed book, Black Collagists: The Book (Kanyer Publishing, 2021). 

As the Arts and Culture Editor of the Baltimore Beat, a Black-led Black-run, nonprofit newspaper, Henderson consistently provides insightful and critical perspectives through diverse storytelling. Her writing regularly is featured in leading publications such as Artforum, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. Her extensive curatorial practice includes co-curating "LAYERS: The Art of Contemporary Collage" at Maryland Institute College of Art in January 2025, serving as a consulting curator for "New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and notably, curating the inaugural Scout Affordable Art Fair with Derrick Adams in May 2025. She also served as a jury member for the 2023 exhibition "Histories Collide: Jackie Milad x Fred Wilson x Nekisha Durrett." 

Henderson's influence in media and journalism is further recognized through her participation in prestigious programs, including the 2020 Momus Emerging Critics Resident, the 2024 Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellow, and the 2024 Maynard Institute for Journalism Education Fellow. In 2024, Baltimore Magazine honored her as a "GameChanger" for her leadership in Baltimore's creative community, underscoring her commitment to empowering artists of color. 

Armina Howada Mussa

Armina Howada Mussa (b.1990) is a sculptor based in Baltimore, MD. Her work centers on the creation of contemporary artifacts and totems that explore the tension between ancient and modern narratives. Through sculpture and installation, Mussa examines the active and passive forces that shape our existence, using the tactile power of clay and other materials to engage memory, ritual, and the infinite. Mussa sees each of her sculptures as an artifact: a record of her hands’ echo, but also as a totem that speaks to the collective memory and spiritual connection of her bloodline. 

Through installation, she explores how these forms interact with their environments, shaping and being shaped by the spaces they inhabit. Each body of work she creates adopts a new material or process, a gesture toward the infinite adaptability of form and meaning. In this way, her evolving practice resists stasis—each sculpture becomes a marker of the moment in which it was made yet simultaneously speaks to something beyond itself. 

Mussa’s work will be included in Black Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art, an upcoming Yale University Press publication edited by Dr. Jareh Das (2027), which surveys the vital contributions that Black women have made to contemporary ceramics. She has exhibited widely, with past group exhibitions including Earthly Pleasures at Deli Gallery in New York (2023), Within + Without at Unit London (2023), and a group show at Corvi-Mora in London (2023) featuring artists such as Toyin Ojih Odutola and Jennifer Packer. Her work has also been included in Future Ancestors, curated by Aisha Harrison at Baltimore Clayworks (2022), as well as Round 48: Beyond Social Practice at Project Row Houses in Houston (2018). Mussa’s upcoming solo exhibition at Hannah Traore Gallery in New York is scheduled for 2026.

Pooja Pittie

Pooja Pittie is a self-taught visual artist based in Chicago, whose work explores the complex interplay between body and mind, movement and stillness. Raised in Mumbai, India, Pittie trained as an accountant and earned an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago before transitioning full-time to an art practice in 2016.

Living with a progressive form of muscular dystrophy, Pittie’s work draws on the dynamics between a slowing body and an active, curious mind. Through painting and fiber art, she weaves together personal memories, cultural heritage, motherhood, and her experiences of disability, creating intricate compositions that speak to resilience and identity.

Pittie has completed the Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center, the HATCH residency at Chicago Artists' Coalition, and the 3Arts Bodies of Work Fellowship at the University of Illinois. She was the recipient of a 2022 3Arts Next Level/Spare Room Award and nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. Her work is part of the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The University of Chicago, The University of Illinois at Chicago, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (Delhi, India). She has exhibited at venues such as Art Miami, EXPO Chicago, the South Asia Institute, and McCormick Gallery, where she is currently represented.