Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, and founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative that has promoted and preserved the practices of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists, and artists with disabilities across the Midwest since 2010. Focusing primarily on reframing cultural archives and institutional collections, her exhibitions and projects have been produced with the University of North Texas, South Side Community Art Center, Terrain Exhibitions, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, the Smart Museum of Art, and the University of Chicago, among others. Her writing has been published with Candor Arts, UChicago Press, Tremaine Foundation, Prospect.4, Alphawood Exhibitions, Haymarket Books, and Duke University, as well as in various exhibition catalogs and artist monographs. She was the 2019 recipient of the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists.

Tempestt is also the Arts Program Officer for the Field Foundation. At Field, she works with organizations, collectives, and artists to give grants and other support to culturally-anchored, justice-driven, and cross-sector community care work led by BIPOC organizations in chronically divested communities of Chicago. With an emphasis on racial equity, her work at Field explores the ways in which Chicago’s cultural workers and their communities can challenge the systems that stifle their ability to thrive, and to develop alternative models that encourage self-determination and align with community-identified needs, culture, and values.

Tempestt was born and raised in Peoria Illinois, and has called Chicago her second home for over 13 years. See more of her work at tempestthazel.com.