Considering a career in the arts?

Share pizza and conversations with arts alumni who will discuss their experiences trying to make a go of it in the professional world. This is your opportunity to ask the questions you really want to ask as you try to figure out a career in the arts!

This session will feature an alumni talk and Q&A, followed by an informal networking reception. Free and open to all Princeton students.

This event is part of our Arts At Work Spring Series:

• May 1: Arts at Work - Theater Alumni Day
• May 2: Arts at Work - Visual Arts Alumni Day
• May 4: Arts at Work - Creative Writing Alumni Day

Arts At Work provides panels and workshops that offer practical, real-world advice to Princeton students and early-career alumni interested in establishing creative careers. 

Co-sponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Center for Career Development.

Moderated by Lex Brown, Lecturer in Visual Arts.

Alumni Speakers:

• Gabriella (Gabby) Chu ‘18
• Ogemdi Ude
• Sydney Mieko King
• Simon Wu
• Victor Guan

Speaker Bios

Gabriella (Gabby) Chu ‘18 is a visual arts alum and New York City native. She attended Bard High School Early College prior to Princeton, where she initially entered as a computer science concentrator. In her sophomore year, Gabby declared VIS as her concentration and worked with a variety of different mediums, such as fashion, graphic design, sculpture, and photography. Her experiences after Princeton have been as diverse as her education, spanning various industries and job responsibilities. Her longest-held positions post-graduation include short-form news production at Bloomberg, digital media marketing at Gagosian, and social media production at Millennium, all of which were based at the respective companies’ NYC headquarters. Most recently, she’s joined Capvision, the fastest-growing global expert network company, as their marketing manager.

Ogemdi Ude is a Nigerian-American dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, La Mama Courthouse, and for BAM's DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she serves as Head of Movement for Theater at Professional Performing Arts School and has taught at Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, MIT, and University of the Arts. She is a 2022-2023 Smack Mellon Studio Artist and 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. She has been a 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in english, dance, and theater from Princeton University.

Sydney Mieko King is an artist working primarily in photography. Her work explores the potential of the body as a site and source of formal invention, as a semipermeable membrane, and as a vessel for memory. King’s work has been shown at the International Center of Photography Museum, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, the Broodthaers Society, the Dean Collection, Chashama, and others. She has been in-residence at BRIC, Recess Art, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Yale Norfolk School of Art. King graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in Art and Archaeology in 2017. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Yale School of Art.

Simon Wu is an artist and writer involved in collaborative art production and research. He has organized exhibitions and programs at David Zwirner, The Kitchen, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum, among other places. In 2021 his art writing was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant and he was featured in Cultured magazine's 2021 Young Curators series. He was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and is currently in the Ph.D. program in History of Art at Yale University. His first book, Dancing On My Own, is forthcoming from Harper Collins in 2024.

Victor Guan is a queer, first-generation Chinese American artist and designer based in NYC — interested in imbuing lived experiences with purposeful design forms. He graduated from Princeton in 2021, studying visual arts and architecture, with a focus on graphic design. Currently, he is an incoming Assistant Art Editor at The New Yorker, art directing illustrations and managing the art in the print magazine. Outside of work, Victor enjoys experimenting with printed media in a way that merges his own cultural upbringing with the modern life he’s learned to fit into. His latest thoughts include but are not limited to collectible toys, dried herbs, and welcome mats.