In Conversation: Jordan Seaberry and Dr. Sunita Puri

Join us for an illuminating conversation with exhibiting artist Jordan Seaberry and hospice and palliative care clinician and writer Dr. Sunita Puri. The We Live Until exhibition is their collaboration, informed by conversations and stories of five individuals dying while receiving hospice care. Seaberry’s work captures their emotional worlds during a stage of life that, though universal, can be fearful and hard to contemplate. The works reflect the stages of grief, and reflect on life and death, vulnerability in the face of impermanence and the unknown.

Free.
RSVP for in person strongly recommended. RSVP required to receive live stream link.

Jordan Seaberry is a painter, organizer, legislative advocate and educator. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, he came to Providence to attend Rhode Island School of Design, and later, Roger Williams University School of Law. Alongside his art, he built a career as a grassroots organizer and legislative advocate, helping to pass multiple criminal justice reform milestones, including probation reform, the Unshackling Pregnant Prisoners Bill, and the statewide Community-Police Relationship Act.

Seaberry serves as Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and as a professor at Rhode Island School of Design. He previously served as the Director of Public Policy at the Nonviolence Institute, as the Community Leader Fellow at Roger Williams University School of Law, and as the Chairman of the Providence Board of Canvassers, overseeing the city’s elections.

He has served as artist in residence at Skowhegan, Yaddo, the Verge Center of the Arts, and elsewhere. His work is in collections including the RISD Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the deCordova Museum, and others. Seaberry maintains a studio in Providence.

Dr. Sunita Puri serves as the Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program at the UMass Chan School of Medicine, where she also teaches as an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Yale University and was subsequently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study Modern History at Oxford University. She earned her MD and completed residency training at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Subsequently, she underwent fellowship training in hospice and palliative medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Puri is also a published author, contributing to renowned publications such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. In 2019, she published her memoir That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, documenting her personal and professional experiences working in palliative care.

She is a 2023 and 2017 recipient of the Mesa Refuge Fellowship, a 2022 recipient of the Yaddo Literature Residency, and a 2017 recipient of the Macdowell Colony’s Nonfiction Literature Fellowship. In 2018, Dr. Puri received the Etz Chaim Tree of Life Award from the USC School of Medicine. This annual award recognizes a faculty member who embodies and delivers humanistic and compassionate care.