juliana roccoforte novello is an educator, activist, artist, and writer. She teaches photography and painting at both public colleges and prisons.

In her most recent project, The Golden Pond, novello uses photography and video to direct and document performances, where characters volunteer to enact a scene from a memory or a dream, or are given a prompt on which to expand. The scenes and props are built or found by novello, who has a background in sculpture as well as photography. Working mostly with elders in the working class New York City community, where she was born and raised, novello meets strangers during daily rituals. Over time, she befriends these strangers and together they venture to Xanadu. 

novello is interested in how “participatory art can heal society” and the theories embedded in drama therapy influence the pageants she stages. As an educator, social worker, and grade school teacher, she has learned from the people who have crossed her path that, “Humans carry with them a map, sometimes it is a bewildering map, but we’ve all got one.” She uses this “map” as a guide for the performances; working with folks to conjure difficult memories, confront troubled relationships, and sometimes, to talk to the dead. novello’s measures of success are: Was it an adventure? Did we learn something new about ourselves?

“The art produced is only a slice of what’s happened for us.” She says of these productions, “The crux of the matter is in the expression of the drama, the ability to relive, or alter, a moment that has already passed, the experience of controlling the future, and the potential of a surreal, unnameable, and humorous tomorrow.”

novello holds several teaching positions across CUNY schools. A portion of her project, The Golden Pond, is being published with 89books this winter under the title Joe, Willets Point, which will be her third photo book. She was a recipient of the Mary Frey Book Award for her first book, Blooming Syzygy – The Fancy Free Delight of Janet Roccoforte, and held a Penumbra Workspace Residency in the summer of 2022. In November 2023, her video project, Need Not Know, will premiere at the Underhill Film Projects Screening.