20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future (Film and Visual Arts)
The future is unwritten. It is also right around the corner, and, if, as science fiction author William Gibson noted, it is not evenly distributed, more and more young people around the world are reaching toward it to shape it, improve it, and make it more equitable. These “shapers of the future” work in many fields and endeavors, embracing every corner and intersection of health and medicine, science and technology, and business and entrepreneurship. They are people of ideas, framing the intellectual questions and concerns that will guide future thought. They are scholars, builders, designers, architects, artists, teachers, writers, musicians, and social and political leaders. While under the age of 40 (as of January 2022), the 200 shapers of the future that we will highlight in this series have already left their mark on the present, and we expect to see much more invention, innovation, creation, and interpretation from them in times to come.
Wendimagegn Belete (35)
Born in Ethiopia, Wendimagegn Belete took an early interest in art, and he absorbed the traditional designs and techniques of the artists working in his community. He attended the Addis Ababa University Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2012, and then moved to Norway, where he earned a master’s degree in contemporary art from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art and Creative Writing in 2017. His work strikingly blends ancient motifs with modern tropes, producing a syncretic effect that speaks to one of Belete’s great interests: how memories are both transmitted and changed over the generations. Today he continues to divide his time between Norway and his native land, exhibiting his work at galleries in both countries. Selections of his work are scheduled to be exhibited in 2022 at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, among other venues.
Flóra Borsi (28)
Born in Hungary and based in Budapest, Flóra Borsi holds a bachelor of arts degree in photography from Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design in Budapest. She learned photo editing when she was only 11 and embarked on an early career as a photographer, eventually coming to blend representational images with conceptual and figurative elements. One of her images, for example, melds a woman with anserine makeup in the near background with a swan in the foreground, part of a series in which women use flowers and feathers as decorations. Often featuring the female body, her work sometimes turns on “dark fantasies and atmospheric dreams,” as her website explains, with techniques that help the viewer conceive of “what it means to think, feel, dream, and express in the urban world.” Borsi’s work is regularly exhibited in the United States and throughout Europe, with a notable appearance at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, and has been enshrined in recent iterations of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of software.
Kasper Bosmans (31)
Born in the Belgian city of Lommel, Kasper Bosmans studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent. His paintings and sculptures often incorporate elements from folklore and history. He told an interviewer that he finds inspiration and sources in old books, many of them not connected with art: he cites a biography of an esoteric Austrian naturalist and engineer whose theories about hydrodynamics, developed during the first half of the 20th century, Bosmans intends to use somehow in the future. He also collects books of heraldry. His work is often metaphorical, and the freedom of artistry, he says, allows him to be “inaccurate” about the subject in a way that might be denied to, say, a photographer or journalist. Bosmans is the youngest artist ever represented by New York’s influential Gladstone Gallery. He told Vice, “I’m an object maker, and I enjoy reaching diverse conclusions by dragging dispersed narratives together.”
John Boyega (29)
Born in London to Nigerian parents, his father a Pentecostal minister, John Adedayo Bamidele Adegboyega began acting as a child, joining the troupe of a theater company that staged productions for young actors. He studied acting at South Thames College and attended the University of Greenwich before winning the lead male role in the science fiction film Attack the Block (2011), in which Black London teenagers battle an alien invasion. For the film, he took a shortened form of his family name. American director J.J. Abrams, an admirer of the film and of Boyega, cast him as the imperial trooper turned rebel named Finn in the franchise film Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (2015) and, following it, Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He acted in many other films and television series and is considered one of the most talented actors of his generation.
Leelee Chan (38)
Born in Hong Kong, Leelee Chan attended school and university there, then did graduate work at the Rhode Island School of Design. On returning to Hong Kong, she established a sculptural practice that is built on making use of found objects—what her artist’s statement calls “dumpster detritus and mundane objects,” that, when transformed into art, offer a subtle critique of consumerism. Using such materials as household cleaning products, pallets, and other everyday objects that surround us, she adds to them artificial plants, seashells, bits of mosaic-like tile, and other elements that lend the resulting works an air of mystery and even whimsy. Chan was the winner of the 2020 BMW Art Journey Prize, which recognizes young artists and sends them, so as to inspire new work, nearly anywhere they want. Chan chose to go to several locations in Italy, including the marble quarries of Carrara and a bell foundry in Agnone, all despite the challenges of traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the cancellation of numerous art shows and conferences internationally. Of her distinctive work, Chan says, “It’s not about up-cycling, or recycling, but really about very specific objects that tend to be anonymous—like Styrofoam, or plastic pallets…things that are mass produced. I think because of its openness, I can project my imagination on it without any kind of burden.”
Damien Chazelle (36)
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a French father and Canadian-American mother, Damien Chazelle earned a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and environmental studies from Harvard University. On graduation, he began writing film scripts and making short films, enlisting family members, including his sister Anna Chazelle, to play parts in his debut film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009), which he wrote, directed, and coproduced. His next feature film, Whiplash (2014), based on a short film of Chazelle’s of the same name, earned an Academy Award for best supporting actor for veteran character actor J.K. Simmons. It was Chazelle’s turn for honors with his next film, La La Land (2016), which tied a record for receiving 14 Academy Award nominations in 2017 and won 6, including best director. He was the youngest director in Hollywood history to be so recognized. The film also received seven Golden Globe nominations, winning all of them, including best director—again with Chazelle the youngest person ever to take that prize.
Ryan Coogler (35)
Ryan Kyle Coogler was born in Oakland, California, and grew up in Richmond, a nearby city in the Bay Area. His father worked in the justice system as a counselor to juvenile offenders. Coogler himself worked with incarcerated youth while attending Saint Mary’s College on a football scholarship, completing his undergraduate work at Sacramento State University, where he studied finance and business administration while taking elective film courses. That set his career in motion: he was accepted into the master’s degree program in film at the University of Southern California, and his student films won several awards and the attention of studio executives. His first feature film, Fruitvale Station (2013), was a searing account of the last day in the life of a young African American man who would be killed by a police officer. The film was a critical success, as was Creed (2015), a film in Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky series. His greatest triumph to date is Black Panther (2018), both a commercial hit and lauded by critics, winning three Academy Awards. Coogler was also tapped to direct a sequel.
Ismael Cruz Córdova (34)
Born in Aguas Buenas, a mountain town near San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ismael Cruz Córdova joined the drama club in his high school and was almost immediately cast in local commercials and television productions. After moving to New York City, he enrolled in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He won roles in several TV drama series, including The Good Wife and Ray Donovan, and he appeared in numerous episodes of the iconic children’s series Sesame Street in the role of Mando, which brought new attention to his work. He had a few small film roles prior to appearing in the well-received Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016). Larger roles followed, including a major part in the TV drama series Berlin Station and lead roles in the 2019 crime film Miss Bala and the 2021 science fiction movie Settlers. He also landed a role in the streaming series The Lord of the Rings.
Cuong Dam (31)
Cuong Dam, born in Hanoi, Vietnam, graduated from Hanoi Architectural University in 2013. He worked as an architect for five years before deciding that his real passion lay in designing clothing rather than buildings. He opened a shop to sell his first line of products but found it hard to break into a market he did not know well, so he returned to school, enrolling at the London College for Design & Fashion in Hanoi. His first major collection, Warriors in Yoshiwara, received enthusiastic reviews, and Dam inaugurated a prizewinning line of elegant women’s clothing called Chats by C. Dam, which is sold internationally. Dam takes inspiration from traditional Vietnamese clothing, particularly the sweeping form-fitting dress called the ao dai, worn over trousers. Dam conceives of this connection between ancient costume and his modern designs as being a conversation along the continuum of time, connecting the past, present, and future. “Both fashion and architecture have the mission of understanding the needs of people, thus creating works to satisfy those needs,” he told an interviewer.
Miryam Haddad (30)
After growing up in Damascus, Syria, where she attended school and received her bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University, Miryam Haddad moved to Paris, France, and earned a master’s degree from the École des Beaux-Arts. Her large paintings, such as Le Ciel volé (”The Stolen Sky,” 2020), are distinguished by bright colors and swirling shapes; one can draw a lineage from Chagall, Monet, and van Gogh to them. Distinct from that tradition, however, are Haddad’s juxtapositions: her work often blends the abstract with the figurative, the modern and the ancient, and it is influenced by both Asian and European techniques and themes, along with literary classics such as the Odyssey. Her oil paintings sometimes contain shards of pottery or stained glass. In 2019 she was awarded the prestigious Prix Jean-François Prat for her work to date. “These colors,” she told RFI, “convey a sense of joy, festivity, and hope”—though, she added, they can be ambiguous too, as when used to depict conflict as well as happier moments.
Aziz Hazara (29)
Born in Wardak, a village near Kabul, Aziz Hazara grew up there and in the Afghan capital. His experiences of the frequent bombings that took place there after 2001 found their way into his art. As he explained to the jurors of the 2020 Biennale in Sydney, Australia, “The question of how best to represent this history and its effect on the lives of individuals has been one of the most persistent questions during the making of this work.” That work comprises a variety of media, including film, sound, text, and video, to create portraits blending landscapes and human figures. One piece, for example, depicts village boys who try to remain standing on a tall hill while buffeted by high winds so as to sound a bugle in protest against the violence that besets them. Another depicts people who have gathered in a cemetery to commemorate the victims of a suicide bombing at a school. Hazara continues to work in Afghanistan as well as in his second home in Ghent, Belgium.
Mire Lee (33)
Born in South Korea, Mire Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in sculpture in 2012 and a master’s degree in media art in 2013 from Seoul National University. The following year she mounted her first major exhibit, a highly conceptual work called War Is Won by Sentiment Not by Soldiers. Much of her work includes motorized elements, though these kinetic sculptures sometimes contest conventional ideas of the beautiful. Some, indeed, are almost monstrous and grotesque, as with work that suggests the skin flaying that ancient shamans would undergo in order to be more responsive to stimuli. In the same way, Lee’s work is more physical than intellectual, meant to engage the senses. One of her exhibits featured a piece called Carriers (2020), a large kinetic sculpture that pumps viscous materials through what appears to be an animal’s digestive tract. “I enjoy touching material and playing with its texture and property,” she has said. She lives and works in Seoul and Amsterdam, exhibiting widely.
Janet Mock (38)
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Janet Mock began to transition to a woman while a teenager there, undergoing gender reassignment surgery while studying fashion at the University of Hawaii. She completed a bachelor’s degree there, then moved to New York to study journalism at New York University, receiving a master’s degree in 2006. She worked as an editor and writer for several years, then wrote two memoirs, Redefining Realness (2014) and Surpassing Certainty (2017), the former of which was a finalist for the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award. She produced the television special The Trans List and wrote the pilot and subsequent shooting scripts for the dramatic series Pose, for which she has been producer, executive producer, and director. The series follows the lives of trans women in New York in the 1980s. Mock advocates for gender and ethnic equality and has served as a mentor and role model for young transgender people, resisting sensationalism and reductivism.
Pedro Neves Marques (37)
Pedro Neves Marques was born and raised in Lisbon, Portugal, where he studied art and literature. Over the years, he developed a wide-ranging body of work in several media, blending his interests in visual art, film, sound, and writing. He is well versed in anthropology, and his work often takes a sidelong view of the human condition, while, as notes on one of his exhibitions explain, it also “employs science fiction and speculative storytelling as key tools to produce works that range from fictional dramas to theoretical films and writings.” One conceptual film is more grounded in the earthly, exploring the economics of cannibalism under a regime bent on “turning society into a market-based self-regulation of corporatized individuals.” Apart from his visual work, Neves Marques edited a literary anthology and wrote two collections of short fiction and a book of poems. He now lives in New York City but often exhibits in Portugal and other European countries as well as at museums and galleries throughout North America.
Elliot Page (34)
Ellen Grace Philpotts-Page was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to parents involved in the arts and education. She became interested in acting at a very early age and attended acting school, earning a role on the prizewinning Canadian television drama series Pit Pony at the age of 10. She appeared in several other television series and feature films before her breakthrough in Jason Reitman’s 2007 comedy Juno, which stirred some controversy for its depiction of a pregnant teenager who wrestles with what to do before arriving at an unexpected solution. Page went on to appear in many other productions, including films in the X-Men franchise, as well as a recurring role on the gay-themed series Tales of the City and another in the quirky comedy series The Umbrella Academy. An actor, director, and environmental and LGBTQ activist, her documentary There’s Something in the Water (2019) was critically acclaimed at the Toronto International Film Festival. In December 2020 Page announced on social media that “I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot.…To all trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better.”
Park So-Dam (30)
Park So-Dam, a native of South Korea, was attending high school when she chanced to see a stage production of Grease. She instantly resolved to become an actor, and, on graduating, she enrolled in Korea National University of Arts. She appeared in several small films before earning a larger role, in the thriller The Silenced (2015), set in a girls’ boarding school in 1938, during the Japanese occupation of Korea. It earned her the nationally important Busan Film Critics Award for best new actress. Her role in the supernatural thriller The Priests (2015) earned Park an Asian Film Award nomination. She had a considerably larger part in Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 film Parasite, a black comedy that earned the first Academy Award for best picture for a film not in the English language as well as three other Oscars. Park has also starred in several television series. For her role in a biopic about the legendary Korean chanteuse Lee Nan-Young, Park even sang backup on the K-pop single “Our Feeling.”
Andrés Pereira Paz (35)
Born in La Paz, Bolivia, Andrés Pereira Paz studied at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes Hernando Siles and the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, then undertook specialized work at the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas in Buenos Aires. There he began to develop his very particular style as a textile artist, one whose work includes traditional Andean motifs and colonial productions, often to startling effect, as when he turned a piece of old fabric into a kind of voodoo doll pierced by indigenous arrows. One of his exhibits centered on Pereira’s interpretations of a 17th-century vision of hell painted in a cathedral in the Bolivian city of Carabuco, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. His hanging textiles respond to the original colonial artist’s visions of angels. In collaboration with other artists, he explored LGBTQ themes, evangelism, political extremism, and other contemporary issues. Pereira has also been an artist in residence in Berlin, where he explored how art helps define cultural identity.
Saoirse Ronan (27)
Saoirse (meaning “freedom” in Gaelic) Ronan was born in New York City to Irish parents; her father, Paul Ronan, was an actor who found modest success in television when the family returned to Dublin three years after Saoirse’s birth. She studied acting, appearing in a television series when she was only nine and making her feature film debut in Amy Heckerling’s 2007 comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman. It was her role in a film released in that same year, Atonement, that drew attention to her considerable acting skills, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress at the age of only 13. Ronan has since appeared in many other films, including The Lovely Bones (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and Little Women (2019), earning three more Academy Award nominations as well as numerous nominations for BAFTA, Golden Globe, and other honors. She won a Golden Globe for best performance by an actress for her work in the 2017 comedy Lady Bird.
Onni Tommila (22)
The son of the popular Finnish character actor and writer Jorma Tommila, with whom he has appeared in several productions, Onni Tommila is a rising actor. He has often been cast as a boy put in danger in the wintry landscapes of the Finnish outback. One such film, Rare Exports (2010), found him on the flanks of Korvatunturi, a high hill along the Russian border in northern Finland where an archaeological team for a multinational corporation unearths a monster who proceeds to terrorize the local inhabitants. Pietari, Tommila’s character, saves the day through his knowledge of Sami folklore. In another film, Big Game (2014), Tommila plays Oskari, a hunter trying to master the bow and arrow that his father has given him for his 13th birthday. Oskari has to put his outdoor skills to work when Air Force One, the U.S. president’s plane, crash-lands near his campsite, and he takes it upon himself to save the president, played by Samuel L. Jackson. The highest-budget Finnish film ever made, it put Jackson in the rare position of working with a child actor. Said Jackson, who praised Tommila’s work, “It’s an interesting little film for kids who are tweeners, in that particular place where they want to be something, but they don’t believe, or people around them don’t believe, that they can.” Tommila has since gone on to appear in many other films and television series in his native country.
Helena Zengel (13)
Born in Berlin, Helena Zengel made her debut as an actor in 2014, in an episode of the German television series Spreewald Krimi (“Spreewald Crime Story”) called “Mörderische Hitze” (“Murderous Heat”), playing a young girl whose family is caught up in a terrible crime. She took a lead role for the first time in 2019 with the drama Systemsprenger (System Crasher), for which she received several honors, including being named the youngest actor in the history of the German Film Awards to win the Lola prize for best performance. In 2020 she received plaudits yet again, this time for her first non-German film, News of the World, starring alongside Hollywood veteran Tom Hanks. The film’s director, Paul Greengrass, told The New York Times that he had expected to have difficulty casting a child actor in a lead role, a first for him, but that when Zengel auditioned for the part, he hired her immediately. He said that it “was the easiest decision in the film.” She also appeared in the British made-for-television drama A Christmas Number One, released in December 2021.