Eric Gottesman teaches, organizes, writes, and makes artworks with other people. His work addresses nationalism, migration, structural violence, history, and intimate relations. His projects question accepted notions of power and, by engaging communities in critical self-reflection and creative expression, propose models for repair. Gottesman’s work is always collaborative; he has never made an artwork alone. He is a Mentor in the Arab Documentary Photography Program in Beirut, Lebanon. 

Gottesman has presented his art projects at health conferences, universities, in government buildings, on the televised opening of the NFL season, on Indigenous reserves, in post-war rubble, and at museums.

Gottesman is a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2020), a recipient of an ICP Infinity Award (2017), a Creative Capital Artist (2015), a Fulbright Fellow (2012), a Lightwork resident artist (2011), an Artadia awardee (2009), and a co-founder of For Freedoms. Sudden Flowers, his decade-long collaboration with young people in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, toured that country in a series of street installations, and was published as a collective monograph by Fishbar. His co-translation of

Ethiopian writer Baalu Girma’s banned novel Oromaye was published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, only the second published English language translation of Amharic literature.