#BlackLivesMatter, 2017 was created in collaboration with artist Xxavier Edward Carter for the 2017 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Fellowship, in its inaugural program created to instigate community transformation through arts and culture.

Originally from Brazil, Jamil Hellu is a lens-based artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose work investigates representations of identity relating to race, sexuality and gender. Moving from traditional photography and incorporating video, installations, and screen-printing, his practice draws from the potential of image-making to convey personal narratives while exploring the construction and multiplicity of cultural identities.
His recent works bring the friction between Arab ethnicity and gay identity into focus, considering the conflicts that emerge at the intersection of Middle-Eastern heritage and queerness. Hellu holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Art Practice from Stanford University and a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. He was awarded the 2018 Eureka Fellowship by the Fleishhacker Foundation, a Kala Art Institute Fellowship, and has been artist-in-residence at Recology in San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.