Scheherazade Tillet is a photo-based artist, curator, and feminist activist who explores the themes of Blackness, play, freedom, trauma, and healing. Blending social documentary, portraiture, and social practice, Tillet intimately photographs the inner lives and public performances of Black girlhood throughout the United States and the Caribbean, while also centering the gaze of and actively collaborating with her Black girl subjects. Born in Boston, growing up in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Newark, NJ, and now working in Chicago, Tillet received her B.A. in Child Development from Tufts University with a minor in Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and her Masters of Art in Art Therapy from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.  Her work has been featured in Gagosian Journal, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, and MSNBC.  In 2003, she co-founded A Long Walk Home (ALWH), along with her sister Salamishah Tillet, a national nonprofit that uses art to empower young people and end violence against girls and women. ALWH’s mission centers on increasing resources, opportunities, and creative outlets for society’s most vulnerable girls and women: girls and women of color. 

Through ALWH, Tillet is the artistic director and photographer behind the award-winning multimedia performance, Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS). Tillet documents her sister Salamishah’s 20-year healing journey from rape survivor toward healing and becoming a renowned feminist activist As Executive Director of ALWH, Scheherazade inaugurated the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute, a year-long artist-activist program  to trains Black girls as advocates for racial and gender justice in their own schools and communities.

Tillet is internationally  recognized for raising public consciousness and changing cultural narratives. She engages artistic approaches toward advancing creativity, research, policy, and community programming that highlights Black girls’ political agency and elevates their voices. Tillet’s artistic and organizing work advances solutions for improving the life outcomes of Black girls in the United States.Tillet was a consultant for Lifetime’s Emmy-nominated-documentary series Surviving R.Kelly, She has also been instrumental in the development of two philanthropic portfolios: the international Grantmakers for Girls of Color and a co-founder of the Black Girl Freedom Fund, a 10-year philanthropic initiative designed to invest $1 Billion dollars in the lives and livelihood of Black girls and young women in the United States.

Currently, Scheherazade along with two additional A Long Walk Home artists and co-curators, Leah Gipson and Robert Narciso, have the curated, The Black Girlhood Altar on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.  Tillet was the inaugural artist in residence at  Express Newark, where she developed her first solo show, Scheherazade Tillet: Black Girl Play and co-curated the largest  exhibition on Black Girlhood, Picturing Black Girlhood. Recently, she was a keynote speaker and featured artist at the 10th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights in Sierra Leone.

www.alongwalkhome.org