Patricia Ayres is an artist based in New York. Initially trained in fashion, Ayres’ work considers themes of the body and systems of control and conformity. Her sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. Ayres holds an MFA in Sculpture from City University of New York, Hunter College, 2018; a BFA from City University of New York, Brooklyn College; and an A.A.S in Fashion Design from State University of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2019 and is currently an artist-in-residence with The Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary and Dieu Donné Workshop Residency, Brooklyn. Her work is represented in the collections of de la Cruz Collection, Miami; The Bunker Art Collection, West Palm Beach; and Zuzāns Collection, Zuzeum, Riga, Latvia. Ayres is represented by Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles.
patriciaayres.com
Quinci Baker is a mixed-media artist born in Washington, DC and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Her works combine various crafts and repurposed materials in an exploration of collective memory and identity. Baker’s practice is heavily influenced by the secret languages that develop through the shared experiences of marginalized people and the mnemonics that elucidate a cultural identity. Baker earned her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in May 2022 and her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2017, where she received the Michael S. Vivio Memorial Prize for Excellence in Drawing and the Carin Tendler Lurkis Award for Excellence in Painting. In 2021, Baker was selected to participate in the SOMA Summer Residency in San Rafael, Mexico. She is currently based in New Haven, Connecticut.
quincibaker.com
Caleb Jamel Brown lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. His work examines themes of black labor and leisure in the South, craft traditions, mental health, and overlapping psychological states. Utilization of abstraction and vernacular as the foundation for larger cultural narratives is at the core of his practice. Brown received his BFA from Valdosta State University in Valdosta, GA in 2016. Brown has had solo and two-person exhibitions at Camayuhs, Atlanta; MINT, Atlanta; Plough Gallery, Tifton, GA; and the Mast, Atlanta; among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Below Grand, New York; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, SC; Westobou Gallery, Augusta, GA and MINT, Atlanta; among others.
Nickolas Calabrese is an artist and writer based in Queens, NY. He is a recent recipient of a Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL in early 2020, and participated in the Drawing Center NYC's Viewing Program 20/21. From 2020-2022 he ran an independent art space in Tulsa called Lost in America, after the original title for Kafka’s failed attempt at a novel that ends in Oklahoma.
Lucas de Lima is a Brazilian-born poet, scholar, and educator based in New York. They are the author of Wet Land (Action Books 2014) and Tropical Sacrifice (Birds LLC 2022) as well as multiple limited-edition chapbooks. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts, de Lima holds a BA from McGill University, an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Their writing has appeared in PEN Poetry, Poetry Foundation, boundary2, Syndicate, Brooklyn Rail, and anthologies pertaining to avant-garde and ecopoetics.
Manal Kara is a Moroccan-American self-taught interdisciplinary artist and poet. Its work has been exhibited extensively in Chicago and New York as well as in Istanbul, Vienna, and Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include “Conjectures,” Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; “Xylem & Phlöem,” No Place, Columbus, OH; “The Viewing-Room vs. The Adoring-Gaze,” Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY; and “Song of the Other Worm,” Prairie, Chicago, IL. It has participated in residencies at ACRE, Ox-Bow, September Spring at the Kesey Farm, and Project Freewill. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN, and Projet Pangée, Montreal, QC.
manalkara.com
Tina Lam is an artist-scientist-wanderer who was born in Montréal/Tio'tia:ke/Mooniyang and raised by Cambodian-Chinese refugee parents. Her sculptures, land-art interventions, and installations explore physical and metaphorical transformation, hybridity and exchange to interrogate the vastness of the universe and its enigmas born from the interplay between the human and the non-human. Her work has been funded by numerous grants and awards, notably from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Council for the Arts and Letters. Recent exhibitions include “A Long Toast” at Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn), “How to: Build an Ocean'' at Jack Hanley Gallery (NYC), “Ensemble” at Eastern Bloc (Montreal), “Scale” at T6 Gallery (Toronto), and “Mirror:miroir” at centre articule (Montreal). She earned an MFA from Cornell University, a BFA from Concordia University, and a PhD from McGill University.
tinalamstudio.com
Juan Luna-Avin is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines individual and collective identities. His practice includes mixed media paintings and drawings, sculpture, and video. He also explores lost, untold histories and the art of counterfeiting and piracy through music-themed projects. He has participated in exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Casa del Lago, Mexico City, Mexico; and Ceroinspiracion, Quito, Ecuador; among other venues. Luna-Avin holds an MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University and a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he was an Osher Scholar.
juanluna-avin.com
Susan Metrican is an artist living and working in Fairfield, IA via Boston, NYC, Toronto, and Bangkok. Metrican received an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014. Metrican’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions nationally; Rivalry Projects (NY), Tracey Morgan Gallery (NC), Maharishi International University (IA), “SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2017” (NY), Able Baker Contemporary (ME), GRIN Contemporary (RI), Proof Gallery (MA), Boston Center for the Arts (MA), Field Projects (NY), Knockdown Center (NY), and Gallery Protocol (FL). Metrican has an artist edition with Drawer NYC (NY), and has been featured in ART MAZE Mag. She is one of four founding members of kijidome, an experimental project space and collaborative in Boston, MA (2013-2017). She was the Curator at the Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA) from 2014-2022.
susanmetrican.com
Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Masked and merkin-ed, she works at the intersection of dance, art, and activism in a range of media including live performance, film, video, collage, and sculpture. She presents work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. She won “Best Use of a Sex Toy” at Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival, a Bessie nomination for the theatrical performance “Organ Player”, Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards, and interested in troubling the popular entertainment and experimental art divide, she appeared on America’s Got Talent. Her first feature film “Narcissister Organ Player” premiered at Sundance 2018. Her activist short film "Narcissister Breast Work" premiered at Sundance 2020 and won a Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short at Outfest 2021.
narcissister.com
Mimi Park is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in New York. Inspired by cyclical patterns around her, which includes microcosm, soft circuitry, sand play therapy and beyond, Park continues her world-building. The sensorial plays a central role in her work, interested in the ways that neuro-atypical forms of communication can often be misconstrued, something that she has experienced firsthand. She had her recent solo show "Dawning: dust, seeds, Coplees" at Lubov Gallery in New York.
mimipark.art
Peat Szilagyi is a Richmond, Virginia based artist creating colorful, sensorial works exploring consciousness, belief and spirituality. Raised in Hollywood, CA, the queer, campy cult-ridden aesthetics of the tinseled boulevards inform their style, alongside Peat's decade of devoted practice in West African and East Asian spiritual traditions. They received their undergraduate degree from Williams College and their MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University.
petraszilagyi.com
Ruby T makes work as an experiment in translating fantasy to reality, and she is fueled by anger, desire, and magic. Rooted in drawing, her practice has offshoots in painting, performance, comics, fibers, and video. She was named a 2018 Breakout Artist by Newcity and received her MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. She has had solo and two-person exhibitions in Chicago at Western Exhibitions, Randy Alexander Gallery, Roots & Culture, The Back Room at Kim’s Corner Food, and Woman Made Gallery. Ruby has performed and screened video works at Chicago spaces including Iceberg Projects, Weinberg/ Newton Gallery, Gallery 400, Chicago Filmmakers, and Comfort Station, as well as Monaco in St. Louis, Compliance Division in Portland, and the Visual Arts Gallery at University of Illinois Springfield. Her band Lezurrexion performed in over 50 crusty basements, clubs, and secret outdoor spaces between 2011 and 2015.
rubyt.net
Christopher Udemezue, born in Long Island, NY, has shown at a variety of galleries and museums, including the New Museum, Queens Museum of Art, PS1 MoMa, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Mercer Union, Recess Gallery and Anat Ebgi Gallery. Udemezue utilizes his Jamaican heritage, the complexities of desire for connection, healing through personal mythology and ancestry as a primary source for his work. As the founder of the platforms RAGGA NYC & CONNEK JA, he completed a residency with the New Museum “All The Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another” in June 2017. In 2018 Udemezue was exhibited in the New Museum’s “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” and a part of the Shed’s Open Call program in 2019. In 2021 Udemezue was elected to be Co-Chair of the board at Recess Gallery, Brooklyn NY and had a solo show at Anat Ebgi Gallery in Los Angeles, California.
christopherudemezue.net
Phyllis Yao graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Painting, where she was a recipient of the Florence Leif Award. Since then she has participated in the residency program at Lijiang Studio in China and has exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Colorado, and Rhode Island. She was most recently included in group exhibitions at King's Leap, TSA NY, and and a two person show at the Chinese American Arts Council. Phyllis is based in New York where she also enjoys being an arts educator, working mostly with grades K through 2.
phyllisyao.com