Alumni
July 1st to August 4th 2024
Cara Jaye, Bellingham, WA, USA
Jaye is multi-faceted artist whose practice is rooted within drawing and expands into various techniques including painting, photographic processes, printmaking, and embroidery. She considers drawing her first and primary medium - she loves drawing for its immediacy and intimacy of marks placed directly on the page. Building work of a diverse nature, Jaye crosses into various subjects and material concerns. Themes in the work move between environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. She examines the intersectionality of femininity, portraiture, authorship, and identity, and finds subtle affinities between these interactions. Cara Jaye lives and works in Bellingham WA where she is Professor of Art at Western Washington University.
Jamil Hello, Brazil
Jamil Hellu is a visual artist whose work focuses on the fluidity of identity, cultural heritage, and queer representation to express a shift towards a world beyond binaries. Through self-portraiture, his projects challenge the dominant ideology of masculinity while pointing to the tensions found in the evolving discourses about gender expression and queer sexuality. His art fosters empathy and dialogue, ultimately promoting a more inclusive and equitable world. Born in Brazil, Hellu holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Art Practice from Stanford University in the United States and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. His projects have been discussed in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Artforum, and VICE. He is the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission Artist Grant, Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Grant, Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship, and the Kala Art Institute Fellowship Award.
Jinseok Choi, Republic of Korea
Jinseok Choi is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates our current cultural moment by researching historical and cultural contexts and weaving together seemingly unrelated issues via sculpture, installation, performance, and video. His recent works have been shown at various art venues in South Korea and the U.S., including Amado Art Space, Human Resources Los Angeles, The Box, and Werkarts. He has participated in multiple residency programs, such as Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, The Studios at Mass MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, and Otis Summer Residency, and was also recently nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2020). As a public event organizer deeply involved in local art scenes, he co-founded an artist-run space, Space 1, in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012, and also a mobile project space, MOTOR, in Los Angeles, in 2021. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2018. He was born and raised in Seoul, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Gijsbert Coenen, Brussels
As a visual artist I explore the relationship between art and play by creating a series of sculptures that, together, function as a playground. One of these sculptures, called Rocking Module, reacts to simple movements such as pushing, pulling or evading. It’s my ambition to investigate multiple facets of play by creating a variety of play objects, each with a unique response to movement. Within this series, spectators become part of the artwork, as adults and children move intuitively with the objects. These artworks find themselves at the intersection between sculpture, play-object and functional design. However, the conflict with functional design is significant, for how do you define the function of a free activity like play? Let alone; how do you design an object that supports this unpredictable action? I’m fascinated by how seemingly aesthetic elements such as color, texture and figuration take on a different kind of value within free play. As they definitely are key to our imagination. This is where play and art intersect conceptually. Both allow us to connect to the real world through an imaginary world, which calls for imaginative designs. And both allow us to connect to reality, whilst disrupting “the rules”. It’s this tension between the serious and the non-serious that is shaping my oeuvre. It’s this tension, powered by an unstoppable urge to play, that works as an incentive for the artworks.
Thomas Bils, Florida, USA
Born and raised in central Florida before moving south to his current residence of Miami, Thomas Bils paints autobiographically in ongoing investigation into the precarious nature of the world and the banality of disaster. Reflecting from the absurdities he was accustomed to while growing up in the suburban south during the beginning of the opioid crisis, Thomas crafts images employing his role as the unreliable narrator to develop a fragmented reality where personal narratives intertwine with universal anxieties. Within that space the viewer is invited to meditate on the inherent contradictions that define human experience and the fragility of certainty.
Natalia Mejia Murillo, Bogata, Colombia
Natalia Mejía Murillo (b. Bogota, Colombia) is a visual artist whose work explores the notions of territory, repetition, trace and time through correspondences between astronomy, cartography and archaeology. She holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, an MA in History and Theory of Art and a BFA from the National University of Colombia. Mejía has been the recipient of awards including the 98th ANNUAL International Competition of The Print Center, Philadelphia (2023-2024), Kunstmuseum Reutlingen, Germany (2020) and Ministry of Culture of Colombia - Mexico (FONCA) (2017). She has also been awarded residencies at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2023), Curatorial Program for Research (New York, 2023), Tajo Taller and Saenger Galería, Mexico City (2023), Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Maine (2022), Fundació Miró Mallorca and Casa de Velázquez, Spain (2021), Fundación CIEC - Centro Internacional de la Estampa Contemporánea (Betanzos, Spain, 2014), The Strzemioski Academy of Fine Arts and Design (Łódz, Poland, 2014) among others. Mejía’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include The Print Center, Philadelphia; A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles; Saenger Galeria, Mexico City; Museo Moralense de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuernavaca, México, Casa de Velazquez, Madrid, Spain; Kunstmuseum Reutlingen, Germany, among others. She has taught at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, and is currently Assistant Professor of Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University Doha, Qatar.
Ashlyn Dadkhah, San Diego, USA
I am a facilitator and artist living and working between San Diego, Los Angeles, CA and Tijuana, MX. My practice weaves installation, sculpture, and wearable objects to create imaginary worlds that embody the possibilities for connection and play, with windows for those who identify with the in-between. My work engages with stories of belonging: how clusters of knowledge and place stored in our bodies are connected within and outside of ourselves, how they pass down through lineage, diasporic spirits, and body history and how that knowledge can create homes in that hidden realm. I’m curious about the shadow places and unearthings of one’s relationship to their many selves, land/space, and others. I’ve crafted multiple participatory projects. I am a co-founder of homegrown, a cross-border popular education and alternative learning collaborative where young people and adults imagine and co-create programs, events, play-dates that they otherwise wouldn’t have the freedom to create together within traditional education spaces. I’ve also worked with organizations including Allied Media Projects, Particle FM, Tijuana Performera, and Burn All Books. I hold a bachelor's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from The University of California, Berkeley.
Nat Decker & Jules Chimes Garder, Los Angeles, USA
Nat Decker (they/them) is a Chicago born Los Angeles based artist interpreting the intimacies of queer and disabled lived experience as provocation toward collective care and liberation. Creating between digital and physical mediums, they identify the computer as an assistive tool affording a more accessible practice. They use digital 3D software to trace serpentine connections between the body and technology, reimagining fantastical mobility devices as cultural celebration and agitation of conventional desirability politics. This cyclically informs their work with sculpture, creating non-functional mobility devices as aesthetic scrutiny and frictional commentary on designations of usefulness. Nat is also an access worker, consulting on accessibility for various arts organizations. They are currently deepening their accessibility research as an awardee of the 2023 Processing Foundation Fellowship. In June 2022 they graduated from UCLA with a degree in Design/ Media Arts and Disability Studies.
Jules Chimes Gårder (they/she) is a Los Angeles based artist creating work centered around death, grief and sexuality. Their practice incorporates sculpture, large-scale ceramics, painting and performance. As someone who lost their mother as a child, Jules is interested in how embracing ongoing relationships with the dead can shift our lived experiences and recenter what we value. Born in Sweden and raised in Maine, the mainstream culture that they were raised in (the United States, whiteness, capitalism) has an uneasy relationship with death and mourning (these realities are often ignored or passed over quickly as ongoing grief is inconvenient for contemporary structures of productivity). For the past two years Jules has been making artworks re-creating (and interacting with) stream of consciousness drawings left behind by their mother in the 1990s. These recreations link to the shifts we experience in our relationships with the dead over time and space and counter the narrative that grief should be traversed quickly and privately. Other works grapple with the longitudinal realities (the complexities, pain and joy) of adult sexuality in the aftermath of ongoing sexual trauma as a youth. They will graduate from UCLA with a BA in Art this Fall 2023.
Nat Decker & Jules Chimes Garder, Los Angeles, USA
Nat Decker (they/them) is a Chicago born Los Angeles based artist interpreting the intimacies of queer and disabled lived experience as provocation toward collective care and liberation. Creating between digital and physical mediums, they identify the computer as an assistive tool affording a more accessible practice. They use digital 3D software to trace serpentine connections between the body and technology, reimagining fantastical mobility devices as cultural celebration and agitation of conventional desirability politics. This cyclically informs their work with sculpture, creating non-functional mobility devices as aesthetic scrutiny and frictional commentary on designations of usefulness. Nat is also an access worker, consulting on accessibility for various arts organizations. They are currently deepening their accessibility research as an awardee of the 2023 Processing Foundation Fellowship. In June 2022 they graduated from UCLA with a degree in Design/ Media Arts and Disability Studies.
November 1st to December 5th 2023
Silvia López Chávez,
“As a muralist, my process is fueled by understanding a site's context and relationship to how the public engages with that space. At the studio, I explore identity, working with patterns to tell immigrant stories of adaptation, assimilation, and resilience through painting, printmaking, and drawing; interested in how our environment influences who we become. My works use an unapologetic color palette, realistically painted areas juxtaposed with geometric forms. At the core of my practice is a desire to bring joy, connection, and agency to the places where my work lives.”
Dylan Ahern
My work focuses on the rapid and tumultuous transformation of everyday objects and material. Through processes such as burning, melting, casting and frying, I work to transubstantiate these objects as a means to envision the life and history that they hold. My own history with cancer and chemotherapy plays a pivotal role in informing the stylistic aspects of my work and often leads me to explore materials and objects that are inherently toxic. I'm interested in the ubiquity of toxic materials and their proximity to our lives and homes and the coverage of disease and rampant pollution.
Sonya Yong James
Cloth and fiber can sometimes hold the gift of memory. Textile art can provoke a desire to touch, thus awakening multiple senses at once. Color and texture can be heard like a sound while the desire to experience art by physically touching it is using the eyes of the skin. James is a multidisciplinary artist that works with thread and repurposed cloth for the references that they hold such as mending, repairing and connecting. This ubiquitous material is central to the human experience. Cloth is always touching us. She uses string, sewing, and weaving as well as found objects to construct new worlds of imagination. Adapting age-old techniques and traditional materials, she seeks to create environments and sensory experiences that vary in scale from the large and public to the small and intimate. For many, fiber art is synonymous with women’s work. Knitting, crochet, weaving, and sewing are historically associated with domestic work- clothing the body, providing warmth, adorning space - and speak to the strength as well as the exploration of female labor in the artist’s work. Her current work speaks to a fascination and reverence for the natural world. James has been exploring narratives that speak to collectively shared mythologies and folk tales. Myths and fairy tales spin and weave stories of relationships, power and morality. These once familiar stories are then fragmented and conflated with another to form new clusters of meaning and are a perfect medium for modern allegory and what it means to be alive today. The work seeks to join together the points where these stories and systems overlap and where sources of sexuality, memory, and death construct meaningful relationships and dialogue.
José Herrera
born in Puebla and based in Mexico City, studied Architecture at the UNAM, has been part of group exhibitions in: Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico. His work is based on explorations of territory, the transformation of the landscape and the dynamics generated between private and public space. He obtained the stimulus PECDA Puebla 2021; he was selected by the call La tangente 2021; for the call PAC/Covid-19 and was awarded first place in the category alternative mixed media student during the International Image Festival Fini Mx 2019
Martha Lorena Parada
I have used artistic practice as a way to investigate and come to terms (with the body) with issues that arise from food and eating. In my projects, I question the values we give to food, the landscapes built by food industries, and the current eating habits. Currently, I find myself thinking about sweets, particularly sugar and the coloniality of the palate for sugar. My projects have been installed in different streets and public spaces, such as Septimazo and Simón Bolívar Park in Bogotá. Also, in group exhibitions such as the Performance Biennial 2021 in Bogotá and the Artecámara section at Artbo 2019.
Frances Melhop
visual artist, curator and gallery director, born in Christchurch, New Zealand, living and working at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. She works in tactile mediums such as photography, printmaking, hand embroidery, sculpture and oil paint exploring the tensions between the virtual and physical ways we experience the world. Her focus is on human presence and absence in our screen and material lives, along with imperfection and evidence of the human hand. Melhop has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Awards include, University of Nevada, Reno, Outstanding Artist Award, 2019, NNDA Innovator of the Year 2014, Luerzers Archive World’s Best Photographers 2009/2010.
Igor Zigor
Igor Zigor is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist & craftsman, currently experimenting with various creative and artistic approaches. He predominantly focuses on creating sculptural and alternative graphical work through labour-intensive processes. By toying with the notion of the frame as the artwork in and of itself, he aims to delve into the myriad avenues of contemplation regarding the shift from one state to another, be it of the same or different material, function, or even in the way we perceive and connect certain facets of our society. By re-contextualizing history through a current and unconventional approach, he endeavors to reimagine it, unveiling the delicate, vulnerable, and nostalgic hues of our surroundings.
Rodrigo Navarro
Between live paintings, paintings from drawings and photographic translations, Rodrigo Navarro's work leans towards a constant representation of indoors, which he uses as motifs for his pictorial exploration. From these paintings, he explores the stillness, the permanence, the finitude, the drift and the "compositional" order that results in these spaces when they are inhabited. His painting practice draws on artists such as David Hockney, Noah Davis, Matisse and Karin Mamma Andersson, as well as the aesthetics of anime, cartoons of the 90s and early 2000s and Fortnite-style video games.
November 1st to December 5th 2023
Mandy Cano Villalobos
My practice is a form of cultural scrapping. I use discarded, “rewanted” objects to discover and celebrate the everyday stories of everyday people. Materials include tattered clothing, orphan socks, broken toys, kitchen utensils, candy wrappers, and the like. When I integrate these castoffs in my work, I resurrect them, and assign them a new value. Craft plays an important role in my work. In a hyper capitalist world that prizes efficiency, entertainment, and consumption, my craft is an intentional, time consuming love that provides a quiet, revolutionary alternative.
Scott Bluedorn
I am an observer of the natural world and a critic of its disruption by contemporary human society. My work is influenced by science, history, geography, cultural anthropology, “primitivism”, and supernatural tradition; and I strive to distill imagery that speaks to the collective unconscious through visual storytelling. I work primarily in drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, assemblage, and installation; separately or sometimes in combination. Making personal work in this range of media addresses a spectrum of ideas, though there are distinct central themes pertaining to different environmental aspects. I work primarily in realism based on observation and recording detail, yet there is often an element of chance, chaos and/or abstraction involved in the execution. In the last few years I have attended many residencies and as an avid world traveler I integrate new experiences and geographies into my work, investing in the psychic energy of a place and hoping to translate that in my art. My current interests are in material studies, human/non-human interaction, the interconnection of living systems, “new” ecologies, climate disruption, sustainable design and living practices.
Brenda R. Fernández
Brenda Patricia Rodríguez Fernández was born in Mexico City in 1973. She studied Initiation in the Arts at Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), later earning a degree in Art at the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana. In 1997, she studied with Master Luis Nishizawa, (notorious painter, sculptor, ceramist, famous for his multiple disciplines and his profound knowledge of various techniques and language) from whom she learned the handling of multiple painting techniques and procedures. In 2007, she began a Master's degree in Social Responsibility at Anahuac University. For more than 20 years, she has combined her passion for art with a career in social development, working in different sectors to design innovative strategies for social inclusion within communities. From the moment she began to hold exhibitions, she decided on her professional name: Brenda R. Fernández. Fernández's artistic career has seen her exhibit work in various national and international venues in Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Brussels, Austria, Italy, England, USA and Switzerland, among other countries. Brenda Patricia Rodríguez Fernández was born in Mexico City in 1973. She studied Initiation in the Arts at Mexico's National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), later earning a degree in Art at the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana. In 1997, she studied with Master Luis Nishizawa, (notorious painter, sculptor, ceramist, famous for his multiple disciplines and his profound knowledge of various techniques and language) from whom she learned the handling of multiple painting techniques and procedures. In 2007, she began a Master's degree in Social Responsibility at Anahuac University. For more than 20 years, she has combined her passion for art with a career in social development, working in different sectors to design innovative strategies for social inclusion within communities. From the moment she began to hold exhibitions, she decided on her professional name: Brenda R. Fernández. Fernández's artistic career has seen her exhibit work in various national and international venues in Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Brussels, Austria, Italy, England, USA and Switzerland, among other countries.
Deniz Yurtbay
Play is the common underlying feature in my work. I observe socio-political events and cultural experiences with a satirical and playful perspective which is reflected back into my paintings. Sometimes a misogynist proverb, other times a personal experience or an unquestioned custom within my culture are my source of inspiration. I intend to subvert them with satire. Alternative ways of considering the world we live in and my critical assessment of commonly accepted social beliefs constitute the mainstay for the satire in my art. Social issues, political opinions and cultural differences are the topics that interest me. I create the foundations of my art by researching these cultural accepted subjects and then I blend them through abstraction to offer alternative perspectives.
Lena Buzueva
For the past three years I have worked in the field of science art, exploring the relationship between human and non-human agents, between past present and future, avoiding oppositions "nature vs. technology", "science vs. magic" but trying to create a speculative hybrid environment suitable for different mindsets. I am an interdisciplinary artist and researcher with a background in history/writing. My practice way or another relates to the themes of "dark" ecology, post-museology, new material studies and digital sacrality, involving multimedia tools. I direct "situations', where sometimes I myself play the main role. I use my camera as a tool in most of the projects. Initially used for documenting events, over time it took more free forms: mockumentary interview, music video, horror movie, anthropological fairy tale. Working with matter as "language", transforming domestic "ritual" into real one, one physics to another.
Hovey Brock
"My paintings, installations, writings, and social actions are part of a project I call Crazy River, which grew out of my life-long relationship with the West Branch of the Neversink, a river that runs between Ulster and Sullivan counties in New York State. “Neversink” is a corruption of the river’s original Lenapé name that means something like “crazy river.” Two catastrophic back-to-back floods, Hurricane Irene in 2011 and a localized super storm in 2012, woke me up to the climate crisis. Crazy River explores its psychological cost through an autobiographical lens, while addressing actions for mitigation and adaptation."
July 1st to August 4th 2023
Arleene Correa Valenciaz / California USA
Through textiles, painting and social practice Arleene Correa Valencia dives into questions surrounding her political status as a registered “illegal alien.” Inspired by her family’s migration from Mexico to the United States, she unthreads the complexities of immigration, human rights, inequality, and family separation by creating portraits of families that exist together and apart. Divided by lines that define imaginary borders, Correa Valencia’s works are carefully crafted in various mediums to play with ideas surrounding visibly and invisibly as they translate the history of migrants who seek a better life
César Ríos / CDMX, Mexico
Designer currently shifting interest in the art and technology relationship , My work seeks to create artifacts that use the aesthetic and sensory languages of design to reinterpret metaphysical concepts and contexts in phenomenological experiences, using as a medium, modern technological tools that address research topics such as; ancient beliefs, alchemy, philosophy and literature thus seeking to contemplate the artifacts, components and technological manufacturing processes from a poetic point of view.
Brittne Potter/ Canda & Baja California sur
Brittne Potter is a Canadian painter based in La Paz, BCS. Potter works with natural earth pigments that are foraged throughout the mountain ranges in Baja. The pigments are gathered and processed by hand in her home studio before being turned into paint. In her early life, Potter used a rock tumbler to create various crafts as her affinity for natural materials bloomed. Prior to arriving in Mexico, she completed her BFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University. In her spare time she co-founded Centerfold Gallery, a successful pop- up event series that led to the opening of a physical gallery in Montréal in 2016. As a foreigner in Mexico, taking samples from the earth became a deeply satisfying process to connect to the land and larger community. In Summer 2022 she moved to an off-grid eco retreat property to structure a creative residency program. The property sits at the base of the Sierra de la Giganta, allowing further exploration and access to new, vibrant pigments. The program is designed to bring creatives into a raw environment along with the requirement of regenerative community activation. Potter’s creative process continues to be interlaced with fostering community.v
Tommy Fitzpatrick / California USA
Tommy Fitzpatrick currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Grounded in an intimate understanding of the scientific description of nature, Fitzpatrick is interested in how scientific knowledge coexists with spiritual insights, rituals, and metaphysical explanations of phenomena. Fitzpatrick uses soft-sculpture, textiles, and wearable sculpture to create a visual dialogue exploring the interaction of spirituality and scientific inquiry. Fitzpatrick holds a Master’s degree in Astrophysics from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. Fitzpatrick has worked with organizations including Domicile Tokyo, Retail Pharmacy, and 8 Fields Market. Fitzpatrick has exhibited and sold work in several Chicago group shows as well as in group shows at Domicile Tokyo (Tokyo), Larrie NYC, Gern en Regalia (NYC), Nonation Art Lab (Chicago).
Raju Rage / London, UK
Raju Rage (artist name) is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival.Born in Kenya, raised in London (UK )and living in Mexico City, they explore the spaces and relationships between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. Their current interests are around sustainability, economies, care, and resistance. They have an expanded practice in various mediums, including print, installation, sculpture, audio-video collages and (anti/)performance. Previous themes focused on decolonial aesthetics and dilemmas of diaspora. They are a member of Collective Creativity arts collective and are a creative educator and independent scholar with an interest in radical pedagogy. They have taught at various art schools and universities in the UK as an Associate Lecturer and visiting artist. Raju has a theirstory inactivism, self and collective organized queer/ transgender/ people of color movements and creative projects in Europe and beyond from which their politics and works draw on and from. Raju has trained as a pastry chef and baker, worked in several community kitchens and been part of a baker’s collective.They occasionally use culinary elements in their creative practice. Raju Rage (artist name) is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival.Born in Kenya, raised in London (UK )and living in Mexico City, they explore the spaces and relationships between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. Their current interests are around sustainability, economies, care, and resistance. They have an expanded practice in various mediums, including print, installation, sculpture, audio-video collages and (anti/)performance. Previous themes focused on decolonial aesthetics and dilemmas of diaspora. They are a member of Collective Creativity arts collective and are a creative educator and independent scholar with an interest in radical pedagogy. They have taught at various art schools and universities in the UK as an Associate Lecturer and visiting artist. Raju has a theirstory inactivism, self and collective organized queer/ transgender/ people of color movements and creative projects in Europe and beyond from which their politics and works draw on and from. Raju has trained as a pastry chef and baker, worked in several community kitchens and been part of a baker’s collective.They occasionally use culinary elements in their creative practice.
Monse Muro / Montreal, Canada
Monse Muro is a Canadian, Mexican born visual artist. Her work draws on images from daily life, domestic interiors, fragments of songs and poetry, as well as her family archive. Piecing together elements into atmospheric spaces that evoke memory, distance, and longing. She creates images that are utterly familiar - an orange peel, an interior window, a series of snapshots tacked to a wall. While evading a specific narrative, the artist suggests an autobiography offering a personal quality in which the viewer can closely inhabit Muro’s world. Her work mainly examines migration, family archives, speculative history, identity, and kinetic memory.vMonse Muro is a Canadian, Mexican born visual artist. Her work draws on images from daily life, domestic interiors, fragments of songs and poetry, as well as her family archive. Piecing together elements into atmospheric spaces that evoke memory, distance, and longing. She creates images that are utterly familiar - an orange peel, an interior window, a series of snapshots tacked to a wall. While evading a specific narrative, the artist suggests an autobiography offering a personal quality in which the viewer can closely inhabit Muro’s world. Her work mainly examines migration, family archives, speculative history, identity, and kinetic memory.
May 1st to June 4th 2023
Jacob Grumulaitis / New York, USA
Growing up in a conservative Texas town, my visible queerness was an invitation to violence. Being in New York allows me to study culturally queer spaces because of the relative ubiquity of queer spaces. The physical nature of construction is vital to my methods of photography. The pieces reflect individuals and their experiences within a place, my act of space building for my identity and gender, the spaces and legacies created by the queers before me, spaces held in importance by subsects of the queer community, and the historical spaces that are no more. My interest in these subjects stems from a want to be visible within queer history and a yearning to understand the impact of temporary marks on people, places, and history. The works employ collage techniques, site-specific installations, historical studies, and references to the established queer artists I claim as my forbears. These methods act as my imprint; a mark of my work never attempts to claim ownership but enacts itself as a part of a nuanced definition within history. My self-portraiture has been a pivotal part of my work and understanding of my gender and the versions of myself that are known through each person. Each photo lives in temporality, a still of a prolonged performance. Why is the timeline of mark-making not sequential, what histories coexist, and what relation does a person share with a physical space that will inevitably inhabit a part of a future stranger?
Lucy Wood Baird / Chicago, USA
My practice examines the ambivalent nature of images via sculptural spatial collage of photographic prints. These prints, used as material for composite objects and installations, are divorced from their context and play with the perceived reality and dimensionality of the printed image. The works use images as sculptures, shadows, negatives, and mirrors. Some works allude to light that is documented from another context, others work like sundials activated by ambient light. The works cannot be captured or fully possessed, they maintain their own agency as they are dependent on light, time, or movement to activate them. They are documents of things while existing simultaneously as another thing themselves, showing multiple perspectives at once, and bringing into question what perspective is true or real if any.
Maximiliano Ruelas / Guadalajara, Mexico
Maximiliano’s work aims to create narratives between social contexts, specifically around race, cultural identity and the romanticism that involves the clashing of cultures. The emphasis of his practice delves deep into the problematics surrounding his immediate ecosystem. Ranging from post colonialism in society and the syncretism surrounding us, to queer identities flourishing in a societal turn moil and a changing political context, the themes that motivate his work are often at conflict with each other, yet also harmoniously intertwined. With the materials used, he seeks to create a conversation between painting, one of the most respected mediums, and textiles, a medium often overlooked. These two, one historically masculine, and the other inherently feminine, create a dichotomy that converts into his own contemporary ideology. Maximiliano received his BA in Textile and Fashion from Polimoda. His work has been exhibited in Mexico, Italy and the Netherlands.
Leming Chung / Shenzhen, China & Los Angeles , USA
I am an LA/China-based artist working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, sculpture, and game world-building. I received a BS in Economics from China and a MFA in Media Arts from UCLA. I have a long-term interest in the manipulation of body politics in real life and the power dynamic between human and nonhuman forms. I have been exploring entanglement of biological phenomena such as immune disorders and allergies, along with food preparation and preservation, as a comparative study of the unsettled intermediate stage for cross-species interconnection and how future is shaped in ideological narrative.
Jacobo Said / Lima, Peru
Self-taught artist from Peru. Began a serious practice i n 2 0 1 9 , s t a r t e d b y d r a w i n g a n d d o i n g s c u l p t u r a l p i e c e s u s i n g r e s i n a n d c l o t h . During 2021 I focused primarily on painting, e x p l o r i n g t h e u s e o f v a r i o u s m a t e r i a l s s u c h a s c r a y o n s , p e n s , m a r k e r s , acrylics, oils and other found objects. M y l a t e s t e x p l o r a t i o n s a r e a h y b r i d b e t w e e n p a i n t i n g a n d s c u l p t u r e . Recurring themes in my work revolve around absurdity, irrelevance, and humor. Questioning the function/limits of order, established protocols, and human b e h a v i o r i n a n a i v e y e t p r o f o u n d m a n n e r
March 1st to April 4th 2023
Juan Ledesma / Miami, USA
My practice is rooted in interdisciplinary experimentation. For my first solo exhibition in 2021, I examined the discourse of sound in relation to accented speech and the rhythms of spoken language. The intention was to contrast seemingly unrelated disciplines (linguistics & music) as common threads in the fabric of our social reality. Through my practice, I attempt to reveal spaces of commonality that fundamentally question who we are and how we relate to one another. Having had training both as a visual artist and a musician, I often explore resonance and material culture via drawing, sculpture, and sound installation. Recent work includes a drawing series exploring ancient symbols, cave paintings and the concept of nature, the process of which mimicked the flow of musical collaboration.v
Samantha Vo / Phoenix Arizona, USA
Samantha Vo is a multidisciplinary creative practicing at the intersection of art and design. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Culture with an emphasis in Design and a minor in Studio Art from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University in 2019. Her work explores her Mexican and Vietnamese heritages through mixed media art forms such as typography, textiles and printmaking with messages inspired by prayers, stories and memories of her family and upbringing. A common theme across Samantha’s practice is upcycling materials. She was inspired by her family’s constant resilience and resource-fullness in utilizing what they had and always finding beauty in found objects, thrifted items and antiques. nal en ciudades como Monterrey, Cd Mx, Hermosillo, Querétaro y Mérida Invitada como ponente en WPPI (Wedding And Portrait Photography International) en 2020 y 2022, donde tuvo la oportunidad de ser reconocida por Fujifilm X Series EU y compartir escenario con fotógrafos internacionales. Fue seleccionada durante 2020 en Fotos por México, una iniciativa de colección de fotografías por el COVID19, a través del trabajo fotográfico de artistas consagrados. En 2021 es seleccionada por LAP Foundation (Latin American Photography Foundation), en la categoría retrato de larga trayectoria. El mismo año es invitada a la exposición colectiva de la convocatoria en Bogotá, Colombia. Artista seleccionada en 2021-2022 en la sexta edición de PARAC (Programa de Alto Rendimiento de Arte Contemporáneo), con sede en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey. Daniela ha tenido la oportunidad de presentar su trabajo a nivel mundial en países como México, Colombia, Estados Unidos, España, Francia e Italia. En el presente año funda oficialmente en la ciudad de Monterrey, México, un laboratorio de fotografía analógica llamado Bengala. Además de viajar por el mundo para bodas de destino, Daniela actualmente experimenta con fotografía de arte contemporáneo (analógica y digital), video, instalación y performance. Con dos exhibiciones colectivas en curso, la galería educativa del museo de arte contemporáneo Museo MARCO, Aparador Aldama de Aldo Chaparro Studios en Monterrey y próximamente NUUN gallery en Oaxaca.
Katayoun Vaziriv / Iran & Los Angeles
At the moment I am working on a series called “Sky's the limit”. The series plays with the meaning of this phrase and the fact that what if Sky is actually the limit. What if we are all being ambitious, discovering new technology, not paying attention to its impact on our only planet and sky? Same as my other works this series also happens in a space between hoping to change the system ( reaching the sky), and feeling disabled and out of power towards it. At the moment all my works are in gouache, For these series I want to add print making to my medium and that's one of main reasons I am applying. Also as a person who has recently moved to CDMX, I would love to get to know the community better and I hope these types of residencies can also help with that.
Lu Villanueva / San Paulo, Brazil & cDMX, Mexico
My work is an approach to abstraction. I'm trying to create my own visual language: one that uses shapes, forms, color and line to create a composition with a degree of independence from visual reference to reality. Mixing techniques and trying out the resilience of the mediums and materials involving my art is as important as the final artwork. As a resource I use photography and architectural elements as well as the environment that surrounds me; creating complex dimensions represented by layers, multiple lines, colors and figures. I intend to deconstruct and decontextualize form and figure, breaking out the formality of geometry. Usually I work in two or more series simultaneously. This methodology allows me to balance and integrate each composition and play with adding and subtraction at the same time.v
CA Art Collective / cCMX, Mexico & Buenos Aires, Argentina
At CA Art Collective, we recognize that art exists because it is built in community, from production to appreciation. We seek to assert that we exist for what we are. The nature of what is human, divine, terrestrial, the cosmos, and the different realities, are condensed in our works of art, showing that it is possible to be and not to be at the same time, making both options, a cosmic probability. Always together, we anticipate the uncertainty of the environment, and we establish harmony through geometry. We achieve this by walking though a temporary maze, an imaginative composition in which it is necessary to face many crossroads at a time: alternatives that stop being alternatives when opting simultaneously for all of them at once, thus creating various lines that are multiplied, intercept and diverge where all outcomes occur and each one is the starting point of other bifurcations that materialize in angles and shapes.
December 1st to January 5th 2022-2023
Nicholas Milkovich / Chicago & Boston, USA
The human body is a perfectly fabricated machine made up of nature’s most clever designs. As a biomechanical engineer and sculptor, my practice sits in a foundation of material science and structure. In this way, my work has always been closely linked to research. All things in biology are made up of networks of smaller microstructures; atoms, cells, and limbs are units that interconnect to form meshworks of utility. Connection and configuration dictates the characteristics of the macrostructure. In my installations, I mimic biological motif in an effort to both overwhelm and control processes otherwise left passive. Calling attention to these features can have the added effect of eliciting the uncanny. I use this register in my work to express feelings of bodily “wrongness”, both physical and internal. I also balance that feeling with my own enthusiasm for the body’s complex structure through color and a wide variety of materials.
Daniela Villarreal / Monterrey, Mexico
es una fotógrafa de 31 años de Monterrey, México. Después de estudiar fotografía (comenzando en Parsons en Nueva York y terminando en la Escuela Americana de Fotografía en México) comienza su establecimiento profesional fotográfico hace más de una década haciendo bodas de destino. Posteriormente en 2018 y 2019 comenzó a desarrollar a partir de residencias de corta duración en Nueva York un archivo analógico contemporáneo, también en ciudades como Bruselas, Madrid, Cd Mx, Milán. En 2019 se inició como educadora de fotografía, creando talleres a nivel nacional en ciudades como Monterrey, Cd Mx, Hermosillo, Querétaro y Mérida Invitada como ponente en WPPI (Wedding And Portrait Photography International) en 2020 y 2022, donde tuvo la oportunidad de ser reconocida por Fujifilm X Series EU y compartir escenario con fotógrafos internacionales. Fue seleccionada durante 2020 en Fotos por México, una iniciativa de colección de fotografías por el COVID19, a través del trabajo fotográfico de artistas consagrados. En 2021 es seleccionada por LAP Foundation (Latin American Photography Foundation), en la categoría retrato de larga trayectoria. El mismo año es invitada a la exposición colectiva de la convocatoria en Bogotá, Colombia. Artista seleccionada en 2021-2022 en la sexta edición de PARAC (Programa de Alto Rendimiento de Arte Contemporáneo), con sede en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey. Daniela ha tenido la oportunidad de presentar su trabajo a nivel mundial en países como México, Colombia, Estados Unidos, España, Francia e Italia. En el presente año funda oficialmente en la ciudad de Monterrey, México, un laboratorio de fotografía analógica llamado Bengala. Además de viajar por el mundo para bodas de destino, Daniela actualmente experimenta con fotografía de arte contemporáneo (analógica y digital), video, instalación y performance. Con dos exhibiciones colectivas en curso, la galería educativa del museo de arte contemporáneo Museo MARCO, Aparador Aldama de Aldo Chaparro Studios en Monterrey y próximamente NUUN gallery en Oaxaca.
Michelle Sitton / CDMX, mexico
Mexican artist that centers her practice in painting, exploring her identity through rituals and technology. She began her studies in a BFA in painting and drawing in California College of the Arts, San Francisco, after two years comes back to her hometown to conclude her career in the Centro de Arte Mexicano. Currently she is developing her thesis on how the digital landscape participates in her painting. Exploring different mediums she did a creative writing diplomat in UNAM in 2020 and a contemporary art practice residency on 2018 in Royal College of Arts in London. Worked as an arti assistant with Victor del Moral in 2017 and with Cecilia Barreto in 2021. During one year she worked as coordinator in Casa Lü artist residency. Currently she has her studio and collaborates with editorial project casa roga, and is working as an art teacher for highschool in colegio Olami. Her work has been exhibited in collective exhibitions and art fairs, in february 2022 she had an individual exhibition in Casa Equis: “entre el cielo y la tierra”. Today she works with Casa Equis, Adhesivo Project and Estudio Marte galleries
Noah Tavlin / New York, USA
is a multimedia artist in Brooklyn, NY. He completed his BA in English Literature at McGill University in 2010, and his MFA in Painting and Drawing at Pratt Institute in 2022. Tavlin’s work has been exhibited at galleries in the New York-area as well as Canada and the UK. Working in mixed media drawing, printing, photography, and video, Tavlin sources found imagery from archive and everyday life, recontextualizing it with a deadpan sense of humor to address the experience of social, political, and spiritual decline from a personalized perspective.
Elizabeth Chang / Oakland California, USA
born in Oakland, CA to Korean immigrant parents. She had been studying psychiatry and public health when she started taking art classes and her career goals gradually shifted to focusing on art. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Hunter College in 2020. She views her work as an artist as similar and complementary to her work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner as both involve examining and exposing commonly held assumptions, expectations, and power structures that produce disease within a society or an individual. She has shown her work at Local Project Art Space, 440 Gallery, and Hunter College in NYC.
Sue Montoya / Honduras & Miami, USA
born in Los Angeles, California and raised between Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Miami, Florida. She received a BFA from New World in Visual Arts in 2014, and her MFA from the University of Florida in May 2018. She has exhibited in Berlin (Radialsystem), Mexico City (FainFeria), and Miami (CIFO). She has completed artist residencies at 4Most gallery in Gainesville, FL, SOMA Summer 2019 in Mexico City, and Home+Away at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, CO. She was shortlisted for the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards in 2022 for Change Atlas, a transmedia exhibition exploring climate change in Miami.v
October 1st to November 5th 2022
Jerry Shai Sarig / Tel Aviv, Isreal
Sarig’s practice explores the topic of childhood; memories and her own early drawings inspire her craft. The examination of this subject matter in her art is also an exploration of the self, consciously and unconsciously bringing into expression the same imaginary childhood characters, time and again, although in different forms and textures. She uses embroidery, ceramics, acrylic and oil paintings, sometimes independently and sometimes in combination. Her works are a visual collage, mixing shapes, drawings, and threads.
Ali Vaughan / Boston, USA
Ali Vaughan is an artist who creates sculptures centered around ecological concerns and somatic, personal, and spatial experience. Through embodiment and observation, the work explores the tension between industry and ecological anxiety. It balances the violence, curiosity, and desire in the will towards extraction with the potential for protection, presence, and restoration within nature and the body. Vaughan received a BA with Honors in Art Practice and a BA in Art History from Stanford University. She has exhibited in the de Young Museum, the Stanford Art Gallery, and Coulter Gallery and completed a residency at The Steel Yard in Providence.Ali Vaughan is an artist who creates sculptures centered around ecological concerns and somatic, personal, and spatial experience. Through embodiment and observation, the work explores the tension between industry and ecological anxiety. It balances the violence, curiosity, and desire in the will towards extraction with the potential for protection, presence, and restoration within nature and the body. Vaughan received a BA with Honors in Art Practice and a BA in Art History from Stanford University. She has exhibited in the de Young Museum, the Stanford Art Gallery, and Coulter Gallery and completed a residency at The Steel Yard in Providence.
Ramiro Ávila / Guadalajara, Mexico
Avila’s work explore different disciplines with the aim of approaching to the notion of the elusive, using ways of different knowledge that take place in supernatural, superstition, mythology and ritual. Making his practices expand the possibilities of finding meaning in reality, making everyday experience into speculative depth. This hint of the supernatural concept responds to a curiosity about human finitude, which is assumed by Ávila through corporality, daily life and the anecdotical.
Valeria Becerra / Bogota, Colombia & CDMX, Mexico
Interdisciplinary artist based in Mexico, Becerra’s work and research are influenced by the sociopolitical conditions and dynamics of site and space, making experiments with different references, contexts and languajes. Her current practice focuses on the embodiment of resulting forms in art, of particular non archived social dynamics in Mexico such as meditation and dreaming so it can be translate through matter and installation in space.
Deny Ramos / cDMX, Mexico
Ramos’s work mainly focuses on printmaking nevertheless, this discipline has allowed her explore in textile, installation, photography, painting, drawing and the possibilities of her own body. Japanese philosophy and aesthetics works as a poetic operator to feel life in its multiplicity and in that way start talking of the self-referential. DIY culture is adopted by the artist work as a political posture in which she prefers to get involved in every part of the process -conceptual, design, handmade. Her current work is about identity and the psi geográfico from the study of specific sites in which color and textile have an important weight in contemporary conversations.
July 1st to August 5th 2022
Brandi Holt / New York, USA
Holt is a Black American and Afro-Colombian designer, artist, and arts administrator living in Brooklyn, NY. She has been designing and creating art under the label Escarria for the past 10 years. Brandi’s design inspirations are pulled from an intimate process of honoring maternal ancestry, the overlooked elements of femininity, and the essence of the people she creates for. With each design she aims to create a visceral and hypnotic sensation amongst audiences that pull viewers in.
Chen Flamenbaum / Tel-aviv, Isreal
Flamenbaum is a multidimensional artist that explores the option of paintings and objects becoming and changing into another. In his works, he combines the worlds of psychoanalysis, sexuality, and Traditional-craft. The foundation of his works deals with the tension between opposites: sketch and sculpture, masculinity and femininity, matter and spirit.
Nomi H. Rave / New York -Woodstock, USA
Rave is a fine art photographer living between New York City and Woodstock, Upstate New York. She studied Photography at the ICP- International Center for Photography, NY. She explores different forms of photography from studio portraits fashion scene, street photography and is mostly passionate about the art of nature in particular flowers. “Inspired from the nature around me, I photograph flowers and create with them colorful images”
Omar Mendoza / CDMX, Mexico
Mendoza has a bachelor in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Arts and Design UNAM 2012-2016, he has exhibited his work in independent spaces and museums in Mexico, such as “SAJAK” individual exhibition at Mashimón, “SUUT” individual exhibition at Radio28CS, “PARÁMETRO” collective exhibition at Carrillo Gil Museum, “LA MUJER DE 60X SESENTA” collective exhibition at MUCA UNAM, “XXXVI ENCUENTRO NACIONAL ARTE JOVEN”, collective exhibition at Casa de la Cultura Victor Sandoval in Aguascalientes, Mexico. He has participated in art fairs such as Feria de la Acción Mexico City 2019, FAMA Monterrey 2020 and FAIN Mexico City. And he has been invited to participate in several art residencies with COBERTIZO, Casa Equis, Radio28CS, Mashimón and Centro de las Artes de San Agustin Oaxaca.
Sally Scopa / San Francisco, USA
Scopa is a painter from San Francisco, California. Her playfully ornate, formally experimental works question the cultural reverence commonly attached to painting, while celebrating and earnestly engaging with the medium as a tool for expression. She graduated from Harvard University in 2013 with a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies, and from Stanford University in 2019 with an MFA in Art Practice. She has recently participated in solo and group exhibitions at Eve Leibe Gallery (London), Biquini Wax EPS (Mexico City), and 5-50 Gallery (NYC).