Candida Alvarez
Candida Alvarez (b.1955, Brooklyn, NY) is widely recognized as one of her generation’s most highly innovative and experimental painters. Alvarez is known for creating kaleidoscopic abstract paintings that spin together personal and cultural knowledge with everyday life. Her work has been collected by the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Denver Art Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York, Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Seattle Art Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, among others. Alvarez is an alum of the Yale School of Art (1993-95) and Fordham University at Lincoln Center, NY (1973-77) and Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998-2023) where she is now Professor Emeriti. In 2024 she was the Alex Katz Chair in Painting at the Cooper Union, NY. Alvarez has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1981) returning in summer (2023) as faculty) Studio Museum in Harlem AIR residency (1985), Pilchuck Glass School (1998), and LUMA Foundation (2023). Her awards include the Trellis Art Fund Award (2024), Mellon Foundation Latinx Artist Fellowship, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art (2022) The Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painter and Sculptors Grant (2019). Alvarez is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago and Richard Gray Gallery, NY, Geneva among others. In addition, she received a 2008 NYFA fellowship in Photography. She lives and works in New York.
Image: cbob 6, 2025. Acrylic on linen, 48 ¼ × 48 ⅛ inches, 122.6 × 122.2 cm.
Ambreen Butt
Ambreen Butt (b.1969 Lahore, Pakistan) is a Texas-based artist whose practice engages in acts of staining, cutting, ripping and tacking with repetitive urgency. Butt's painted and collaged works on paper and large-scale installations espouse the radiant aesthetics of sacred geometries, Islamic ornamentation, and traditional miniature painting while simultaneously exploring the complexities of contemporary global politics, female identity and living as a Muslim in the United States. Her work has long focused on war, maternal witnessing, and the afterlife of violence, approached through slow, meditative processes grounded in South Asian miniature painting and feminist collage. Butt’s work has been shown and collected by many institutions such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC), Dallas Contemporary (TX), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA) the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA), the Brooklyn Museum, the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She was the first recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Maud Morgan Prize from MFA, Boston, grants from Joan Mitchell Foundation, Boston Foundation and many others. Butt received her BFA in traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, and her MFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.
Image: Tearful harvest from the series ‘Lay Bare My Arms,’ 2023. Watercolors, white Gouache, gold pigment, pen, and Collage on tea-stained paper. 90 30 inches X 22 inches (unframed)
JoAnne Carson
JoAnne Carson (b.1953, New York City) currently splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and Shoreham, Vermont. For more than five decades she has created two and three-dimensional artworks that offer exuberant visions of life on the cusp of another world. Her work has been shown in numerous solo museum exhibitions including The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois; and the Zillman Art Museum, Bangor, Maine. Notable group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Ceremonial Exhibition, the Albright Knox Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Sheldon Art Museum. She is the recipient of numerous prizes including the John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an American Academy in Rome Prix de Rome, an Award in the Visual Arts, and a purchase prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, amongst others. Her work can be found in many public collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Joslyn Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Frederick Weisman Art Museum, and Sheldon Museum of Art. She received her B.S from University of Illinois and her M.F.A. from University of Chicago. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of University of Albany, SUNY.
Image: Bouquet, 2005. Installation view at Brooklyn Museum, 84”x105”, thermo plastic, fiberglass, aqua resin.
Cecelia Condit
I consider myself a storyteller working within the psychological landscape of contemporary fairy tales, dreams, poetry and the natural world. I explore archetypal themes where my characters are often shaped by violence, basic cold-heartedness and trauma.
I have shown internationally in festivals, museums and alternative spaces, and is represented in collections including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Centre Georges Pompidou Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France. She received the 2024 Stan Brakhage Vision Award for expanding the boundaries of personal cinema. She has received numerous festival awards and grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Mary L. Nohl Foundation. Cecelia Condit lives and works in Minnesota.
Image: I've Been Afraid, 2020. I've Been Afraid is a musical encyclopedia about how women get abused, and why they stay. It uses emojis that are as ubiquitous as abuse is in our culture.
Lola Flash
Lola Flash (b. 1959) is a New Jersey native and a prominent figure in New York’s downtown scene. An activist and artist, Flash has dedicated their career to documenting themes of race, age, and gender. During the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was an active member of ACT UP and featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are deeply intertwined, reflecting a lifelong commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ communities and communities of color.
Working primarily in portraiture with a 4x5 film camera and a digital medium format camera, Flash engages individuals often overlooked, amplifying their presence. They are a 2024 Pollock Krasner grantee, with work featured in collections such as MoMA, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the George Eastman Museum. Flash is also a member of the Kamoinge Collective and serves as President of the Queer Art board.
Image: Toni Parks, 2011. SALT series. Torquay, UK
Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq/Koyukon Athabascan, b.1969, Nome AK) is a mixed-media visual artist based in Anchorage AK. Her sculptures and paintings combine synthetic elements with traditionally harvested materials to create an expansive perspective on bodies, identity, and relationships within a rapidly changing North. Her work has been shown in numerous national and international exhibitions over three decades and is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Alaska State Museum, the Anchorage Museum of Art, the British Royal Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Native Art Santa Fe, among others. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2025), Rasmuson Fellowship (2008, 2022), United States Arts Fellowship (2018), Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2017), Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art (2007). She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (1992) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Arizona State University (1998). Mark: Sonya Kelliher-Combs, edited by Julie Decker, is published by Hirmer and Anchorage Art Museum (2024).
Image: Blue and Peach Large Secrets, 2024, acrylic polymer, cotton muslin, paper, 66" x 64." Photo credit: Stars Gallery, private collection
Michelle Marcuse
Michelle Marcuse (b. 1957) grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and creates mixed-media sculptures from wire, raffia, string, and cardboard. She embraces failure and improvisation as essential forces in her practice, and resists the pressures of speed and optimization. She has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, including at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, Washington, D.C.; Rowan University, NJ; Taller Boricua, NYC; Little Haiti Cultural Center, Miami; and the Restart Museum, China. Her work is held in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The State Museum of Pennsylvania; College of Notre Dame of Maryland; and the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, among others. Marcuse was shortlisted for the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2021), received a CFEVA Fellowship (2020), and completed a residency at Brandywine Print Workshop (2024). Additional honors include the Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge Exhibition (2016) and participation in (re)FOCUS/2024 at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. She holds a Bachelor of Design from Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel, and a BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Marcuse lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Image: Mapburst, 2023. Cardboard, acrylic paint, graphite, chalks, paper; 60” w x 72”h x 3” d
Park McArthur
![[Dozens of used bacterial-viral ventilator filters litter a striking turquoise-colored floor in an otherwise empty room.]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b42673c1aef1dea2e4fa0bd/511f7aeb-7a3a-4b5a-8933-b0a0daa160fa/PM_Untitled_2014.jpg)
Park McArthur (b. 1984 Raleigh, NC) experiments with personal and social meanings of debility, delay, and dependency under the guidance and instruction of disability. Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany and mumok, Vienna, Austria; Kunstraum Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany; and Paid, Seattle, Washington. With Constantina Zavitsanos McArthur has exhibited artworks and published essays in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory (Routledge, 2013) and Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT, 2017). Artist publications include Beverly Buchanan: 1978–1981 (Athénée Press, 2015) co-edited with Jennifer Burris and Contact M (mumok, Museum Abteiberg, 2025).
Image: Untitled, 2014
Courtesy of the artist and Museum Abteiberg
Photo: Fred Dot
Nicole Miller
Known for her evocative videos and multimedia installations, California-based artist and filmmaker Nicole Miller frequently addresses themes such as race, translation, and the politics of representation. Notions of embodiment and articulation are common threads throughout Miller’s work. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis (2022); SFMoMA, San Francisco (2019); The High Line, New York (2014); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve (2014); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2013); and LAXART, Los Angeles (2009). Miller has received numerous prestigious awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award (2018), Rome Prize (2016), William H. Johnson Prize (2015), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2013), Artadia Award (2013), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2011), among others. She is an associate professor in the department of visual arts at University of California, San Diego.
Image: Michael in Black, 2018. Bronze sculpture.
Narcissister
Narcissister (New York, 1971) is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Masked and merkin-ed, she works at the intersection of art, dance, and activism in a range of media including live performance, sculpture, collage, film, and video. She presents work worldwide in museums, galleries, festivals, and nightclubs. Among other awards, 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,” a hybrid performance/doc about her complex family history, 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. Voyage Into Infinity, a large-scale performance commission, had its world premiere at Pioneer Works in 2024 and will be presented at NYU Skirball during the 2026 Under The Radar Festival. Narcissister is a 2025 recipient of a Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation commission to develop a new theatrical piece at Playwrights Horizons.
Image: Untitled Self-Portrait Series (Fringed shoulder epaulets), 2025
Dhara Rivera
For over two decades, Dhara Rivera’s work has focused on the issue of water bodies and their place in society, interweaving the social aspects and the historical /political backgrounds involved with a poetical tone to the story approached.
Dhara is a multimedia artist living and working in Puerto Rico. She holds Bachelor degrees in Humanities and Sculpture from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) (1973) and Pratt Institute in New York (1980). She graduated from Hunter College with a Masters Degree in Sculpture (1983) and later, she completed the first year of doctoral studies in the Public Space and Art Program of the University of Barcelona, Spain (201-03).
Linda Stark
Linda Stark (b. San Diego, CA) has been making talismanic paintings for more than four decades in which pop cultural symbols, personal mythologies, and feminist notions of the body reverberate within her investigation of the physical properties of oil paint. Recent museum and private group exhibitions include Ordinary Extraordinary, Orange County Museum of Art (2024); New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, UC Berkeley Art Museum and PaciMic Film Archive (2021); Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); and Painting: Now and Forever, Part III, Matthew Marks Gallery and Greene Naftali, NY (2018). Her work is included in the collections of Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Wadsworth Athenium, Connecticut; and Berkeley Art Museum. She is the recipient of awards and grants including California Community Foundation (2008); C.O.L.A.Los Angeles (2001); California Arts Council (1998): National Endowment for the Arts (1995), and Western States Arts Federation/NEA (1992). Stark received her B.A. from University of California, Davis and her M.F.A. from University of California, Irvine. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Image: Bastet, 2016. Oil on canvas over panel, 36 x 36 x 2 inches. Photo credit: Brian Forrest
Kunié Sugiura
Kunié Sugiura (b. 1942, Nagoya, Japan) In 1963 Sugiura moved to the United States to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she received her BFA in 1967. While at the SAIC, Sugiura studied under the conceptual photographer Kenneth Josephson. During the 1970s Sugiura’s practice combined photography with acrylic paint on canvas. In the 1980s, Sugiura began creating photograms using objects from everyday life including flowers, plants, animals, which led her to create her famous Artists and Scientists series. Her works can be found in esteemed private collections, museums and cultural institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Tochigi Prefecture Museum of Art, Japan; Hiroshima MOCA, Hiroshima, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; Tate Modern, London, England ; and Vivendi Universal, Paris, France.
Image: Compounds A Positive, 1997. Toned Gelatin silver print, 39 3/8 x 28 15/16 inches
Collection: MoMA
Hong-Ân Trương
Hồng-Ân Trương is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores immigrant, refugee, and decolonial narratives and subjectivities. Often working with archival materials, her work examines structures of time, memory and the production of knowledge. Using video, photography and sound, her work interrogates the narrative paradigms of these media, and how they shape what we come to know about political and historical events. Her work was included in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp (New Orleans), and has been exhibited at the Nasher Museum of Art (NC), The Kitchen (NY), Nhà Sàn (Hanoi), and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), among other places. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the North Carolina Museum of Art (NC), and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University (MA). She has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2019-2020), the Capp St. Artist in Residence at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art (2020), and a MacDowell Residency Herb Alpert Fellow (2022). Her writing has appeared in Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the Arts edited by Christopher K. Ho and Daisy Nam (Paper Monument 2021), and in American Art in Asia: Artistic Practice and Theoretical Divergence, edited by Michelle Lim and Kyunghee Pyun (Routledge 2022). Hồng-Ân lives in Durham, North Carolina where she is an organizer and teaches in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Image: Installation view, Hồng-Ân Trương: With love from your Vietnamese Sisters, 2025. Photo by Julia Featheringill, courtesy of Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Paula Wilson
Paula Wilson (b. 1975, Chicago, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Carrizozo, New Mexico, whose work spans printmaking, painting, collage, video, and installation. Her immersive environments explore the interplay between human and non-human forms, blurring the boundaries between art and daily life. Wilson has exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo shows at the California African American Museum (Los Angeles, CA), the Tang Teaching Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), 55 Walker (New York, NY), and Emerson Dorsch Gallery (Miami, FL). Her awards include the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award (2024), the Ossorio Fellowship at Colby College (2022–23), the Hodder Fund Grant from Princeton University (2020), the Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence at Yale University (2009), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2009). She received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Columbia University. She co-founded the artist-run Carrizozo Artist-in-Residence program (est. 2016) and MoMAZoZo (est. 2010), a grassroots venue for community-building and creative exchange.
Image: Earth Angel, 2022. Oil-based ink, acrylic and oil on muslin and canvas, wooden and beaded jewelry made in collaboration with Mike Lagg, 155 x 155 inches
Image credit: Justine Hill, courtesy of Denny Gallery