Gabriel Moreno (b. Galesburg, IL, 1992) works between sculpture, collage, and installation. Moreno’s work believes sculpture is a language of “touch:” a poetic operation where two things meet and change one another. With this in mind he is interested in the medium’s phenomenological coalescence of object, figure, and site.

Fundamental to the work is a longstanding interest in the history of industrialization’s simultaneous productive and extractive forces. In particular, a ten year project looking at Maytag Refrigerator Manufacturing’s relocation from the midwest and what this absence generated. Refrigerators have been forefronted in this inquiry as objects that sometimes resist entropic decay while at other times succumbing to it. Positioned within a cultural situation of failure and persistence he asks “how do social conceptualizations of time frame our experience of such an inheritance?”

His works have been exhibited in galleries and museums including The University of Chicago (2024), The National Museum of Mexican Art (2023), Produce Model Gallery (2019), Randy Alexander Gallery (2017), Trinity College (2017) and Figge Art Museum (2013). He has been featured and given interviews to publications such as NewCity, WBEZ’s Reset, and Denizen Designer. He received BA’s from Knox College in 2014 and completed his MFA at the University of Chicago in 2016. He currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Image: Gabriel Moreno, Maytag Assembly NASCAR NASCAR NASCAR, 2024; Wood, gesso, image transfer; 42.5" x 22"

Headshot: Olivia Wolf

Carina Vargas-Nuñez is a multidisciplinary artist who employs paint and textiles to delve into the tapestry of identity, disability, and family history. Carina has used artistic expression from a young age to process their experience with disability and envision worlds outside of the constraints imposed by their complex health challenges. This world building has continued into their practice today, where Carina uses bright colors and defined lines to illustrate narratives aimed at better understanding their sense of self. Their work is an amalgamation of memory, family stories, folklore, and history—pieced together to shape almost fantastical scenes rooted in elements of symbolism and magic realism

Carina’s work has been featured at Cam Contemporarie, the Chicago Athletic Association, the Bridgeport Art Center, The Other Art Fair, Comfort Station, and the Logan Arts Center. They have designed a mural for Centro Hispano in Madison, WI. Carina has participated in residencies with Unpack Havana in Havana, Cuba and Cam Contemporarie in Chicago, IL.

Image: Carina Vargas-Nunez, Cieba in Caimanera, 2023, Acrylic on Canvas, 60" x 60"

Headshot: Zakkiyyah Najeebah

Diana Noh is a Korean American interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL, working at the intersection of photography, fiber, and installation. Her work centers on the reconstruction of distressed photographs of abandoned spaces and landscapes to explore the trauma of cultural in-betweenness and emotional neglect. Raised between two cultures, Diana’s process of tearing, burning, sewing, and layering photographs mirrors her navigation through internal fracture and personal recovery. Her manipulated imagery often stands in for the body—hidden but present, broken yet restored—offering spaces for reflection, confrontation, and restoration.

She received her M.F.A. in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her B.F.A. in Photography/Motion Picture from Kyungil University in South Korea, with additional training in art therapy. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, IL; Coker University in Hartsville, SC; and Space HNH in Seoul, South Korea. She has shown in group exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA; Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL; Hudson Valley MOCA in Peekskill, NY; and Editart in Geneva, Switzerland, among many others.

Her work is held in the collections of Jennifer and Dan Gilbert, Kyungil University, and numerous private collectors. Recent recognitions include Artist of the Month at Brushwood Center and first place at Verde Variants, Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights, IL. Diana has also participated in residencies at the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, WI, and Talking Dolls in Detroit, MI.

Diana frequently shares her practice through lectures and workshops at institutions including Wayne State University in Detroit, MI; Brushwood Center in Riverwoods, IL; and The Arts Council in Fayetteville, NC.

Image: Diana Noh, After Nine, 2022, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle canvas, thread, wires, yarn, 89 inch x 121 inch

Gunjan Chawla Kumar (b.1980) is an American- Indian artist living and working in Chicago. Kumar is natively from Punjab, India and moved to the United States in 2011. Gunjan is a materialist and works with various pigments and textiles from around the world. She has spent many years traveling through India and other countries in South Asia observing age-old practices in textiles and indigenous arts. Her interest in archeology, particularly prehistoric cave paintings and related schools of art play an important role in carving her process and ideology. She is a textile graduate from National Institute of Design and Technology, New Delhi (2003) and holds a bachelor’s degree in arts from DAV College, Chandigarh, India (2001). Her works have been exhibited globally and are a part of noted private and public art collections worldwide.

Image: Gunjan Chawla Kumar, Sifr 9, 2024, Pigment on Hand Woven Cotton (Khadi) on Wood Panel, 36" x 36"

Mauricio López F. is a Chilean artist currently based in Chicago. From a young age, he became deeply connected to the local experimental scene, performing with different sound acts. He studied Musical Composition at the Escuela Moderna de Música y Danza, guided by renowned composer Javier Farías. He was also selected by composer Luca Belcastro to participate in Copiú: Improvement Course in Composition and Interpretation of Contemporary Music. Later, he pursued a Bachelor's Degree in Aesthetics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he focused on avant-garde movements in the context of Chilean popular music, particularly the disruptive work of the Productora Mutante. He is a recent graduate of the MFA in Sound program at SAIC, where he received the New Artist Society Scholarship.

Currently, his practice explores the entanglement between visuality, sound, and motion by carefully tensioning them into unexpected social synchronizations. With a foundation in music, he has expanded into a broader territory of materials, which he navigates while dodging their expected roles. This seemingly unattached praxis distills his Chilean heritage, where discomfort finds refuge in sardonicism.

López F. often positions himself in complex terrains where confusion intensifies—and instead of leaving, he remains. Themes such as translation, miscommunication, labor, and cultural friction surface as he engages with the social layers embedded in the spaces he inhabits. Through a combination of sculpture, installation, performance, drawing, and photography, he seeks to challenge sensory expectations, creating encounters that unfold through shifting and layered codes.

His work has been featured in Peru, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States, with recent highlights including the 30th anniversary exhibition of SITE Gallery and Expo Chicago 2025.

Image: Mauricio López F., Wind reenactment: Fig 1, 2025, Handrail, mechanism, miniature flag, and toggle switch, 45.67" × 3.54" × 48.82"

Headshot: Sage (Shu Tzu) Lin

Skyler Simpson (b. Omaha, NE 1995) is a visual artist working between painting and drawing. Her work explores personal mythology and the home as a fraught refuge. The narrative pulls from Simpson’s Midwestern upbringing and confronts socialized domestic ideals. Through detailed mark-making, Simpson reveals her ongoing negotiation with beauty standards, materialism, and the allure of ornamentation. The paintings flit between familiarity and fantasy, connecting mundane rituals to a cosmic psychodrama. In these mystical subplots, the artist wrestles with hope and spirituality amidst current power structures.

Skyler received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison (2024) and a BFA from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (2018). In 2023, Simpson was the recipient of the University of Wisconsin Foundation Graduate Fellowship. During the summer of 2019, she worked as a Painting and Drawing intern at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Simpson was selected as a finalist for the AXA Art Prize Exhibition at the New York Academy of Art three years in a row, in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Booooooom, and she has exhibited in shows throughout the United States. Skyler is currently based in Chicago, IL.

Image: Skyler Simpson, Behind the Scenes, 2025, Colored pencil and acrylic on panel, 30" x 24"

Van Payne (b. 2001) is a black-filipino american artist working between painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. She received her BFA from the School of the Art institute Chicago and is the recipient of the Magdalena Abakanowicz Fellowship and Buonanno-Smith Scholarship. Payne assembles objects to navigate the interstice of mixed-race identity, patriotism and the contradictions birthed by their union. “The American conception of Blackness is to exist in a state of calculation, seeking ways to pacify the past within oneself. I reckon with a chasm that lies between our collective understanding of visibility against representation.” Reckon: to calculate or settle accounts. In her practice, Payne considers the many divisions she inhabits and works to produce images that reflect her experience of the visual narrative. Here, she settles on how objects, materials and assembled contexts can re-member the history that lives within her. Payne currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Image: Van Payne, Nap, 2024, cotton, hair, enamel, bed spring

Headshot: dani case

Rob Croll (b. 1993; Asheville, NC) is a multimedia artist, writer, and educator living in Chicago. His work moves between photography, sculpture, and performance to examine the politics of space and the unstable relationships between landscape, body, architecture, and image. Drawing from a background in improvised music, he applies the idea of extended technique to the camera, often purposefully misusing the technologies and materials of photography in search of novel ways to represent a subject.

Croll holds a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was awarded the 2023–2024 James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship for photography. He has exhibited and performed both locally and internationally and has recently attended residencies in Italy, Germany, and the United States.

Alongside his artistic practice, Croll has worked extensively as a translator and editor, with a focus on contemporary Latin American literature. His translations have been featured in such places as Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, The Paris Review, Circumference Magazine, Literary Hub, and Granta; his books have been reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, NPR.org, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus, among others.

Image: Rob Croll, Echo (echo), 2024, C-type prints and paper, 9 x 9 inches

Miguel Limón (b. Chicago, Illinois) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker whose practice spans printmaking, photography, installation, and socially engaged pedagogy. Informed by a lineage of Mexican migrant labor and shaped by their background in museum studies and education, Limón explores the ways images, objects, and materials function as carriers of memory and spirit. Their work approaches the print as both artifact and animate form—an object that not only documents but intervenes, activating personal and collective histories.

Through an animist and pedagogical lens, Limón engages print media as civic infrastructure: a tool for storytelling, resistance, and cultural transmission. Their process often merges archival research, material experimentation, and community engagement, investigating how labor, displacement, and place shape our visual and embodied languages.

Limón holds a BS in Education from DePaul University and an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. They have received support from 3Arts, the Puffin Foundation, and the Aperture Foundation, with work presented at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Design Museum of Chicago. They live and work in Chicago.

Image: Miguel Limón, Hogares Perdidos, 2016-2019, Silver Gelatin Prints, Instant Film Prints, 10” x 30”

Headshot: Daniel Delgado

Pedro Montilla (Bogotá, 1997) is a Colombian artist whose practice unfolds through painting as a way to understand the experience of being alive and surrounded by life. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a BFA from Universidad de los Andes. He is currently based in Chicago and works between the city and the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in Colombia.

His work emerges from the understanding of Painting as a mystical being, in whom science and magic converge in a continuous conversation. Through this lens, painting becomes a space for transformation, reflection, and attentive presence. Pedro works primarily on fique fabric, a fiber cultivated, dried, and woven in the Colombian Andes, traditionally used to transport coffee beans and harvests. This surface connects his artistic practice with his Andean roots, while also holding a strong sense of dislocation and the memory of what it touches. On it, he creates hybrid objects that exist between painting and tapestry, holding an imagery of landscapes, scenes, and abstractions that reflect an amalgam of internal states and lived experience.

He has presented solo exhibitions at Polícroma Galería in Medellín and participated in group shows at EXPO Chicago, Chili Art Projects in London, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Galería El Museo, SGR Galería, and multiple editions of ARTBO in Bogotá. He has received awards such as the New Artist Society and the Second Year International Graduate Scholarships from SAIC.

Image: Pedro Montilla, Mayo Sur, 2025, Oil and distemper on fique, 118” x 86.6”

Headshot: Emily Miller

Nick D’Alessandro (b. 2000) is a Chicago-based artist focusing on industry and subsequent disposal practices. His work draws from the events of planned obsolescence, collecting the objects of its disregard. In approaching a fiber context, the materiality of the objects studied becomes centered and honored in light of their exhausted utility. Investigating extraction systems as a catalyst for land destruction, digital colonialism, and material reuse within the textile industries, he asks what the aesthetics of these essential materials offer a throwaway society, and looks for the point at which an object becomes waste.

His work explores group identities, signaling through dress, and a garment’s associative flux. Often dependent on the site, the work is informed by sifting through thrift stores, alleys, and curbsides, looking for objects with visible use, and synthesizing these materializations. Questioning how material origin, permanence, and external forces affect an object’s value, Nick’s work explores the connection between maker, user, and re-user. Intercepting material to assign new context reintegrates them into discussions of class, longevity, and labor.

D'Alessandro received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on Sculpture, Fiber and Material Studies, and Fashion. He is the director of the fashion brand WWWYRED. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at; LVL3, Sawhorse, EXPO, and in NYC at NADA and Gern En Regalia. His work has been published in Document Journal, Graphite, and Like a Field.

Image: Nick D’Alessandro, Jasper, 2025, lint + aluminum zip ties, 40" x 43" x 33"