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Meet Curatorial Residents
Christina Nafziger is a Chicago-based writer, editor, curator, and critic interested in research-based artistic practices, labor and power, the impact archiving has on memory and identity, and the ways in which location affects identity and art making, particularly in the Midwest. She believes in the unlimited potential of approaching all things with a anti-authoritarian, collaborative mindset. When she is not writing she is reading about cyborgs, dolls, and AI.
Christina holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths University of London and a BA. in Art History from Herron School of Art & Design. She is currently the Managing Editor at the arts publication and archiving initiative Sixty Inches From Center. She is also the Associate Editor at the contemporary art publication Create! Magazine.
With a decade of experience as an arts writer, Christina’s writing has been published by the Chicago Reader Chicago-Sun Times, Sixty Inches From Center, Create! Magazine, Newcity, Ruckus Journal, and more. She is also co-editor of Sixty Inches From Center’s inaugural book Chicago Artists + Archives Project: Case Studies in Collaboration (2023).
Image: Photo of an exhibition curated by Nafziger titled Haunted Nostalgia: the mall will be closing in 10 minutes…, featuring the work of Katie Neece.
Christine Magill (she/they; b. Boston, MA, 1996) is a curator, nonprofit administrator, and art collections professional currently based in Chicago, Illinois. She received a BA in French Studies from Boston University in 2018 and MAs in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Previous curatorial projects include two iterations of <i>New Work</i> and the 2022 SAIC <i>Faculty Sabbatical Triennial</i> at SAIC Galleries.
Christine's curatorial practice centers around ideas of space, time, materials, and connections, specifically examining architecture and spatial layout of display spaces in direct conversation with the artworks shown alongside artists' material processes of creating. They are also interested in languages, translations, cultural differences, and global understanding as methods of both curation and communication. As such, she speaks proficient French alongside her native English and is working on their literacy in Korean and German.
Image: Christine Magill, Installation shot of New Work, 2021. Work pictured: Liang He, Running Bunny (2021), plastic fabrics, fans, cardboard, and wires; and Xinyan Wang, Intriguing Uncertaintied (2020), acrylic on cardboard
Francine Almeda is a Chicago-based Filipina-American gallerist, independent curator, cultural producer, writer, and DJ. She is the Founder and Director of Tala, an independent contemporary art space and gallery with a multitudinous program containing a library and atrium marketplace. Prior to this, she founded Jude Gallery, an artist-run project and exhibition space which ran from 2021-2024. As a gallerist, Francine builds community-based platforms for artists that encourage transdisciplinary experimentation of all mediums with the goal of proposing new realities. Her practice nurtures new methods of collaboration in order to expand the capacities of art as a caretaking tool. With a focus on conceptual, narrative-driven curatorial projects, and public programming, Francine supports QTBIPOC artists at all stages of their career. She has spoken and sat on panels across Chicago, including the Arts Club of Chicago, Soho House Chicago, and The Silver Room. She was a participant in the ICI’s Curatorial Seminar (2022), and is currently a Curatorial Resident at Chicago Artists Coalition (2024-2026).
Image: Tala Inaugural Show Installation Shot - Credit: Steven Piper
Headshot: Steven Piper
Gordon Fung (b. 1988, San Francisco, CA; lives in Chicago, IL) is a transdisciplinary artist-curator who works with large-scale curatorial/collaborative practices, experimental audiovisual performances, new media installations, noise music, experimental film/video, media archaeology, participatory works, and happenings.
Expanding the traditional caretaking role of the curator, he applies stewardship to artworks, artists, history, culture, and the community at large to ensure constructive dialogue between them. Recognizing the cultural significance of media and technology, his curations bring equilibrium to art scenes where media arts are underrepresented. Serving as a mediator and facilitator, he builds a heteroglossic bridge to foster a more supportive environment that elevates both institutions and independent DIY scenes.
Inspired by the unique Chicago video/media arts lineage and collectivity in Fluxus, Gordon forms and directs the experimental time-based arts collective //sense to showcase large-scale experimental community theater performances, exhibitions, and screenings. Counteracting the marginalization of experimental time-based arts, he curates and fosters a collaborative common ground for sound, video, performance, and media artists to create gesamtkunstwerk through synergy. By democratizing media tools, he empowers and mobilizes the community to rectify media injustice imposed by corporations.
As a firm believer in collectivism, his large-scale curation cultivates two maxims: “making good communities better” and “finding arts in all things.” Referencing Fluxus and happenings, he creates brave spaces for participants to unleash their imagination in artmaking through deskilling and unlearning.
Gordon has presented experimental community theaters at the International Museum of Surgical Science (2024), No Nation Art Lab (2023), Comfort Station (2023), and MacLean Ballroom (2023). His curated exhibitions include: (re)understanding media: extension of agency in the global village (Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition 2024 in Austria), prismatic (re)ality (2024), and //show what you can (2023). He launches neomediapolis, an experimental and community space in Chicago, to support video, media, and performance arts.
Image: Gordon Fung, and the home of the [placeholder]—S1E1_pilotComfortStation (2023), experimental community theater, duration varies - Photo by Alex Teng-feng Kuo
Sidney Mori Garrett is a Houston, TX born, Chicago, IL based curator, arts administrator, and artist. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Digital Media from University of Houston and a Masters of Fine Art in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Garrett has created multimedia works that have exhibited nationally and internationally at Alabama Song Art Space, Blaffer Art Museum, Art Licks Weekend and Wedge Gallery among others. Her written works have been published in Byline Houston, Gulf Coast Journal, and The Smartest Thing. In 2017, Garrett performed in Scales with Solange Knowles at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX and later continued to work with Knowles in 2019 for When I Get Home. She is also a founding member of JUICEBOX, a community platform for Black and Brown women, queer, and transgender & gender-nonconforming (TGNC) DJ’s. She has curated exhibitions for Project Row Houses’ Community Gallery, ICOSA Collective, and the School of Art Institute of Chicago's Wellness Center. Her artistic, administrative, and curatorial practice is rooted in her southern Black Feminist’s lens of love, mindfulness, and care. Garrett has held previous positions at Lawndale Art Center, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Project Row Houses while also serving as an Artist Board member for Art League Houston from 2018-2019. She is currently Manager of Programs at 3Arts, Communications Manager at Hyde Park Jazz Festival, a member of Nikkei Uprising (a group of Japanese American activists in Chicago organizing towards abolition & the collective liberation of all peoples), and a core member of Companion Cooperative (a volunteer-run art exhibition and programming space in Chicago).
Image: Sidney Garrett, Finding Necessities curation at ICOSA Collective, 2020
Meet Artist Residents
an emard’s practice is a meditative process exploring world-building mythologies and the myth-making potential of queerness. Working with oil paint and leaded glass, they find poetry in the space between art and meaning; between concept, intention, and form.
In emard’s paintings, the surface of the canvas is in an interstitial state at all times. The image finds its way through processes of rubbing and blending paint on the surface and acts of removal by sanding and scraping. It is through this approach that emard creates an atmosphere of becoming, where boundaries are forgiving and time is nonlinear. Emard’s leaded-glass objects function as viewfinders and are a means to implicate and imprint physical space. The accumulation of glass and solder impose image, gesture, and frame onto their surroundings as an acknowledgement and question. In doing so, these leaded-glass objects create a kaleidoscope of the coexisting queer mythologies.
Like queerness, the future exists in the cracks and gestures of the present. It is from this devotional, affective space that emard creates art that enchants, clinging to the notion that art is a conduit towards new places, dimensions, and futures.
an emard was born into a working-class family in suburban Chumash Land / Ventura, CA and spent their formative years navigating queerness in the shadow of the Catholic Church and the light of lemon orchards, asphalt, and the Pacific Ocean. emard now resides on the unceded homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires / Chicago, IL. emard has exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Vermont at venues including Steve Turner Gallery, Block Museum, Usdan Gallery, Kibum MacArthur, Weatherproof, Some Clouds, among others.
Image: an emard, Viewfinder, 2022
bex ya yolk (b. Richmond, VA, 1994) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, book maker, researcher, and adjunct professor based in Chicago, IL. yolk earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and an MFA in Visual Communication Design with a concentration in Book Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a full merit scholar. yolk has received grant endowment and recognition from the Atlanta Contemporary, Codex International Biennial Artists' Book Fair and Symposium, the College Book Art Association, VCUarts Adjunct Faculty Research, and the Judith Alexander Foundation. yolk has been invited as an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI, ACRE in Steuben, WI, Real Time and Space in Oakland, CA, and Aviário Studio in Ferreira do Zêzere, Portugal. They are the senior designer at Cita Press, an independent publishing platform promoting open access, public-domain works of feminist literature.
yolk is the founder of an artists’ book bindery + publishing initiative—THUNGRY which focuses on disrupting what we’ve come to understand qualifies a Book, complicating traditional ways of book building + semantics through experimentation and queering praxis. THUNGRY explores historical research, sociology, and speculative theory into 'the Maternal Complex' made up of subgenres like care work, reproductive design, rematriation, container technologies, abortion access activism, reproductive justice and health care disparity in the U.S, the maternal identity, matrescence, and the gestational state especially in queer folx exploring the intersectionalities between the Book + this kind of body.
Image: bex ya yolk / the book of every title / 2023 / plywood, Tyvek, LED, ink, Migra Italic typeface, sand / 3' x 8'
Headshot: MJ Minutoli
Cay Mims (she/they) is a Black, queer artist living on the Northside of Chicago. Their primary goal is to synthesize sociological frameworks with their personal experiences. Their work is overwhelmingly concerned with representing themes of displacement, erasure, impermanence and memory. Qualitative and curious, never didactic, and infused with personality; they seek to create moments that are comfortably familiar to some, while amicably informative to others.
Cay also is an emerging, independent arts programmer and curator. Placing an emphasis on marginalized artists, they have hosted and supported creative events around the city for the past year. This includes facilitating/moderating a series of artist conversations in conjunction with shows at the German Cultural Center and (formerly) The Martin; curating an emerging artist pop-up at DragonFly Gallery; and hosting a Black Pride Movie Screening at the Logan Theater.
Cay graduated in 2021 from Vanderbilt University with a BA in Studio Art and a BA in Sociology. They have shown work in a number of galleries nationally including Space 204, Nashville TN; Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, Valdosta, FL; Buckham Gallery, Flint, MI; M. G. Nelson Gallery, Springfield, IL; The Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago, IL.
Cay also loves cooking, jazz records, trivia, and YouTube.
Image: Cay Mims, DURAG, 2022, Oil on Panel, 35" x 30"
Cecilia Beaven is a visual artist and art instructor from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Cecilia holds an MFA in Studio from SAIC which she pursued as a Fulbright scholar and a BFA with honors from ENPEG La Esmeralda (Mexico City). Cecilia’s multidisciplinary artwork has been shown in solo shows in Mexico City, Houston, and Chicago, as well as in group exhibitions in Mexico, the US, Colombia, Sweden, Italy, and Japan. She has painted murals in several cities such as Hiketa, Paris, Houston, Chicago, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Pachuca, Tepoztlan, and Tijuana, where she was commissioned to paint a segment of the border wall between Mexico and the US.
Through her work, which includes painting, drawing, animation, film, and sculpture, Cecilia develops a speculative mythology with unique visual narratives. Cecilia questions who gets to tell stories and establish the official cultural narratives. The artist affirms her creative agency by modifying existing tales and mythology and seamlessly adding fiction and personal anecdotes. Through this analytical and ludic experimentation, Cecilia brings a unique perspective on Mexican identity that goes beyond folklore and mainstream ideas of Mexico.
Cecilia has also been the recipient of distinctions like the year-long Radicle Studio Residency at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago (2021), the Leroy Neiman Foundation Fellowship at Ox-Bow School of Art, in Saugatuck, Michigan (2019), and the Fulbright program (2017). In 2022 she was considered one of the “100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World” by Forbes Mexico, and in 2023 she was included in the “Art 50 – Chicago’s Artists Artists” list by NewCity magazine.
Image: Cecilia Beaven, Moon Bloom, 2023, Acrylic enamel on wall, 9' x 30'
Chelsea Bighorn (b.1989) was born and raised in Tempe, Arizona, and is Lakota, Dakota and Shoshone – Paiute. She is a textile artist that works in finding the beauty in her rich mixed Native American and Irish American heritage. Finding great inspiration in the history of traditional dance, Bighorn works to celebrate her memories of attending Powwows with her grandmother through her large-scale textile pieces.
Bighorn has a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber Material Studies. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, SITE Santa Fe, EXPO Chicago and Center for Native Futures.
Image: Chelsea Bighorn, Vertebrae, 2024, Canvas, MX dye, artificial sinew, glass beads, 64" x 68"
Headshot: Lillian Heredia
FÁTIMA (b. Earth, 0000) is a Mexican artist working in the fire arts: blacksmithing, lightworking, metal casting and fabrication. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus in Sculpture and Printmaking from Loyola University in New Orleans and pursued her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In her art practice, FÁTIMA delves deep into the roots of radical ancestry, seamlessly weaving ancient techniques into her contemporary creations. Each piece becomes a vessel through which she communicates with the past, present, and future. Objects and spaces transcend their physical forms, becoming conduits for ritualistic expression with the intention of forging narratives of connection.
Image: FÁTIMA, BRASERO I, 0000, Fire, light, ritual, gathering, steel, 27" x 27" x 16"
“I tend to work with my hands versus my fingers as I question the traditions of both hard work and Haute Couture. I mirror the violence seen around us by physically tearing, burning, stapling, knotting and puncturing materials that tie back to my identity. To find myself I must destroy what I am given. Being from Western KY, a place that values hard work in the traditional sense, I am drawn to explore heavy materials and ideas within a reconstructive fashion practice. I aim to rebuild an understanding of the places I live within and the identity imposed upon me.”
Originally from Western KY, where corn is farmed and coal is mined, Isaac Couch has brought his southern perspective to the northern city of Chicago where he lives and works. After receiving a Bachelor's degree in Merchandising Apparel and Textiles in 2019 from the University of Kentucky, he went on to earn his Masters of Design at SAIC in 2021. Following graduation, he was awarded the 2021 Luminarts Fashion Fellowship, the 2021 Fashion Council Fellowship, and the 2023-24 Arts Club of Chicago Fellowship. He has shown work with the Weinberg Newton Gallery in Chicago, the Lexington Art League back in his home state, the Comfort Station in Logan Square, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Image: Isaac Couch, HANDS DOWN, 2022, Installation at the Lexington Art League /// Image Credit: Jakob Green
Headshot: Max Li
Jairo Granados-Cardenas (b. Michoacán, Mexico) is a self-taught film photographer whose captivating work reflects a profound connection to both his Mexican roots and the vibrant cultural tapestry of his current home in Chicago, IL. Jairo spent his formative years immersed in the dynamic fusion of his Mexican heritage and the distinctive atmosphere of a Mexican-American household in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Despite lacking formal training, Jairo's artistic journey has been defined by an innate ability to capture the essence of human experiences through the lens of his camera. His evolving perspective is shaped by a keen understanding of composition, an astute mastery of color, and a unique flair for storytelling. These elements converge seamlessly in his photographs, creating a visual language that transcends cultural boundaries and resonates with viewers on a profound level.
Currently based in Chicago, Jairo Granados-Cardenas draws inspiration from the bustling urban landscape and the diverse tapestry of people that populate the city. His work is a testament to his intuitive response to human actions and gestures, a skill that has become instrumental in capturing moments of cultural intimacy and visual surrealism. Each photograph tells a story, weaving together the threads of daily life with an artistic vision that invites viewers to engage with the complexities of the human experience.
Image: Jairo Granados-Cardenas, Wrench Cross, 2023, Canson Rag Photographique 310gsm (Mounted by D-rings + Wire), 22.5" x 34"
Headshot: Felton Kizer
Martha Osornio Ruiz is an interdisciplinary artist born in Veracruz, Mexico, and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Osornio Ruiz started her art career after graduating with her MFA in Sculpture from the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, collaborating on various community projects, installations, and video performances. Her current work focuses on her first-generation immigrant experience and her DACAmented status.
Image: Martha Osornio Ruiz, La Casa de mi Abuelo, 2023, Projection, windows, 19ft x 20ft, Amount varies
Headshot: José Ibarra Rizo
Maryam Faridani is an Iranian artist currently living in Chicago. By using moving images, installations and performance, she tries to explore how the given technical systems today leads to creation and maintenance of a particular set of social conditions as the environment of that system. Humor is an important aspect of her work as she finds it to be an effective way to talk about matters that are usually dark and bitter.
Faridani received the MacDowell Fellowship in 2023 and the Define American Fellowship in 2020. She was named as one of the Chicago Breakout Artists in NewCity Magazine in 2022. She has shown her work at Currents NewMedia Festival, Everson Museum of Art, and Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts among many others. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and holds a B.F.A. in Theater from the Art University of Tehran.
Image: Maryam Faridani, Give me a minute and I will be out, 2022, 9 minutes
Headshot: Elnaz Javani
Nekita Thomas is a multidisciplinary experiential graphic designer, educator, and researcher dedicated to harnessing design for social impact. Her work focuses on the intersection of race, well-being, and urban design, spatializing justice and reimagining the civic role of design in our lives and communities. Bridging graphic design, tactical urbanism, and civic engagement, her research explores design's capacity to strengthen communities, initiate radical imagining, and amplify civic participation through anti-racist placemaking solutions. Thomas's initiatives, including public installations and participatory design workshops, guide communities toward envisioning and actualizing healthier, more inclusive, and just spatial environments and futures.
Thomas’s practice has helped steward projects with the National Public Housing Museum's Corner Store Co-op, the Chicago Sukkah Festival as part of the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and SkyART Chicago in reimagining the future of South-Chicago. These collaborations highlight her dedication to creating spaces that foster dialogue and understanding, emphasizing the critical role of design in addressing societal issues.
She has presented her work across disciplinary domains on both national and international stages, including venues such as the Krannert Art Museum, the Black in Design Conference at Harvard (BiD), the American Institute of Graphic Arts Design Educators Conference (AIGA), the International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference (IASDR), and artist residencies such as at Ragdale Foundation. These platforms have not only showcased her contributions to the field but also amplified her voice in the critical conversations around spatial justice.
Thomas holds a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo New York. She is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Design for Responsible Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Image: Nekita Thomas, Black Space Protocols, 2022, Public Installation
Oriana Koren (he/they, b.1988) is a polymathic artist based in Chicago.
Merging language, memory, and the image as auto-fiction, Koren’s work explores the body itself as a form of archival knowledge. Koren's works attempt to trouble conceptions of queerness, homonormativity, domestication, and Black performance by revisiting and revising their personal history by harnessing photography, sound and language, ephemera, and sculpture as interventions to transform a self/body fractured by performances of race, gender, and sexuality in the context of societal legacies of erasure, violence, and trauma.
Koren is a visiting lecturer at Stonybrook University and a graduate of Columbia College Chicago.
Image: Oriana Koren, Needle/Thread, 2011, C-Print, 20" x 24"
Reevah Agarwaal is a multi-disciplinary artist from New Delhi, India, currently based in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2024. Through textiles and collage, her work explores girlhood and the complex dualities that exist in domestic relationships. Using repurposed found textiles that have a personal history, she creates quilts and collages that reference her childhood, relationships, and the domestic spaces she has lived in. By employing material history, intuition, and memory, she aims to reconstruct and reclaim narratives of women and girls.
Her work has appeared in various shows including Stainless Gallery in New Delhi, and at Zhou B Art Center, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Purple Window Gallery, Color Club, South Asia Institute, FLXST Contemporary, Free Range, and The Martin in Chicago. She also has permanent public artwork on view in South Chicago which was funded by Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) and South Chicago Parents and Friends. Recently she received the New Futures Award from The Other Art Fair.
Image: Reevah Agarwaal, Will I be free?, 2024, Repurposed cotton razai, saris and other miscellaneous personal clothing, thread, yarn, tights, wall decals, nail polish, and hair baubles, Approximately 80" x 108"
Headshot: Inaara Vishnani
Ruth L. Poor, raised in Indiana, uses their work to dissect memories of the rural Midwest and to investigate intersections between power, American history, faith, and deviancy. Poor received their MFA from the Painting & Drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed their B.A. in Studio Art and Religious Studies at Cornell College and DePauw University. They currently reside in Chicago, Illinois, where they teach at SAIC and advise with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. They have shown work at the University of Chicago [Chicago, IL], the New York Academy of Art [New York, NY], Zolla/Lieberman Gallery [Chicago, IL], Pinto International Gallery [New York, NY], ADDS DONNA Gallery [Chicago, IL], Manifest Gallery [Cincinnati, OH], Woman Made Gallery [Chicago, IL], and Indiana University [Bloomington, IN].
Image: Ruth Poor, Lessons en Rouge, 2022, Spray paint, embroidery, machine stitching, acrylic, bbs, oil, on tapestry, 23" x 40" x 2"
Headshot: Ricardo Bouyett
Sangwoo Yoo, born in Seoul, is an artist driven by the intention to reawaken modern senses and aims to engage with social realities and the environment through the ecological cycles of materials. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Seoul in Korea.
Yoo was the recipient of the 2024 Eldon Danhausen, 2025 Anderson Ranch Arts Center, 2024 MASS MoCA Residency Fellowship, which was fully sponsored by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has been nominated for both the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship and the MFA Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture. He won the second-place award in the 2023 William and Dorothy Yeck Award, and was the grand prize winner of the Hoguk Art Exhibition in Korea in 2016. His works have been displayed in renowned Korean institutions such as The War Memorial of Korea, the United Nations Peace Memorial Hall, the Yanggu Humanities Museum, and the ChunCheon National Museum. One of his pieces is currently part of the collection at The War Memorial of Korea in Seoul.
Moreover, Sangwoo is scheduled to participate in the 2024 EXPO CHICAGO with sponsorship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has held several solo exhibitions at Comfort Station Gallery, SITE Gallery in Chicago, Dos Gallery, and Red Brick Gallery in Seoul.
Image: Sangwoo Yoo, Portrait of Loss (dust), 2024, Discarded Christmas tree, Variable Dimension
