Simone Baron

Artist Statement

I am a polyhedric musician and compose genre-fluid works, working with manifestos, open scores and inspired by psychic dander, somatic empathy and solastagia. I see artists as energy workers and carriers of archetypal memory, catalyzing our communities. I navigate dualities, as a polyglot, pianist and accordionist, performer and composer, vacillating between notated and improvised music worlds. My work looks both backwards and forwards through the lens of performance, learning and unlearning with the listener. My music lives in joyful chaos at the intersection of the familiar and avant-garde. Improvisation connects my body to writing, shapes emerge from being steeped in musical languages to be chiseled and mapped back onto myself and others. We live in a time where many people experience profound disconnect from their own bodies (and each other). Rooted deeply in somatic empathy, my music seeks to repair these wounds, resetting both audience and performers into their own bodies. Through the radical act of re-embodying, stitching back together spirit and physical body will also encourage listeners to sew themselves back into the world, and to see the environment as a place they belong, rather than as a resource to use.

Photo Credit Kitty Paranagua 2023

Bio

Simone Baron is a polyglot pianist, accordionist, improviser and composer whose work “ego-less, genre agnostic and without expectations” (JazzTimes) engages curiously and charismatically with a broad spectrum of idioms. Educated at Oberlin and Tel Aviv University and joyfully de-educated at festivals and performances across Europe and the Americas, Simone has won grants, fellowships and residencies from Chamber Music America, South Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Hambidge Center, Sacatar Foundation, iPark, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Strathmore Foundation, ArtOMI, UMD, Avaloch Farm, the Banff Centre, and Spectrum Toronto. In 2016 Simone founded Arco Belo, a diasporic chamber music ensemble. Simone is a Victoria Artist and plays a Poeta XB Accordion, and is a founding member of the Boulanger Initiative.

simonebaron.com

Maria Batlle

Artist Statement

My practice includes drawing, sculpture and photography but is primarily focused on drawings rooted in my experience navigating discrimination, self-acceptance, relationships and sexual liberation as a lesbian living in the Dominican Republic. In 2023, I worked on a series about the Armenian Genocide, inspired by my grandfather’s story as a survivor and refugee, and how wars seem to be a repetitive and permanent pattern in human history.

Somos libres, 2024 21.8” x 31.5” Color pencils on paper

Bio

In 2013, as an artist in residence at the Altos de Chavón School of Design, affiliated with Parsons, I started exploring the benefits of music in education together with Deaf students in a little school of La Romana, located in the East of the Dominican Republic. Ever since I’ve been committed to promote disability rights along with my art practice, creating a nonprofit and collaborating with the Louvre Museum, UNESCO and the Dominican Ministry of Culture. During these years I participated in Yo-Yo Ma’s institute at Harvard University, and was invited to present my work at Yale, Columbia, NYU, Tesla Motors and Sir Richard Branson’s private island. In 2018, I was honored with a Project Zero Fellowship from Harvard. In 2020, COVID motivated me to rethink disability policies in my country and I proposed to the Dominican government the creation of the Department of Disability Inclusion in the city hall of my country’s capital, Santo Domingo. On its first year, United Nations and the National Disability Council recognized the city hall with the highest award for this initiative. This Department is currently being replicated in 12 other cities in the Dominican Republic. In 2022, Coldplay included as part of their global tour the initiatives I started with the Deaf students back in 2013. It’s the first inclusive tour in the music industry. Since 2023 I’ve been back in the studio, working on my art nonstop.

www.mariabatlle.com

Zoe Mendelson

Artist Statement

Zoe Mendelson is a nonfiction writer trying to make people laugh, learn, care, and feel powerful. Her work has covered topics from architecture to anuses, from dating to drones. For the last six years her work has primarily focused on the “female” body, how knowledge about it has historically been produced, and how gender narratives influence science and our experience of bodies and the world. Her work combines obsessive research, enormous bibliographies, and excessive citations with utter and maximal honesty. Life is scary, laughter heals, and people learn more when they are having fun. But also, Mendelson aims to teach her readers to expect citations, look at who funded the research, sniff out assumptions in study designs, and consider a whole informational landscape rather than look for neat answers. She works to equip people both with knowledge and the ability to make knowledge more accessible to themselves.

My book, Pussypedia: a Comprehensive Guide, published by Hachette, 2021

Bio

Zoe Mendelson is a writer, researcher, and information designer. She is the co-founder and editor of the Webby-winning, bi-lingual, inclusive, illustrated encyclopedia Pussypedia.net and the author of Pussypedia: A Comprehensive Guide. Her projects, which span from a data narrative about drones to a crowdsourced heartbreak charting initiative, to an official emoji pack for Mexico City, have been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The BBC, PBS, Buzzfeed, and Vice. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Fast Company, WIRED, Print, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a newsletter called How to Have Fun in the Apocalypse. Zoe holds a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. She has been based in Mexico City for 9 years.

youngzo.com

Nia Lee

Artist Statement

I am a food theorist, artist, and chef sitting at the intersection of queer feminist theory, community building, performance art, and culinary art. My work centers around Black Food Futurism, a term which I coined to understand how Black American historical traditions, our food rituals, and art practices can guide us to new ways of imagining and building our collective future. Utilizing quotidian materials and techniques, my work challenges prevailing narratives surrounding power, progress, and resistance. Instead, I place domesticity, ritual, and femme labor at the center of my creative process and envision a more expansive future for all.

 "Red Drink And Respite: A Wine and Spirit Tasting," was a Juneteenth celebration and participatory performance work centered around the theme of "red drink" in all of its forms. June 2023 Photo Credit: Madison Rose Media

Bio

Nia Lee is a Black, queer, artist and organizer working in food. Nia blends her traditional Black American food lineage with imaginative healing practices to create experimental and fresh new experiences with food. She coined the term Black Food Futurism to encompass her practice. Nia Lee is a Black, queer, artist, and organizer working in food. Nia blends her traditional Afro Atlantic food lineage with imaginative art practices to create experimental and fresh new experiences with food. She coined the term Black Food Futurism to encompass her practice and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Cut Magazine, Thrillist, and more. Nia is also the founder of Storme Supper Club, a Los Angeles based wine and dinner series centering queer Black women, femmes, and gender expansive people.

NiaLee.Me

Chris Jagmin

Artist Statement

A self-described documentarian, I embrace words that have defined my life, for good and for bad. This confessional work makes a direct verbal appeal for introspection, self-awareness, and forgiveness. In my drawings, installations, audio work, videos, and social practice work, I search for universal connections by retelling personal and intimate storytelling. I want to encourage conversations and find common vocabulary. Informed by the intersection of a complicated upbringing. My Catholic school-life was immersed with rituals, confessionals, civility, and verbal abuse. Juxtaposed with a loving home-life that was secretive, sad, chaotic, and violent, it felt like danger was always around the corner. In my work, I navigate the beauty of ritual with the hopelessness of penance. Parochial and political, my work offers both a celebration of sadness and a hopeful triumph over it. In a seemingly aggressive world, I hope to find a place of comfort and hope.

Will Sleep Tonight 2017-2023 Various Locations, including: Tucson Museum of Art Biennial, PHiCA Hot Box, SMoCA Label Making Tape and Push Pins 62 inches x 130 inches On the left is a close up, and the right side is the installation shot from SMoCA. Site-specific installation with phrases and mantras looking for calm and peace. As I listen to the news I worry about the future of the country. Like my Catholic Grandmother praying on the rosary, I find comfort in typing out that I am going to be okay on a label-maker. If I repeat these mantras enough, I might just make it out on the other side unscathed.

Bio

In 2023, Christopher Jagmin’s work was exhibited in the show, “Language in Times of Miscommunication” at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the Tucson Museum of Art for the Arizona Biennial (also in 2020, 2018, and 2013). In April, he spent a month at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts residency. In 2022 he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. In August, he spent a month at The Jentel Artist Residency Program. In 2021 his work was shown at the Gallery at Tempe Center for the Arts and Modified Gallery (Phoenix, AZ). He exhibited at Lisa Sette Gallery (Phoenix), and in 2020 he presented his first audio project at SMoCA and attended a (7-weeks) Chautauqua Institution Residency (Chautauqua, NY). In 2019, Jagmin was selected for a month residency at The Studios at MASS MoCA. In 2017 he was chosen for the Nathan Cummings Foundation Endowment (a financial award and exhibit) at the Phoenix Art Museum. Jagmin presented his social practice piece, “Your Secret Is Safe With Me” at Scottsdale’s four-day, Canal Convergence where he saw over 1200 visitors. Chris Jagmin received a BA in graphic design and printmaking at the School of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington.

christopherjagmin.com

Ro Haber

Artist Statement

For me, aesthetics are deeply important and useful. As a filmmaker, I work across mediums (documentary, narrative and new media) to tell emotional and aesthetically evocative stories around themes of queerness and transness, otherness, hybridity, and futurity. My work ranges from archival to more fluid and experimental. I like visually portraying the internal state and mood of my characters, depicting their imaginary and inner worlds. I create fantasy sequences out of documentary footage in order to explore their depths, and visualize the things they think or dream. Documentary is about perspective and interpretation, and my work reflects that. I like to push the box aesthetically, whether that means shooting in infrared (as in my series Braddock, PA), constructing fantasy sequences from doc footage or utilizing VHS footage and embracing a deeply campy aesthetic (for my project We Are Pat). Each project begs for a new visual approach and I love finding the one that best suits the narrative at hand. If I had to distill the visual quality of my work to one word, I would say liquid. I want it to feel fluid and naturalistic, as if you are bathing in the world. Some of my inspirations come from the natural world, the films of Pedro Costa and Claire Denis, and photographers like Graciela Iturbide and Alex Webb.

We Are Pat is a feature length hybrid documentary exploring the evolution of gender identity, the bounds of humor, cancel culture, and a creator’s responsibility to their work through the lens of the iconic SNL sketch It’s Pat. Trans and non-binary comedians and culture-makers reimagine and rewrite the original Pat sketches, using camp and humor to reclaim and re-envision a character that has historically maligned the community. It is currently in production.

Bio

Ro Haber is an aesthetically-minded Writer/Director who works at the intersections of doc, narrative and commercials. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, they were a 2018 Sundance Momentum Fellow and New Frontier Lab fellow. They were selected for the Universal Pictures Directing Lab, AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, Film Independent’s Episodic Lab and Project Involve, Outfest’s Screenwriting Lab, and were a shadowing director on FX’s Pose. They were featured on The Alice Initiative’s 2018 list of directors ready to helm studio films, Indiewire’s 8 Best Trans Directors Working Today, and have been a fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell Artist Residencies. They recently served as an advisor for Sundance’s first ever Trans Possibilities Lab. They won a Webby, New Orleans Film Festival, and LA Film Festival awards and were nominated for a GLAAD award for their series, New Deep South. Their series Braddock, PA (Topic) gained critical attention from The New York Times and The New Yorker. They directed Stonewall Forever for Stink Studios as well as Celestial for Tribeca Studios x Bulgari, and have done commercial work for Mercedes, Spotify, Cracker Jack, and the Chan Zuckerberg initiative to name a few. Recently, they directed the finale for the Gotham nominated FX x Killer Films series, Pride on Hulu. They are directing a hybrid documentary EPed by Lauren Greenfield and produced by Caryn Capotosto entitled We Are Pat about the 90s SNL cult figure It’s Pat as a way to unpack what it means to be trans and non-binary now. They are also attached to direct Amasia Entertainment’s trans coming of age film, Handsome as well as the SFFILM Rainin Grant award winning, Since I Laid My Burden Down written by Brontez Purnell and Savannah Knoop. Their film Shell.ai, which is a modern feminist horror retelling of the Frankenstein story from the perspective of a female technologist, is being produced by Seaview.

www.rowanhaber.com