Growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I experienced first hand how Black communities are disproportionately affected by injustice. These experiences shaped my perception of what it meant to be Black and how Blackness is overwhelmingly negatively represented in the media. Through multimedia storytelling, my artistic practice combines film, photography, and creative writing to shed light on Black history, Black culture, Black wellness, and Black experiences in a well rounded way to reveal the multifacetedness of Blackness which is not always as negative as the media portrays it to be. My art challenges oppressive systems and highlights the resistance within oppressive systems with aesthetics that will ignite the activist in viewers to generate change and shift public policy to make more equitable futures.

- Nateya Taylor (she/her)

My visual and curatorial work centers on deconstructions and re-imaginations of media objects as a way of revealing their effects on the human condition. As humans, and especially as artists, we tend to gain an understanding of our world not only through direct engagement, but most especially through the intermediary expressions of that world that we make and engage in. It is this existential drive to mediate that interests me most. I am interested in all media, but I am especially drawn to the transformative qualities of paper and the intimate, four-dimensional potential of the book as an art medium. It is in book and paper where most of my practice is rooted, and where other aspects of my practice -- curation, writing, and mentorship -- derive their foundation.

- Max Yela (he/him)