Onyx Montes is a museum educator, cultural worker, and salary transparency advocate. Onyx moved by herself to the U.S. from Mexico, at the age of 17 and studied art history at the University of Washington in Seattle, and holds an MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the first person in her family to graduate from college and is part of the inaugural Arts & Culture Leaders of Color Fellowship by Americans for the Arts. Onyx has worked as a museum educator at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.

Born and raised in Mexico, Elisa is an international student pursuing her MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies at UIC. Using her background as a multimedia graphic designer, Elisa aims to build bridges between culture and community. Her project Digital Mediation was exhibited at the 2021 Ibero-American Design Biennial in Madrid. In 2022, she was awarded the Laurette Kirstein Scholarship for International Students. She received an Honorable Mention in the Image of Research competition for her video animation project, Descolonización en los Museos.

Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah was born in Batticaloa (Sri Lanka) and did his BFA in Art & Design at the University of Jaffna. His drawings, paintings, digital prints, videos, and installations reflect the painful and often silenced legacies of Sri Lanka’s lengthy civil war, while also tackling the dark sides of globalization: racism, populism, inequality, and ecocide. Pushpakanthan is currently a Fulbright Scholar and is a past recipient of a South Asia Studies Fellowship at Cornell University. He has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Essex (UK).

Juan Baños Fonseca holds a BFA from the University of Granada. Baños’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in China, Mexico, and Europe. His artworks are part of numerous private collections, museums, and public institutions. Baños’ work is characterized mainly by large-format paintings that explore themes ranging from everyday reality to the timeless, portraying fear, inner landscapes, dreams, and the energy of people and objects.

Jacob J. Boglio (b. 1994, Illinois) is a Chicago-based artist. First Post-Baccalaureate fellow at Trinity Christian College (2019) with a BFA in Studio Art and BA in Graphic Design (2018). Often working at the intersection of painting and sculpture; he uses reclaimed materials & mundane items to question the givenness of class-status and reconstruct viewers’ perspectives of the marginalized working class.

Jojo is a Museum and Exhibition Studies alumni. He earned his undergraduate degree in History and Religious Studies at North Central College in Naperville, IL. 

Anastasia Sitnikova was born in Russia, where she studied management and economics and pursued a career in corporate business. She started her artistic practice after moving to the United States several years ago. Her art is much driven by the curiosity about human nature and social relations as a representation of inner self and outer world, subconscious and conscious, correspondingly. In her work Sitnikova focuses on sculpture and installation. Currently the artist is living and working in Illinois. She is an MFA candidate at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Marina M. Álvarez (ella/she/her) is a graduate student of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds an MA in Spanish Language and Literatures from Loyola University Chicago, and BA degrees in Global Studies and Spanish. She has also lived and studied in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With an interdisciplinary background in Latin American Literature, Gender and Women's Studies, Sociology, Critical Race Studies, and Art, she researches graffiti as resistance in the Latin American urban sphere.

Keaton Fox is an artist from Florida. Her works reflect and distort the varied realities of our time.

Her award-winning creations have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals, locally and internationally, since 2011.

She is based in Chicago, IL & Miami, FL.

To learn more visit www.keatonfox.net.

Chris Olsen merges performance, audio, film, installation, and new media into experiential works that explore mystery, identity, humor, and the human experience.