Barak adé Soleil (they + he) has contributed to the contemporary arts scene since 1991. An award-winning artist, curator and thinker, adé Soleil bridges the lived experience of being Black, queer, neuro-expansive and disabled with traditions from the African diaspora, access aesthetics, and postmodernism to create multilayered live art works and cultivate stimulating global conversations. adé Soleil is the recipient of the prestigious Katherine Dunham Choreography Award and awards through McKnight, Jerome, 3Arts and Art Matters Foundation. Presentations include from here to there for the 2018 group exhibition Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design, 1970’s to Today at Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago and a recent commission by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for the performance film and installation Shift in 2023.
Internationally, adé Soleil has participated in the UK symposium New Possibilities for Performance, was Co-Director of Live Art Development Agency, inaugurated the role of Embodied Thinker-in-Residence for Candoco Dance Company and most recently offered a keynote for the 2024 Disability Atlantic Arts Symposium in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Presently, Barak is the Director of Emerging Curators Institute in Minnesota, and continues to work globally; engaging with distinct communities across Turtle Island, Europe and Africa.
Josefina Báez (Dominican Republic/USA) Storyteller, ArteSana, performer, writer, theatre director, educator, devotee. Founder and director of Ay Ombe Theatre (April 1986). Alchemist of artistic/creative life process, Performance Autology© (creative process based on the autobiography and wellness of the doer). Books published include As Is É, Dominicanish, Comrade, Bliss ain´t playing, Dramaturgia I & II, Como la Una/Como Uma, Levente no. Yolayork- dominicanyork, De Levente. 4 textos para teatro performance, Canto de Plenitud, Latin In and Why is my name Marysol? (a children's book). Joy is a vital element present in her path.
Katia Tirado (b. 1965, Mexico City) is a performance artist, actress, and constructora. She studied acting at the Centro Universitario de Teatro at the UNAM along with Julio Castillo, Rafael Degar, and Juan José Gurrola. In the 1990s, her focus shifted toward performance art in the traditions of Situationism and action art, incorporating installation, video, photography, and other experimental approaches into her work. Tirado’s artistic practice destabilizes gender constructions and the borders between public and private spheres, using ritualized profanity and abjection. Her many performances include: Faro del fin del mundo (Beacon at the end of the world), El Cisne (2022); Parody Paradise, Armory Center of the Arts (California), 2018; La fuente y la máquina (The fountain and the machine), Centro Cultural España (2017); Melódrom, Teatro Box–Stop Telenovela, collaboration with Gin Mueller, Museo Universitario del Chopo and Laboratorio Arte Alameda (2012–13); Who Shot the Princess? Laboratorio Arte Alameda (2010); Elektro Time Machina, Museo Carrillo Gil (2009); La revolución intervenida, o inciertamente insertada en la incertidumbre (The intervened revolution, or uncertainly inserted into uncertainty), Festejos del Milenio (1999); Lady Luck, Bar La Perla and Epicentro Gallery (1999); Exhivilización/Las perras en la celo, Museo Carrillo Gil and la Merced Market (1997); and Miss Koatl, Katastase 90 Festival, Berlin (1991). In addition, she has collaborated with many artists, including Jan Majachek, Dr. Lakra, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Abraham Cruz Villegas, Pablo Casacuevas, Annie Sprinkle, Ron Athey, Víctor Martínez Díaz, Marissa Karr, Gin Mueller, S.R.L. ( Survival Research Laboratory), David Kontra, Kaput Collective, Rodrigo García, and Samantha Bryan.