Artists Archive
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With a career spanning over 25 years, Rakesh has captivated audiences worldwide as a versatile performer, choreographer, teacher, and producer. His journey through the realms of artistry began in Bollywood dance, where he lent his talents to numerous films in South India. Evolving his craft, Rakesh found a new passion in Contemporary movement art, drawing inspiration from his family's lineage of yoga and disciplines like Kalarippayattu and other Indian dance forms.
For the past 15 years, he has traversed the globe, immersing himself in diverse cultures and artistic landscapes, shaping his unique perspective and vision. Experience the culmination of Rakesh's passion, dedication, and global influences in every performance and creation.
Learn moreSam Hamilton (Sam Tam Ham) is an independent, working class, interdisciplinary artist from Aotearoa New Zealand of Pākehā (English settler colonial) descent based in Portland, OR. After 20 years of working independently and professionally across experimental music and sound art, moving and still image, painting, writing, performance, stage, cinema, and curatorial projects, Hamilton's practice today operates more like an ecology than a discipline. A messy but verdant garden full of old and new growth, hidden places, edible arrangements, toxic weeds, garden parties, frolicking, and most importantly, the life-affirming ferment of deep existential entanglement. What physically emerges in any given season through the confluence of this garden depends most simply on what vessel(s) best serve the idea at hand.
The long song
a meandering garden path
Both an entrance and an exit
Hamilton's work has existed in a wide range of contexts, including Converge 45, Portland; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Portland Art Museum, OR; Transmediale, Berlin; Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival; Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland; as well as a research station in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, an active volcanic island crater, a billboard, a functioning Shinto shrine in Japan, an anarchist squat in Athens, Greece, the Australian outback desert, a dank underground parking lot, some dude’s apartment in Lima, Peru, and on the radio.
In addition to their solo work, they have collaborated extensively with artists across Aotearoa New Zealand, Sāmoa, Australia, Kiribati, the US, Finland, Japan, and Peru, including ten years spent working with the internationally acclaimed Lemi Ponifasio MAU Dance Company, touring major works to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAB; Ruhrtriennale, Ruhr; KVS; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; and more.
Their work has been recognized with a Creative Capital Award, Oregon Community Foundation's Creative Heights Award, and an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award, among others.
Learn moreSan Cha is a Mexican-American artist whose multidisciplinary practice blends rancheras, electronics, cumbia, and pop to explore themes of identity, power, and liberation. Born Lizette Gutierrez to Mexican immigrant parents, San Cha's artistic journey began with singing in the Catholic Church choir and evolved within the vibrant Bay Area queer drag nightlife scene. This formative period fostered a unique fusion of musical influences, including Catholic hymns, Mexican corridos, rancheras, cumbias, and punk queer electroclash, shaping her distinct artistic voice.
Rooted in the DIY, punk, and queer nightlife cultures, San Cha's work is driven by a commitment to personal, social, and political liberation. Her creative process is fueled by community narratives, lucid dreams, and cultural exploration. A transformative experience living on her aunt's farm in Jalostotitlán, Mexico inspired her to reimagine traditional ranchera music through a queer lens, subverting established forms and cultural signifiers.
San Cha's early work, such as the Capricho del Diablo EP (2018), received critical acclaim, with Bandcamp Daily naming it Album Of The Day. Her 2019 album, La Luz De La Esperanza, earned an 8.0 rating on Pitchfork and recognition as one of The Advocate's "Women Of The Year" in 2020. Her music has been featured in the Starz TV series Vida and Kacey Musgraves' film Star-Crossed: The Film, with the Los Angeles Times declaring, "San Cha sings from a divine place." Her ongoing Processions (2024) mixtape, released through Ballroom Marfa, further demonstrates her artistic versatility and commitment to exploring complex narratives.
San Cha's practice extends to collaborative projects in classical music and opera. She has engaged in projects, performances, and residencies with Performance Space New York, New York, NY; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; lumber room, Portland, OR; The Getty, Los Angeles, CA; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; Red Bull; Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX; Denniston Hill, Glen Wild, NY; Oak Head; On the Boards, Seattle, WA; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; Movimiento de Arte y Cultural Latino Americana, San Jose, CA; KQED; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Portland, OR, and more. Her work has also been supported by the California Arts Council.
Recent awards and accolades include the National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Grant (2023), National Performance Network Documentation & Storytelling Grant (2024), Los Angeles Performance Practice Research & Development Award (2024), a 2023 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. San Cha's work consistently pushes artistic boundaries, utilizing music and performance as powerful vehicles for sociopolitical change and liberation.
Learn moreSarah Gilbert (she/they) is an artist and educator based in what is currently called Los Angeles, CA (Gabrileño/Tongva/Kizh Lands), where she is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Affiliate Faculty in Gender and Feminist Studies at Pitzer College. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, a BA from Brown University, and her MFA in Sculpture from the University of Idaho.
Gilbert’s work explores craft and collectivity—how the sticky relationality of material transformation can open spaces for thinking and feeling together in more-than-human worlds. Joining a wide range of materials and processes, her promiscuously interdisciplinary practice moves between art and science, synthesizing traditional craft techniques with emerging technologies. Often unsettling clear boundaries between past and present, her work draws on material memory and tensions between figuration and abstraction as springboards for contemplating our experience of time. Moving us away from narratives of material mastery or maker-movement individualism, Gilbert's practice highlights the ethical particularities of encounters with difference, and the radical potential of embodied attunement to reorient us towards collective care.
Gilbert has exhibited widely throughout the US and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include BREAKING AND BENDING, curated by Stephanie Snyder at the Edith Feldenheimer Gallery at Reed College, Portland; GOOSEBUMPS, an interactive sound installation as part of the 7th Tallinn Applied Arts Triennial, Estonia; and TURNINGS at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including WOMEN ON THE FENCE in Desert Hot Springs; GENERIS01: COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION at Bushwick Expo, Brooklyn; BORN/MADE at Tartu Art House, Estonia; GLASSAC 17 in Lisbon; WHITHER THE AMERICAN DREAM at Punch Gallery, Seattle; and IMAGINED COMMUNITIES at Gallery Project, Ann Arbor.
In 2014, Gilbert was awarded the inaugural 4Front: Innovation From All Angles Residency at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. She has been a Fellow at the Creative Glass Center of America, Millville; and a Resident Artist at Faro Tláhuac, Mexico City; Olustvere Mõis, Estonia; Glazenhuis, Lommel; and the LC36-Kunstverein, Cologne.
Her published writing includes:
“A Widening Chromaticism: Learning Perception in the Collective Craftwork of the Encounter” in Material Perceptions, Documents of Contemporary Craft no. 5, edited by Knut Astrup Bull and André Gali, Arnoldsche Art Publications, Stuttgart, Germany, 2018.
“Understories: A Common Ground for Art and Science,” co-authored w/ Scott F. Gilbert in the Museum Catalog for Alma Heikkilä’s Exhibition: ‘ , ‘ /mediums,.’_ ” bodies,.’_ ” ° ∞ logs,∞ ‘ , ‘ /~` ‘ holes, .’ `-. ` .’ — °habitats / /`‘ * ‘-‘ . ‘ , ‘ /~`want to feel (,) you inside | * . . * * | ..* . . *./..-. ~ .’ ‘ , ‘ /~` ❅ ☼ ~, curated by Satu Oksanen, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland, 2019.
“Process Epistemologies for the Careful Interplay of Art and Biology: An Afterward,” co-authored w/ Scott F. Gilbert in Drawing Processes of Life: Cells, Molecules, Organisms, edited by Gemma Anderson and John Dupre, Intellect Press, Bristol, United Kingdom (forthcoming, 2023).
Learn moreSasha Wortzel is a visual artist and filmmaker working between South Florida (Miccosukee and Seminole lands) and New York City (Lenape lands). Blending the archival and the imaginary, Wortzel uses film, video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how the past haunts and inextricably shapes contemporary American life. Projects examine queer place-making, geographies of resistance, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories.
Wortzel’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s DocFortnight, True/False Film Festival, DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest, Blackstar, New Orleans Film Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Berlinale, among others. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and The Kitchen, New York; and SALTS, Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Doc Society, Art Matters, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Wortzel has participated in residencies including Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Center, Watermill Center, New York; AIRIE (Artists in Residence in the Everglades) and Oolite Arts, Miami Beach. Wortzel’s film This is an Address (2020) is distributed by Field of Vision. Happy Birthday Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) won special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Miami Dade County Art in Public Places. She has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and New York Magazine. Wortzel received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College.
Learn moreSeba Calfuqueo are from Mapuche origin. Their work appeals to their inheritance to propose a critical reflection on the social, cultural, and political status of the Mapuche subject in contemporary Chilean society and in Latin America. It includes installations, ceramics, performances, and video art that explore cultural similarities and differences as well as the stereotypes produced from the cross between Indigenous and Western ways of thinking. Their research also has the purpose of making visible feminist and sexual dissidence issues. Seba Calfuqueo is part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü, which edits YeneRevista, an online magazine of art, thought, and writing in Wallmapu and AbyaYala language.
Learn moreS.J Norman (b. 1984) is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer. His career has so far spanned 18 years and has embraced a diversity of disciplines and formal outcomes, including solo and ensemble performance, installation, sculpture, text, video, and sound. He is a non-binary transmasculine person and a diasporic Koori of Wiradjuri descent, born on Gadigal land. Since 2006 he has lived and worked between Australia, Germany, the UK, and the United States.
His practice is routed through the volatile interstices of the social and the corporeal. Working extensively with durational and spatial practices, as well as intimate/one-to-one frameworks, Norman's primary medium is the body. Drawing on embodied ancestral lineages of ceremonial praxis, Norman frequently utilises relational and process-based choreographies as a mode of structural critique: reflected in his work is an abiding interest in the space of co- and inter-corporeality, the forces that suffuse it, and how the live act might be utilised as a mean to examine, disrupt and re-inscribe prevailing systems of social power.
Norman has received major commissions from the Biennale of Sydney (AU), Performance Space New York (US), Dark Mofo (AU), The National Gallery of Australia (AU), Venice International Performance Week (IT), Spill Festival of Live Art (UK), Fierce Festival (UK), In Between Time (UK), Arnolfini (UK), Liveworks (AU), Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AU), Unsound Festival (PL), Fusebox Festival (US), Melbourne Festival (AU), Tarnanthi Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (AU) and Tate Modern (UK), the Science Gallery London (UK), Die Fabrikanten (AT), and the Festival of Live Art (AU), to name a few. He has received numerous awards for his work including a Sidney Myer Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship, two of Australia's most prestigious honors for art.
Aside from his artistic and curatorial practice, he is also a writer of fiction, essays, and poetry. He has won or placed in numerous literary awards, including: The Peter Blazey Prize, The Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award, The ABR/Elizabeth Jolley Award for Short Story, and the Overland/Judith Wright Prize for Poetry. His award-winning debut short story collection, Permafrost, will be published by the University of Queensland press in 2021.
Learn moreStephanie Barber is a writer and artist who has created a poetic, conceptual, and philosophical body of work in a variety of media, often literary/visual hybrids that dissolve boundaries between narrative, essay, and dialectic. Her work considers the basic philosophical questions of human and non-human existence (its morbidity, profundity, and banality) with play and humor.
Barber’s films and videos have screened nationally and internationally in solo and group shows at MOMA, NY; The Tate Modern, London; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Paris Cinematheque; The Walker Art Center, MN; MOCA Los Angeles, The Wexner Center for Art, OH, among other galleries, museums, and festivals.
Her videos are distributed by Video Data Bank and her films can be found at Canyon Cinema. Publishing Genius Press published her books Night Moves and these here separated... in 2013 and 2010 respectively. CTRL+P published a collection of her haiku, Status Update Vol. 1 in 2019 and her full-length play Trial in the Woods was published by Plays Inverse in 2021 with a second pressing in 2022.
James Glisson at Artforum wrote, "...the films of Stephanie Barber engage universal themes—time, death, memory, forgetting, frustration." and Ed Halter at Afterall Online wrote, "Barber...approaches cinema as a philosophical toy, intimately small, in which the play itself generates both pleasure and insight."
Barber is currently Department Head of Film and Digital Cinema at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA. She is also a resident artist at The Mt. Royal MFA for Interdisciplinary Art at MICA in Baltimore, MD, and a teaching artist for The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and Image Text Ithaca.
Learn moreStephanie Snyder is the Anne and John Hauberg Director and Curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, a position she has held since 2003. Snyder graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College and completed her graduate studies in Art History and Art Education at Columbia University. In 2008, Snyder received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Getty Foundation, and in 2014 she was a Fellow in the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute. In 2013 she received an award for her critical writing from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the CUE Foundation, New York. The author of numerous catalog essays and other writing projects, she is a regular contributor to Artforum.com.
Learn moreStephen Thompson, originally from Calgary, Alberta is an inter-disciplinary artist working between Canada, USA and Europe. Stephen’s introduction to movement and performing was through competitive figure skating. He received a Bachelor of Kinesiology (art and science of movement) and Dance from the University of Calgary. In 2015 at the World “Figure” Championships in Lake Placid, Stephen received the bronze medal. In 2016 he received a Victor Martin-Lynch award from the Canada Council for the Arts. Past choreographic work and collaborations: 2012 Bessie award winning Antigone Sr. (Large), The Ghost of Montpellier and the Samurai (2014) with Trajal Harell, Culture Administration & Trembling (2014), Les Etudes (2017), Chaud (2020); Jennifer Lacey, Antonija Livingstone, Dominique Pétrin, whatwearesaying (2014); Public Recordings (2 Dora Mavor awards Toronto), numerous projects with Benoit Lachambre, Relative Collider (2015); Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard, Service #5: Try to keep kids off naturalism and Kein Paradiso with Adam Linder recipient of the Mohn Prize at the L.A. Bienniale, Stitchomythia with Nadia Lauro and Zeena Parkins, Dramaturge for Such Sweet Thunder (2019) recipient of 8tensions Impulstanz, Compulsory Figures (2019) co-signed with French visual artist Xavier Veilhan.
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