Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Diné) creates soft, woven sculptures, wearable art, digital collages, and durational performances that relate to his heritage and spirituality, particularly the intergenerational and interspecies traditions of weaving. These works express his philosophies and cosmologies of sanctuary, harmony, and interconnection with all elements of the world around him. His work is a being of Hózhó-Diné philosophy that encompasses beauty, balance, goodness, and harmony in all things physical and mental and its bearing on everyday experience. His work, which he describes as being “encompassed in the threads of weaving and life,” creates an immersive and charged space influenced by his own homes, ceremonies, and rituals from his past, future, and present selves.

Riege's first solo museum presentation was at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in 2019. He has shown work and performed at venues including SITE Santa Fe Biennial, NM (2018); Navajo Nation Museum, Tségháhoodzání (Window Rock, AZ); National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM; and Heard Museum, Phoenix. In the upcoming year, Riege will be a part of the 2021 Prospect New Orleans Triennial and the 2022 Toronto Biennial.

"My Nike shoe reconstructions offer the possibility of liberation and healing from specters of violence that have historically marginalized and criminalized Black and brown youth especially as it pertains to how we fashion ourselves."  — rafa esparza

For his series of sculptures Love Birds (2011–ongoing), esparza pulls apart and restitches together editions of the famous Nike trainer to give form to pigeons, hawks and fighting cocks, amongst other feathery beings. Named after Hernán Cortés, the colonizer that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and founded Mexico City under Spanish rule in the early 16th century, the Nike Cortez was the first track shoe by the world-renowned brand, and often pinpointed as the reason for its commercial success. The shoe was ironically also the preferred footwear of brown gang-affiliated youth in Los Angeles circa the mid-1990s. esparza’s sculptures combine recognizable elements of the trainer with materials such as bandanas, chicken wire, socks, and plumage, dissecting and transforming the trainer into colorful and restorative birds. Many of them carry symbolic value in the cultures of pre-historic Mexico and Central America, as well as into the present-day diaspora where young generations, descendants of these cultures, currently exist.

According to Mayan mythology, Huitzilin, the Nahuatl name for hummingbird, is a creature that was made by the gods after they had already created every living being and assigned them with their purpose on earth. After realizing that they had no one to transport their wishes and thoughts from one place to another, they created the hummingbird to “lead from here to there the thoughts of humans”. esparza pulls from the figure of Huitzilin as a messenger, but equally as a redeemer, as the Aztecs also believed that warriors were reborn as hummingbirds.

Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union and his MFA from Yale University.

In 2017, Mack was the recipient of the inaugural BALTIC Artists’ Award selected by artist Lorna Simpson and completed the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva Island, FL and an artist-in-residency at Delfina Foundation in London. Institutional solo exhibitions have been held at The Power Station, Dallas (2019); Scrap Metal Gallery, Toronto (2019); Brooklyn Museum (2019); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2017); and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2017). Major group exhibitions include the 2019 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019); Serpentine Gallery, London (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2017); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2017); Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2017); Camden Arts Centre, London (2016) and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2015). Mack’s work is in the permanent collections of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

"What would abolition look like if Anna Murray Douglass was where she should be? What would concert music sound like if Nina Simone were positioned where she should be? What would the world look like if Black women were believed?"  
— Kandis Williams

Williams crafts her sculptural collages from artificial plants, which she affixes with images culled from photographs and magazines. Works from this series are currently included in A Field, an exhibition of the artist's work at Virginia Commonwealth University, in which "Williams reminds us of the potential in evasion; that there is power in remaining wild. To evade cultivation is to commit to growth on our own terms; to nurture and be rooted in our desire for change and adaptation." 

"These collages, which appear on the plant leaves, depict laboring bodies in action. They include archival photographs of chain gangs on Mississippi farms, many taken from the estate of Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress; pornographic images from vintage magazines—Jet, Players, Sepia, Mr. Long, and Black Legs; and depictions of dancers performing the Uruguayan tango, a choreography conscripted from workers’ traditions. In these overlapping images, sometimes assembled in figurative constructions, a schema is revealed in the relations between labor and performance, performance and sexualization, sexualization and labor.

Plants constitute a life-force subjected to classification and forced migration, remarkable for their persistence and adaptability. The plant is sentient yet silent, subjected to changing environmental demands as it is displaced and commodified. Plants suggest both the ravages of colonialism and a future for life beyond humanity."

(Press release for Kandis Williams: A Field at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, November 6, 2020 – September 12, 2021)

Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) lives and works in New York.

Beasley’s practice traverses sculpture, photography, sound, and performance. Recent solo exhibitions include A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town (2020); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018–2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2016–17). Group exhibitions include The Warehouse, Dallas (2020); Baltimore Museum of Art (2019); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2018); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2018); The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2016); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2015); and Art Gallery of Ontario (2015).

Beasley has recently performed at venues including The Kitchen, New York (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018–2019); Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, University of Houston (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario (2016); The Dallas Museum of Art (2015); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2014); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2014); Queens Museum of Art, New York (2014); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012).

His work is held in public collections such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Art Gallery of Ontario; Art Institute of Chicago; Columbus Museum of Art, OH; The Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; San Antonio Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate Modern, London; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.