Megan Koza Mitchell

Megan Koza Mitchell is Executive Director of Guns in the Hands of Artists Foundation, New Orleans, an organization promoting community-based art as a means to open a dialogue around gun culture and gun violence in contemporary American society. Koza Mitchell also manages The Hope Photo Project, also based in New Orleans. As a curator and academic, Koza Mitchell’s research focuses on the reformation of identity in the wake of trauma, specifically in regard to public art and public space. She is interested in the ways that visual interpretations of trauma can create, or recreate, collective cultural identity following catastrophic events, as well as the social and cultural ramifications of public art. Koza Mitchell has contributed to various exhibition catalogues and outlets for contemporary art criticism including Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. She lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Marco Bizzarri

Born 1988 in Santiago, Chile. Lives and works in Santiago, Chile.

"Bizzarri’s dystopian paintings and installations, set both within gallery walls and out in open landscapes, focus on the juncture between built and natural environments. Using acts of concealment to draw our attention to the thing underneath, Bizzarri highlights the constant drive for progress that perversely leaves more destruction than advancement in its wake. Formally, this strategy appears in Bizzarri’s use of articulated moments of intense color to serve as beacons for the viewer, what the artist calls “veilings” of chaotic gesture, line, and form, simultaneously obscuring that which we need to see and that which has been forgotten."

Artwork Image: Sitting At The Table, 2017. Wooden and iron table, mining industry waste, industrial paint. Dimensions variable.

Julie Schenkelberg

Born 1974 in Cleveland, Ohio. Lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.

2011 MFA, School of Visual Arts, New York.

"The beauty of Schenkelberg’s work resides in her ability to delicately manipulate notions of home, and the post-industrial landscape of the Midwest, through complex yet fragile installations. Schenkelberg juxtaposes domestic detritus such as china, flatware, tabletop religious icons, and linens with decaying industrial materials like wood and concrete, using palpable materiality to suggest social and cultural collapse. The distressed and crumbling matrices of Schenkelberg's work call to mind fossils and archaeological dig sites, or collapsed buildings in the wake of catastrophe, embodying not only history reclaimed, but healing as well."

Artwork Image: Symptomatic Constant, 2014. Mixed media- plaster, wood, found domestic items. 240 x 360 x 228 in.

David Borawski

Born 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut. Lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut.

"Borawski’s skillful deployment of Freud’s theory of the uncanny through sculpture, installation, video, and digital printmaking generates systems of information for viewers to process. Reflecting on the dark underbelly of society and contemporary political culture, and drawing on the history of art, Borawski leads viewers to consider current realties in new or renewed contexts. His semiotically driven work represents a darkly playful combination of nostalgia, pop culture, and socio-political moments that have significantly influenced our group consciousness, but in recent times have slipped into the realm forgotten history."

Artwork image: Let the Good Times Roll, 2020. Digital video projection, PVC pipe, cotton flags. 110 x 160 x 130 in.