Self Adjacent : Curated by Sarah Irvin and Tracy Stonestreet

Alberto Aguilar is a Chicago-based artist who uses whatever material is at hand in an attempt to make a meaningful connection with the viewer. He does not distinguish his art practice from his other various life roles which allows him to make work wherever he is. He has presented his work at various museums, galleries, storefronts, homes and street corners around the world. Some of these include the Queens Museum, El Torito Supermercado, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, the corner of Cesar Chavez Ave and North Broadway in Los Angeles, CA, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, Chicago City Hall, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Museo Del Jamon in Madrid, Spain, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Chicago River (Jackson Bridge), The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, El Cosmico Trailer Park, Marfa, TX, El Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba, Iowa rest stop I-80. His work is in the collection of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Jorge Lucero Study Collection, Soho House, Meta - Facebook, The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Office of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Along with some members of his family he collectively organizes Mayfield, a multi-use space which operates on the grounds of his home.

Robin Assner-Alvey (b.1978, Massachusetts) is a practicing artist working with photography, video, and installation. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut (2000) and her Master of Fine Arts from the Ohio State University (2002). Her work examines corporality and asks viewers to consider the experience of living in their own skin. She experiments with various photographic processes to push the boundaries of what a photograph can be as well as to question what it means to be a woman. Throughout the artist's practice, she uses her personal experiences as a starting point for her ideas and then investigates those ideas photographically, usually using her own body. Her most recent solo exhibition was Reassembled at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH in 2022. Her art has been exhibited in various solo and group shows throughout the United States. The artist is also a Professor of Art in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Art at Webster University in St. Louis, MO.  In 2017, she received the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award and the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Christa Donner investigates the human/animal body as a site for conflict and adaptation, often incorporating drawing, sound, and small-press publications to create multi-layered projects that are both immersive and community-centered. Her work has exhibited internationally, including projects for the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), the Museum Bellerive (Zurich), the Centro Colombo Americano (Medellin), and throughout the United States. In 2012 Donner initiated Cultural ReProducers, an evolving collaborative platform supporting the work of parents in the arts through events, publications, and an extensive online resource.

Travis Donovan is a North Carolina-based interdisciplinary artist and educator. Born in Banner Elk, North Carolina, Donovan received a BFA in Sculpture from Appalachian State University in 2004. Employing a range of techniques from traditional casting and fabrication practices to studies in kinetics and new media, Donovan explores the relationships between objects, exaggeration, and identity. His current research investigates patterns, poetics, and utilitarian materials of the South and their links to identity, masculinity, and fatherhood. Donovan became a North Carolina Artists Fellow after receiving his MFA from the University of North Carolina in 2011. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo shows at The William King Museum of Art and Neil Britton Gallery and has work in the permanent collection at The Yingge Ceramics Museum in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Donovan is Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Area Coordinator at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. 

Kate Gilmore was born in Washington D.C. in 1975 and lives and works in New York, NY. Gilmore received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (2002) and her Bachelors degree from Bates College, Lewiston, ME (1997). She has participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Moscow Biennial, Moscow, Russia (2011), PS1 Greater New York, MoMA/PS1, New York, NY (2005 and 2010) in addition to solo exhibitions at The Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2014), MoCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2013), Public Art Fund, Bryant Park, New York, NY (2010), Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (2008), Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH (2006).  She has been the recipient of several international awards and honors such as the Guggenheim Fellowship(2018), Anonymous Was A Woman (2018), Art Prize/ Art Juried Award, Grand Rapids, Michigan (2015), Rauschenberg Residency Award, Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva, FL (2014), Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (2007/2008), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, New York, NY (2009/2010), Art Matters Grant, New York, NY (2012), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Award for Artistic Excellence, New York, NY (2010), the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance, New York, NY (2006), "In the Public Realm", Public Art Fund, New York, NY (2010), The LMCC Workspace Residency, New York, NY (2005), New York Foundation for The Arts Fellowship, New York, NY (2012 and 2005), and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2010). Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, Indianapolis; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois.  Gilmore is a Professor of Art and Design at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY.

LaToya M. Hobbs is an artist, wife, and mother of two from Little Rock, AR, who is currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. She received her B.A. in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and M.F.A. in Printmaking from Purdue University. Her work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora. Her exhibition record includes numerous national and international venues, including the National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia; SCAD Museum of Art; Albright Knox Museum, and Sophia Wanamaker Galleries in San Jose, Costa Rica, among others. Her work is housed in private and public collections such as the Harvard Art Museum, Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the Getty Research Institute, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Other accomplishments include the 2020 Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize, a nomination for the 2022 Queen Sonja Print Award and a 2022 IFPDA Artis Grant. Hobbs is also a Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a founding member of Black Women of Print, a collective whose vision is to make visible the narratives and works of Black women printmakers, past, present and future.

Sarah Irvin's art explores the cultural resonance and social significance of mothering as a practice of care. Irvin brings the durational events and material objects of child-rearing into contexts that reveal their relations to the economy, public health, language, and more. Irvin has developed an interdisciplinary practice that is poetic yet pragmatic, blending analog and digital processes including painting, sculpture, video, and installation to investigate -- and abstract -- trauma, embodiment, and routine alike. She documents her labor and mental processes instead of her form, articulating a subjectivity that is open to possibility rather than essentially gendered and explicitly individual. 

Jennifer White-Johnson is a Disabled and Neurodivergent Afro-Latina art activist and design educator. Kevin is a Neurodivergent writer, storyteller, artist, and marketing director. Their combined visual work aims to uplift disability justice narratives in design, cross-movement organizing, and Neurodivergent parenting. Jennifer White-Johnson uses zines and collage art to explore the intersection of content and caregiving with an emphasis on redesigning ableist visual culture. Kevin works to use creative writing, non-traditional and subversive storytelling, and artificial intelligence to explore the potential for experimental methods of expressing the 'unheard' and 'unseen' minority experience. In October 2018 they released an advocacy photo zine entitled "KnoxRoxs" dedicated to their Autistic son, as a way to give visibility to Black families and children in the autism community. Since its release, the zine has received national and international recognition by being included in various Art Book fairs in Milano, London, Madrid and literary features in AfroPunk, CNN, and The Washington Post. The Zine is also permanently archived in libraries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton University, and National Museum of Women in the Arts. They are both graduates of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, They live in Baltimore with their 10-year-old son.

Carmichael Jones works in installation, sculpture, film, photography and performative objects to upend parameters of the encounter and orientation. Often playful and slightly irreverent, their work addresses political concerns of communication and what it means to be a body in relation; the structure of seeing and being seen. This approach is reflexive, mirroring back the bodily aspects of viewing to expose the nuances of encountering. Consequently, Jones queers the act of art viewing through their use of material and spatial contradictions with an emphasis placed on edges or the periphery. Based in Philadelphia, they hold an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and have taught classes at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, University of the Arts and Penland School of Craft among others. They've shown at places such as Vox Populi, The Museum of Glass and Heller Gallery. Jones is creative co-director of The Whole Shebang and a former fellow at the Creative Glass Center of America.

Courtney Kessel, a multifaceted artist based in Athens, Ohio, showcases her work globally, from the China Art Museum to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago. Her art, spanning sculpture, photography, performance, and video, delves into the nuanced realities of motherhood. One of her ongoing projects, "In Balance With," explores collaborative mother-daughter dynamics. Kessel is also Assistant Director for Experiential Learning at Ohio University and pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts. She holds an MFA in Sculpture & Expanded Practices from Ohio University and a BFA from Tyler School of Art.

Ahree Lee, a multi-disciplinary artist, works in video, new media, and textiles. She holds a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale, studying under Sheila de Bretteville. Her commissions span prestigious institutions like the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Cantor Arts Center in Stanford University, and others globally. Notably, her Webby-nominated video Me showcased at the D5 tech conference and is in the Museum of the Moving Image's collection, with over 9 million views. Lee's awards include an artist residency at Santa Fe Art Institute; a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award nomination; an Artist Fellowship Grant in film and video from the state of Connecticut; and an artistic career development grant from Asian American Renaissance. Her work has been written about in Hyperallergic, Metropolis, and Fast Company.She resides in Los Angeles, collaborating with her husband, Nathan Melsted, an electronic musician who composes for her projects.

Colleen Merrill is an interdisciplinary artist based in Lexington, Kentucky. Select exhibitions of her work have been held at Compare Collective in Brooklyn, New York, Parachute Factory and Institute 193 in Lexington, Kentucky, Zephyr Gallery and Carnegie Center for Art; Art History near Louisville, Kentucky, Arc Gallery in San Francisco, California, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Pennsylvania, and the International Textile Biennial in Haacht, Belgium. Merrill has received grants from the Kentucky Federation for Women and the GreatMeadows Foundation to travel and research in New Orleans, England, and Scotland,and to attend Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, New York for three months. She has been awarded fellowships for attending the Byrdcliffe Artist Residency in New York, and the Pentaculum Textiles Residency at the Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Tennessee. Select publications of her work include the book, The Craft Companion by Ramona Barry, in Pint an international publication by Milked Magazine, and in Textiel Plus Magazine, printed in the Netherlands. Merrill is an Associate Professor of Art at Bluegrass Community; Technical College and occasional Instructor in Fiber; Material Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is represented by Wheelhouse Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky.

Qiana Mestrich (b. 1977) is a photography-focused, interdisciplinary artist working in Brooklyn and upstate New York. She has exhibited worldwide including the 2021 International Triennial RAY Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt RheinMain, the 2019 BRIC Biennial: Volume III and the 2018 London Art Fair's Photo50. Mestrich's work is held in the Peggy Cooper Cafritz collection of contemporary art and other private collections in the United States. In 2022, she was a recipient of the Magnum Foundation's Counter Histories grant for her project on the history of women of color in the corporate workplace. Knowledge sharing and community building is a vital part of Mestrich's practice. In 2007 she founded Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, an arts initiative that aims to diversify the medium's history by advocating for photographers of color.  Her forthcoming book based on Dodge & Burn is to be published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Mestrich has written essays on photography for exhibition catalogs and published critical writing in art journals such as Light Work's Contact Sheet and En Foco's Nueva Luz. She is also co-editor of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press).

Sarah Sudhoff is a Cuban-American artist based in Houston, Tx. Her work has been exhibited at Blaffer Art Museum, McNay Art Museum, Donggang Photo Museum, Austin Museum of Art,Pioneer Works, Luckman Gallery, Magenta Foundation, Filter Photo, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Galveston Arts Center, and Colorado Photographic Arts Center. Articles including her work have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Time, Cabinet, and Southwest Contemporary. Sudhoff's research and residencies have been supported by Artpace, Tiffany Foundation, McColl Art Center, Houston Arts Alliance, Kinsey Institute, and the DoSeum. Sudhoff's recent visiting artist lectures include Rice University, RMIT University in Melbourne, Rhode Island School of Design, Blaffer Art Museum, Health & Wellbeing International Conference in Oxford, England, and Material Selves: Health, Gender and Performance symposium at the University of London. Sudhoff's recent and forthcoming exhibitions and performances include; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston; Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio; Ellio Fine Art, Houston; Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock; Ivester Contemporary, Austin; and ICOSA Collective, Austin. Sudhoff completed an MFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a BA in Journalism and Photography from the University of Texas at Austin.

Emilia White is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in object-based performance, fiber art and animation. She draws inspiration from early avant-garde movements such as Dada, Fluxus, and the Bauhaus Theatre, crafting humorous participatory performances designed to remove social barriers and foster inclusivity. Her projects use absurdity and autobiography to uphold feminist values and challenge patriarchal expectations. The artist has presented work throughout North America and abroad in Taiwan and Indonesia. She currently resides in Toronto, Ontario, where she is the Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Integrative Arts at York University School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD). She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design, and a BFA in Theatre & Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts. She was born in Northern California, USA.

William Glaser Wilson (b.1994) is an artist based between Savannah, Georgia and Brooklyn, New York whose practice utilizes photography, sculpture, painting and drawing on a large-scale to portray our collective struggles and pleasures through constructed environments. The artist received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Recent exhibitions include collaborations at the SCAD Museum of Contemporary Art and Cleo Gallery in Savannah. 

Megan Wynne is a multi-media conceptual artist who uses her body as a site to explore the interdependence and anxiety of the mother-child relationship. Her process often involves the act of relinquishing control in experimental collaborative performative scenarios with her three children, which are documented in video and photography. She holds a BFA in sculpture from Pratt Institute and a MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been featured in many publications including Bust Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, and Elephant Magazine. She has exhibited her work throughout the US as well as internationally. Recently she co-produced and shot an Emmy nominated documentary segment on her own work for WHRO PBS. Her work is currently on view in the More Than Shelter exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.