Houston-based Jamal Cyrus’s body of work began from revisionist approaches within American history, particularly studies dealing with the African Diaspora and the formulation of Black political movements. His work acts as a document of questioning, meditation, mediation, and commemoration, attempting to distill and preserve the essences of political and social struggle. More recently, he has become interested in the idea of “The New World,” and the ensuing after-effects of clashing cultures-specifically the characterization of cultures as they blend. For Cyrus, this interest is manifested in the results of creolization, hybridity, and the notion that cultures are becoming much more abstract and increasingly difficult to define.
Cyrus received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. After receiving his BFA from the University of Houston in 2004, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2005. He has participated in exhibitions at The Kitchen in New York, New York (2009); The Museum of London Docklands, London, England (2009); Office Baroque Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2007); and CTRL gallery, Houston, Texas (2007). Cyrus’s work was shown in the Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night; and he is an active participant in the artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, with whom he has contributed to exhibitions such as Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy, High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia (2008); and Lessons from Below, The Menil Collection, Houston (2007).

Robert Hodge is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes of memory and commemoration. Born in Houston, Texas and raised in the City’s Third Ward district, the artist studied visual art at the Pratt Institute in New York and the Atlanta College of Art before returning to Houston. Hodge has exhibited his work in numerous national and international institutions. The artist has also received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Houston Arts Alliance and The Idea Fund. Hodge currently lives and works in Houston. Hodge’s current projects include an album he executive produced called “Two and 1⁄2 years: A Musical Celebration to the Spirit of Juneteenth” and his traveling installation called “The Beauty Box.”
View an interview at his Project Row House Installation View Robert’s work

Shana Hoehn (b. Texarkana, TX) is an artist working with sculpture, video, and photo-adjacent processes. Her research and artwork are a personal and historical inquiry into the aesthetics that allegorize the femme form. Conjuring imagery from her girlhood psyche and the female body in car culture, the medical imagination, pop-culture, and military-industrial objects, she disorganizes these sites of control and fantasy in such a way that retires their previous symbolic performance. Hoehn received her BFA in Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has participated in residencies and fellowships such as the Jan Van Eyck Academie, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Acre Residency, SOMA Summer, and the Fulbright Program in Mexico.

Liss LaFleur (b. TX, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans moving image, installation, performance, and glass. Often described as surreal, intimate, and poetic, her projects explore the interplay between feminist discourse, queer subjectivity, the protesting body, and technology. She is a 2020-21 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.

In 2018, LaFleur was awarded an Immersive Scholar grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to research the urgency of the #MeToo movement and translate public data into a series of immersive videos using 3D animation and conceptual art strategies. In 2019, all of the data associated with this research was archived in the #MeToo Digital Media Collection at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

LaFleur’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally by museums, galleries and other cultural institutions including the TATE Modern, UK; Cannes Court Métrage, FR; Hearst Museum; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; PBS/ POV Digital; the Reykjavik Art Museum, IS; South by Southwest; Artespacio Galeria de Arte, Santiago, Chile; the Museum of Glass, US; Sister Gallery, AU; and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, South Korea. She was nominated for a Webby Award (2019), and has been a finalist for the Foundwork Art Prize (2019), Art Prize (2017), the Aesthetica Art Prize (2018), the Lumen Prize (2016), and the Edie Windsor Coding Fellowship (2019). She is a recipient of the College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship (2014), and a pupil of documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark.

LaFleur graduated with an MFA in Media Art as an Artist Fellow from Emerson College in Boston, MA, where she also founded the New England Graduate Media Symposium. From 2012 – 2013 she was a media researcher on the Ford Foundation Advancing LGBT Rights Initiative, “Out for Change: Transmedia Organizing Network” at the MIT Media Lab. She is an Assistant Professor and Program Director in the College of Visual Art & Design at the University of North Texas, and she is represented by Galleri Urbane Marfa + Dallas.

Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud makes art about landscapes, mapping, and sensation. Her interdisciplinary art is minimal in form and centers on restraint, and there are often layers of meaning beyond the surface. Much of her work is inspired by poetics and rituals of African Americans and more broadly the African diaspora. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies throughout the Americas in the US, Caribbean, and Latin America, and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ayanna is director of education and public programs at the Houston Botanic Garden, creating the organization’s first-ever public programs which will link plants and nature to people and culture. A fourth-generation artist, she enjoys collecting maps and is a proud mother to Zahir, which means radiance and light.