Born in New Jersey, she moved with her family to Florida at a young age. She received her BFA and BS from the University of South Florida, concentrating in Painting and in Marketing and Management. She received her MFA with a concentration in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2014. She has taught at Florida Atlantic University, Daytona State College, and is now teaching as an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Arts at the Halmos College of Art & Sciences at NOVA Southeastern University.

As an Afro-Caribbean visual artist, Lopez is eager to be challenged materialistically and metaphorically when representing marginalized individuals that inspire and move her. Her works are created out of the necessity to learn something new about her people and culture. Lopez is interested in developing a nostalgic dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. If she’s not learning from her materials and how it affects the message, it's not worth creating. 

www.kandyglopez.com

Qualeasha Wood is an interdisciplinary artist whose work contemplates realities around black female embodiment that do and might exist. Inspired by a familial relationship to textiles, queer craft, Microsoft Paint and internet avatars Wood's tufted and tapestry pieces mesh traditional craft and contemporary technological materials. Together, Qualeasha navigates both an Internet environment saturated in Black Femme figures and culture, and a political and economic environment holding that embodiment at the margins. For her what are intuitive combinations of analog and cybernetic compositional processes make for a plainly contemporary exploration of Black American Femme ontology.

In 2024 Wood will have a solo exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture, Charlotte, NC. She is currently included in Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY;Threaded Visions: Contemporary Weavings from the Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, IL; and Threaded, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA. Her recent exhibitions include Manic Pixie Magical Negro, Kendra Jayne Patrick, New York, NY (2023); The New Bend, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA (2022-3); It’s Time For Me To Go, MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2022); Alter Egos | Projected Selves, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2022); and Dancing in Dark Times, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, UK (2021). Her collections include Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; The Dean Collection, New York, NY; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.

Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. © Qualeasha Wood 2024. 

Photo: Athenaeum Editions. 

De’von Downes, a non-binary artist from South Jersey/Greater Philadelphia, creates impactful works in watercolor, public art, and jewelry. Their portraiture focuses on the black experience, weaving in symbolism from folklore and nature. They've contributed to projects with Murals Arts, Atlantic City Arts Foundation, Made in America, NJ Transit, and Camden Fireworks, leaving permanent murals across various locations. Before muralism, De’von studied Art Therapy, worked as an Arts Coordinator, and conducted community-based workshops, emphasizing wellness and emotional literacy. Their belief in influencing change through inclusive, educational art drives them to challenge norms and use public art as a platform for inspiration and education.

Jen White-Johnson (she/they) is an Afro-Latina disabled and neurodivergent artist, designer, and educator whose visual work explores the intersection of content and caregiving, Black Disabled Joy, and emphasizing redesigning ableist visual culture. Jen’s heart-centered and electric approach to disability advocacy bolsters these movements with invaluable currencies: powerful dynamic art and media that all at once educate, bridge divergent worlds, and build a future that mirrors her Autistic son’s experience. Mothering as an Act of Resistance is central to Jen’s philosophy, as she channels this energy into her work. Jen has presented her disability justice activist work and collaborated with brands and art spaces across print and digital media, such as Coachella, Target, and Adobe. Her work has been featured in AfroPunk, Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, and Juxtapoz Magazine, among other publications. Jen’s work is also permanently archived at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Smithsonian National African American Museum of History and Culture. Jen has an MFA in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she teaches decolonizing design. She lives in Baltimore, MD, with her husband and son, Knox. 

Michael Hambouz is a multidisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist musician, and independent curator based in Brooklyn, NY. Hambouz creates chromaesthesia-influenced works – experiments in dimension and color made under the guidance of music – to process bouts of loss and reflections on life in the rural Midwest, New York City, and in the cybersphere as a first-generation Palestinian-American. Experimenting freely with mediums, he encourages unexpected results and mutations in compositional form to bloom in the studio, resulting in conceptually abstracted paintings and prints, intricate layered paper cut outs, sculpture, drawings and animations. Hambouz received a B.A. in painting and sculpture with a minor in video from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, and has been awarded two residencies with Wassaic Project in upstate New York, and a forthcoming fellowship/residency at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA in spring 2025. Solo/two-person exhibitions include Elijah Wheat Showroom (Newburgh, NY) Spring/Break Art Show (NYC), Neighbors (NYC), chashama (NYC), Kayrock (NYC), Troutbeck (Amenia, NY), The Krasl Art Center (St. Joseph, MI), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Future Fairs (NYC), Brooklyn Academy of Music (NYC), and a 20-year survey exhibition at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, OH) in 2018.  Select group exhibitions include The National Arts Club (NYC), Club Rhubarb (NYC), Deanna Evans Projects (NYC), Andrew Edlin Gallery (NYC), IPCNY (NYC), GROWROOM//SHOWROOM (NYC), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), Dominique Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Northern-Southern (Austin, TX), Eve Leibe Gallery (London, UK), and The Centre for Contemporary Printmaking, (Bangor, N. Ireland). His work has been featured in Artnet News, The New York Times, Design Milk, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, and Vice among others, and can be seen in the collections of Antioch College, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Niles History Center, and NYU Langone Medical Center. 

Photoville is a New York City-based non-profit organization that works to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all. In addition to Photoville's annual outdoor photography festival that takes place across the 5 boroughs of New York, Photoville Works is a year-round exhibition production house offering curation, design, print, and installation services. For the past 12 years, Photoville Works has produced art exhibitions across the country and internationally, working in creative partnership with city departments, nonprofits, artists and commercial agencies. Photoville Works' custom-fabricated exhibition structures are modular, customizable and transportable systems that are tailored to exhibit artwork in outdoor and indoor settings. 

This exhibition will be on display in the courtyards of Moore's campus. 

To see more of Photoville's work, visit photoville.com and check out @photoville