Marina Leybishkis is a New York based multimedia interdisciplinary artist who was born and raised in Uzbekistan. She holds a BA in Justice and Humanities Studies from The City University of New York and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was a recipient of the Fulbright grant for artistic research in 2018-2019.

Nona Faustine is a native New Yorker and award-winning photographer. Situated inside a photographic tradition while questioning the culture that bred that tradition, her practice walks the line between the past and the present, beginning where intersecting identities meet history. Through the family album and self-portraiture Faustine explores the inherited legacy of trauma, lineage, and history. Influenced by architecture and sculpture, she reconstructs a narrative of race, memory, and time that delves into stereotypes, folklore and anthropology. Her images are meditative reflections of a history Americans have not come to terms with, challenging the duality of what is both visible and invisible. They are not Photoshopped.

In 2019 Nona Faustine was distinguished with the New York Foundation Arts award in Photography, BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize, Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and Finalist in the National Portrait Gallery Outwin Boochever Competition. Her work focuses on history, identity, and representation, evoking a critical and emotional understanding of the past and proposing a deeper examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes. Faustine’s images have been published in a variety of national and international media outlets including Artforum, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and the New Yorker, among others. Faustine’s work has been exhibited at Harvard University, Rutgers University, Maryland State University, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, the International Center of Photography, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Tomie Ohtake Institute, and many others. Her work is in the collection of the David C. Driskell Center at Maryland State University, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, and has been recently acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art, North Dakota Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minnesota.