Sonja Thomsen’s interdisciplinary practice harnesses light as both medium and metaphor, creating immersive installations that blur the boundaries between photography, sculpture, and architecture. Working at the intersection of feminist theory and scientific inquiry, Thomsen transforms exhibition spaces into sites of perceptual discovery through installations incorporating dichroic glass, mirrors, and metallic materials that shift with viewers’ movement. Her current project—and then down became up (2023-ongoing)—collaborates across time with photographers Lucia Moholy and Hazel Larsen Archer. Thomsen illuminates overlooked histories of women in science and art, weaving these narratives into contemporary conversations about gender, power, and knowledge production.

Beatriz Monteavaro is an artist and musician whose work exists within the realms of monsters movies, science fiction, fantasy, theme parks, and underground music scenes. Her recent work is a meditation on memory, time travel, lost histories, sea life, tall ships, forests, and long walks on the beach. Monteavaro was born in Cuba, and now lives and works in Miami. She also plays drums and is one half of the band Holly Hunt and one quarter of the band SAAVIK. She has a solo sound project called Ellen Ripley

Arden Cone, an artist born and raised in South Carolina, unpacks the historical narratives that inform the varied identities, viewpoints, and experiences framing contemporary American culture. Through her paintings, sculptures and installations, she seeks to excavate core truths and fallacies from the accepted narrative of American history. 

In 2012, Cone received BA degrees in Studio Art and Spanish from Hollins University. In 2018 she earned an MFA from Boston University’s Painting Program. Since then, she has completed residencies at the Chautauqua Institute School of Fine Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Pike School of Art. She has exhibited her work widely across the US and was named a finalist for the 2017 Arthur & Dorothy Yeck Award at Miami University (Oxford, OH). 

Forthcoming, Cone has a solo exhibition of her work at Greenville Center for Creative Arts, a curatorial project to be exhibited at Hollins University’s Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, and a solo exhibition in Johnson City, TN. Arden has written for art publications including BURNAWAY, The Brooklyn Rail and her own art blog, One South Contemporary.

Julian Jamaal Jones is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Indianapolis, IN. Jones received his Bachelor’s degree in Photography in 2020 from the Herron School of Art + Design (Indianapolis, IN) and a Masters in Photography in 2022 from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), under the tutelage of Chris Fraser. 

Jones memorializes Black culture by presenting fresh perspectives while presenting creative freedom within traditional landscapes. His unique practice communicates through the historical language of African American quilting tradition by implementing abstract forms and vibrant colors in his works to bypass the preconceptions and open conversations around his Black experience.

Jones was awarded the CICF Artist Ambassadors Travel Grant in 2023, ArtsConnect’s “Artist to Watch” in 2022, the recipient of the 2022 Playground Emerging Artist Fellowship, supported by the Knight Foundation and the recipient of the prestigious Museum Purchase Award from Cranbrook Art Museum in 2022. Jones’s works are in the permanent textile collections of Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), Richmond Art Museum (Richmond, IN) and The Book Tower Detroit (Detroit, MI).