Performers & Art Exhibitors
Learn more about our Performers and Art Exhibitors. Join us March 9th from 8:30 PM to 10:30 PM ET to watch our performers showcase. Art exhibits are available to all attendees to see at the Art Gallery anytime throughout the conference.
Performers
All performers will present at the Performer Showcase on March 9th from 8:30pm to 10pm ET. Learn more about them below
Chinelo
About the performer: Chinelo is a dibia, storyteller, and child of agwụ. Their work is a continuation of Igbo spiritual traditions, that seek the face of spirit through art. They aim to create spaces and narratives that reinforce indigenous African ways of being.
Demi Alex Ayuna
About the performer: Demi / Alex Ayuna (he/they) is a second generation Taiwanese dancer and wiggler based in unceded Ohlone land (Oakland, CA). They are Mad, chronically ill, and disabled, and center healing, rest, and care in a lot of their work. He co-facilitates free outdoor dance gatherings twice a month with other covid cautious queers, and enjoys carving out time to run errands in drag, flower picking, and meditating by the water. He is grateful to organize and build with other covid-cautious humans while honoring crip time and sustaining our movements.
FatherVenus
About the performer: Father Venus is an anti-capitalist rapper who centers justice, pleasure, and magic in their work. Somewhere between lecture and lullaby, Father Venus’s lyrical approach to music gives access to their inner workings as a Black trans, non-binary artist attempting to survive this world.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
About the performer: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a nonbinary femme disabled writer and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent. They are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is DIsabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, Beyond Survival: Stories and Strategies from the Transformative Justice Movement (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon), Tonguebreaker, and Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. A 2020-2021 Disability Futures Fellow, Lambda Award winner and longtime disabled BIPOC space maker, they are currently building Living Altars, a cultural space space by and for disabled QTBIPOC writers and creators. They are also an older cousin, stoop femme, cultural and memory worker, divinator, writing teacher, space creator, low-tech survival technologist and structural engineer of disability and transformative justice work. They still believe in the disabled future.
Meet the Bug
About the performer: Meet the Bug is the solo endeavor of Philadelphia-based bedroom pop polymath Cariahbel Azemar. Their latest EP Beet The Mug is “a vibey meditation on keys and glimmery vocals that tackles heavy childhood trauma from the perspective of an emerging artist realizing the power of her voice.” Heavily inspired by Cavetown and Rebecca Sugar, Azemar uses their songs as a sort of diary, cataloging the highs and lows of coming into adulthood as someone who is both on the spectrum and ADHD.
ori rue
About the performer: ori rue ( [mirror pronouns] / they / [ask] / [some are secrets] ) is a poet, artist, and studier of herbalism who explores the queering of negative affects such as rage, grief, and fear. a childlike dreamer, ori is interested by the ways in which community bonds form, develop, and deepen. they are particularly passionate about cooking as choreography, release, and mutual aid. having been rejected from every publishing journal they have applied to and often times struggling to write, they turn towards their gestures, stretches, and voices. they consistently find themselves yearning to play, cuddle, and melt with soils, winds, flames, and streams. they have pining attractions with mosses, algaes, and fungis. they are learning how to tend to their bodymindspirits and rely on others to care for them as they care for others. currently, ori rue wants to study to do work as a street medic, birthworker, deathworker, and, and, and...
NeptuneMuse
About the performer: Pulling inspiration from 70's soul, latin jazz, and bossanova, r&b siren Gabrielle Tola is NeptuneMuse: a singer-songwriter, creative director, producer, and poet of the stars dedicated to world-building a sonic and visual dreamscape for all the lovers of the world through her ethereal poetry and music centered on pushing the message of pleasure activism, self-love, and communal dreaming for a more sustainable and kind world. Rising from Miami, Gabrielle loves to create, heal, and uplift through artistic expression from an infatuation of astrology, romance, and magic.
you can find her as NeptuneMuse on all streaming platforms, Bandcamp, YouTube, Substack, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
Art Exhibitors
All art will be available at the Art Gallery for attendees to view at anytime duing the conference. Learn more about our art exibitors.
Derek Quevedo
About the art exhibitor:
Derrick Quevedo (isu | siyá) is a Racialized, Disabled, Queer, Mad, Neurodivergent writer, artist, and cat parent. Siyá is an Iluko and tagá-ilog in the diaspora, currently settled on Piscataway and Susquehannock lands, whose works focus on the intersections as a Multiply Marginalized bodymindspirit.
Piece Summary:
Bundók Banahaw (Mount Banahaw) is a sacred mountain back in my ancestral home of Quezon province in the Philippines. There is a lot of autobiographical, ancestral, cultural, and spiritual backstory to my sharing of the Bundók persona.
Ebbie + Julissa
About the art exhibitor:
Julissa Rodríguez is a proud gender expansive Queer Boricua! They are an educator, youth advocate, musician, writer, arts facilitator, cultural worker, organizer, and visual and performing artist. Her free expression through percussion, theatre, dance, poetry and spoken word is meant to honor our African, Indigenous, and Queer Ancestors, open spaces for community building, connection and healing, and challenge patriarchal limitations placed on women and other marginalized genders. Julissa has been a featured artist, performer, speaker and facilitator in venues and educational centers around the country and across the globe. They have performed at the famed Nuyorican Poets Café, Trinity College International Hip Hop Festival, Play Like A Girl music series with The HartBeat Ensemble and The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Their visual art has appeared at PULP Gallery in Holyoke and their poetry is featured in Pán•o•ply: The Inaugural MultiCreative Anthology (in print this spring).
Ebbie Russell is a Black Genderqueer Femme multidisciplinary artist exploring themes of grief, blood and chosen kin, and community longing. Rooted in Black Feminism and Afrofuturism, their poetry, memoir, visual and performance art explore how dance can heal and honor intergenerational trauma and chronic illness. Ebbie will queer a dancefloor or a dream whenever possible. Their poetry has been published in the anthology From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast and Pán•o•ply: The Inaugural MultiCreative Anthology (in print this spring). Ebbie’s visual art has shown around western Massachusetts at the Burnett Gallery in Amherst, 50 Arrow Gallery in Easthampton, The Ethnic Study in Springfield, 33 Hawley in Northampton, and PULP Gallery and The Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke. Find them on Instagram @blkglittermagic
Piece Summary:
A mixed media collage diptych with original illustration on the theme of honoring ancestors past, present, and future and visualizing our expansive existence across the multiverse. An intergalactic collaboration of two superqueer supersonic babies in love.
edxi betts
About the art exhibitor:
edxi is an autistic, Black, Blackfeet descended(non enrolled) trans Pinay, multi media Mellon fellow artist & community organizer. Her work entails political education while providing material support to historically targeted & colonized communities. Creating art/media for the sake of propagating resistance culture, counter narrative and self-collective liberatory projects that spark discourse, sources of healing, critical thought, dialogue, mutual aid and direct action. edxi’s pay handles: Venmo/cashapp: coin4edxi paypal.me/Coin4Edxie
Piece Summary:
Visual Art piece advocating to stop violence against trans and gender non conforming people of color
Emmeline Kaiser
About the art exhibitor:
Emmeline Kaiser (王忻如) is a scientist and illustrator currently based on Paugussett and Wappinger land (in Connecticut). Their art has appeared in the 2 Trans 2 Furious zine and various places online. They can be found on instagram @emkaisart.
Piece Summary:
For the upcoming lunar year I drew a dragon full of grief, rage, and a steadfast commitment for liberation. I included a quote by Desmond Tutu that I think about often and in small golden text interwoven in the dragon’s mane is the Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself.
Ammara Touch
About the art exhibitor:
Ammara is a neurodivergent queer Khmer plant witch-poet-organizer-artist dedicated to collective healing and liberation. Their identities inform the way they center and explore love in their creative practice, drawing upon the wisdom of plants to create space that nurtures our inner and outer worlds. Through her art and plant medicine, she highlights relationships as places of radical transformation, and reminds us how deep tenderness is a portal to power and joy.
Piece Summary:
a tender honoring of ancestral wisdom and plant magic, who remind us love is abundant. i wouldn't be here without my grandmother's plant knowledge; my family wouldn't have survived genocide without it. through lineage, plants affirm healing is my birthright. we are medicine, deeply connected to the cosmos. we remember reciprocity, care, interdependence, as keys to liberation.
T (Thomara)
About the art exhibitor:
T (Thomara) is an Artivist who uses her superpowers to support young people and promote powerful education, transformational arts, community building, and health and wellness. She is a native Washingtonian and citizen of the world who believes in the words of Dr. Maya Angelou, "When you know better you do better" and who lives by the tenet that we should leave every place better than the way we found it. You can connect with her via famishealthy@gmail.com.
Piece Summary:
"Rainshine" is the story of a woman discovering the strength within her and defeating life's greatest storms of struggle by boldly embracing her personal agency and power. True sistas provide covering for each other even when it appears you will be alone in your storm. Their support from the background is revealed when the one who needed it most shows up shining brightest through the storm. We need each other in pandemic solidarity. Original acrylic on canvas.
Sky Cubacub + CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), Hong Kong
About the art exhibitor:
Sky Cubacub (They/Them/Xey/Xem/Xyr) is a non-binary disabled Filipinx neuroqueer from Chicago, IL. They are the creator of Rebirth Garments, a line of wearables for trans, queer and disabled people of all sizes and ages, which started in summer 2014. Sky is the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a full color cut and paste style zine that celebrates disabled queer life. They also are a founding member of Radical Visibility Collective, which creates fashion performances with audio descriptive songs. Xey started a free online queercrip DIY fashion program and fashion incubator with the Chicago Public Library called Radical Fit which has a yearly summer celebration at Ping Tom Park in Chicago called Queer Radical Fair. They are in the process of creating an online kids show about joyful disability access called “Sky and The Rebirth Warriors”.
Piece Summary: Clothing Collection by Rebirth Garments by Sky Cubacub (Chicago)
Mini Documentary by Felix Kong Chun LO for MILL6CHAT - The Center for Heritage Arts & Textile on Hong Kong, 2021
Gwendolyn Hill
About the art exhibitor:
Gwendolyn Hill (she/her) is a queer Chinese-‘American’ femme with Long COVID, currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Psychobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles on unceded Gabrielino/Tongva land. From a young age, she has involved herself in as many arts as she can find, from martial arts, to flute and piano, to jewelry-making and photography. She is also a copy editor and writer for several intersectional magazines on campus. Passionate about intersectional disability justice, accessibility, and liberation, her on-going advocacy work as a leader in UCLA’s Disabled Student Union has recently resulted in expanded access to high quality masks and COVID-19 resources on campus. Gwendolyn’s professional goals include performing investigative research on the links between marginalization and health disparities in QTBIPOC in order to increase accessibility for all.
Piece Summary:
Mixed media collage using scanned scrap paper, pieces of fabric, digital photos, and original texture overlays. Self-portraiture. Artist Statement: "Time keeps ticking; we are pulled back into the past through the abstract, spending our present time entrenched in the past. And then it all bleeds back into the present."