Bodies We Inhabit

Aboutthe curator:

Jessica Dubyis an independent curator based in Brooklyn, NY. She studied Arts Politics atNYU Tisch and her undergraduate degree is in Art History.

Aboutthe artists:

SchaunChampion is an artist-photographer, director of photography and instructorspecializing in natural light, portraiture, fine art and culturaldocumentary/archival work. Using both digital and analog cameras, she createsintentionally cinematic and honest imagery. Inspired by classic films, musicand all things vintage; her intention is to use themes of nature, diversity andnostalgia to illustrate the drama within the familiar. She has worked withOscar-nominated cinematographer, Bradford Young and visual installation artistslike Sir Issac Julien of the Royal Academy. Her subjects have included fashiondesigner, Bishme Cromartie, actors like André Holland, writers and directorssuch as Radha Blank, independent/grammy winning musicians like Pink Siifu, aswell as friends, family, and people she meets from around the world. Schaun’swork is in both public and private collections in several countries. She hasexhibited her work internationally through museums and galleries such as theBarnes Foundation, James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Arts,Antipode Gallery of Marseille, Deutsches Architekturmuseum (GermanyArchitecture Museum), Eubie Blake Cultural Center, Washington Project for theArts and Latela Curatorial.Her work has been featured internationally throughAdobe and publications/networks such as Cultured Magazine, NBC, PeopleMagazine, The New York Times, HBO, NPR, Allure Magazine, Essence Magazine,American Cinematographer Magazine, Rouleur Magazine, and many others.

Hoesy Corona (based in the U.S.) is aLatinx queer artist creating uncategorized and multidisciplinary art spanninginstallation, performance, and sculpture. He is a Winston Tabb SpecialCollections Research Center Public Humanities Fellow 2022-2023 at the JohnsHopkins University's Sheridan Libraries’. In the studio, Hoesy’s workhighlights the complex relationship between humans and the environment byfocusing on our changing climate and its impact on habitation and migrationpatterns. Corona has exhibited widely in galleries, museums, and public spacesin the United States and internationally, including recent solo exhibitionsSunset Moonlight (2021) at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD and AlienNation (2017), at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presented byTransformer in DC. He is the recipient of many honors and awards including theAndy Warhol Foundation’s Grit Fund Grant, a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellowship, and anOx-Bow artist residency. His work has been reviewed by The Washington Post, BmoreArt Magazine, Washington City Paper, and The American Scholar among others.www.hoesycorona.com

SaraDittrich is an interdisciplinary sculpture artist who builds introspectiveexperiences that shift perspective from passive seeing to active looking, frompassive hearing to active listening. Using musical thinking, Dittrichilluminates the dynamic and unconscious rhythms of the body and environments.Her art is heard and felt in real time, a feature that Nat Trotman, Curator ofPerformance and Media at the Guggenheim, called “the liveness” of Dittrich’swork. Dittrich uses a diverse set of mediums that often include sculpturalobjects, musical performance, video, and interactive electronic technologies.In whatever her chosen medium, Dittrich challenges our expectations andassumptions by exploring natural and constructed dualities—in/out, up/down, rise/fall,large/small, right/left. She has been awarded artist residencies includingBemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2015); the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship(2015); and Sculpture Space (2015). In 2018-2019, she was a Fellow at the FineArts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She is the recipient of a 2017 MarySawyers Baker Artist Award, and was a 2017 Janet & Walter Sondheim PrizeFinalist. Dittrich’s work has been exhibited and performed in numerous venuesincluding the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Washington Project for the Arts, DC;and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI.

PhyliciaGhee is an interdisciplinary visualartist, photographer and performance artist whose work documents transition,explores healing, memory, ritual and the intersection between the physical andthe spiritual. She earned her BFA in Photography with a Concentration inCuratorial Studies from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010. Ghee hasexhibited her work at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Galerie Myrtis, The EgyptianEmbassy, The Margulies Warehouse (Miami), Studio Art Centers International(Florence) and The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African AmericanHistory & Culture. Most recently, Ghee completed a 3-month artist residencyand immersive, multi-sensory solo exhibition at The Nicholson Project inSoutheast, D.C. Ghee has exhibited and performed at NYU, Art on the Vine(Martha’s Vineyard), Young Collectors Contemporary (Memphis, TN), The BannekerDouglass Museum, The Walters Art Museum as 2019 Janet & Walter SondheimArtscape Prize Finalist, Fridman Gallery (NY) and The African American Museum(Philadelphia, PA). Ghee was named 2020 Baker Artist Award Finalist, 2020Pratt>FORWARD Fellow (Mickalene Thomas & Jane South) and 2020 Janet& Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalist. Ghee has taught workshops andheld day-long retreats internationally. She received recognition fromMaryland’s First Lady Yumi Hogan & the Maryland Behavioral HealthAdministration for her art and activism in raising awareness on issuessurrounding mental health. She is the first Black Woman and only one of 21photographers in American history to work as Official Photographer for the U.S.Capitol, House of Representatives.

NavaGidanian-Kagan is an Iranian-Israeli artist based in Tuxedo,NY. Contemplation on our collective humanity, our connection to thedivine/nature and to each other is the heart of her work. She received numerousawards including: The Terra Foundation for American Art (2014), The ElisabethGreenshields Foundation Award (2014), The Eileen S. Kaminsky FoundationResidency award, MANA Contemporary (2017), LABA Fellowship (2022), and featuredin: New American Paintings Magazine (2019) and Studio Visit Magazines (2020).Nava has exhibited both nationally and internationally including: The 14Y, NYC(2022), The Jewish Museum of NJ (2019), The Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, NY(2017), Dedee Shattuck Gallery, MA (2017), Mana Contemporary, NJ (2017), TheExperimental Gallery, NY (2016), Flux Factory, NY (2016), A.I.R Gallery,NY (2016), Panepinto Galleries, NJ (2015), Collier West Gallery, NY (2015),Wilkinson Hall Gallery, NY (2015), Indigo Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2012),Burchfield Penney Art Museum, Buffalo, NY, (2012), Marion Art Gallery,Fredonia, NY (2012), Olean Public Library Gallery, Olean, NY (2011), BAS,Buffalo, NY (2011), Echo Art Fair, Buffalo, NY (2011), Gallery 33, Tel-Aviv,Israel (2006), ISA Gallery, Umbria, Italy (2004/5) and Stern Gallery, Tel-Aviv,Israel. Nava participated in the Residency programs at: The InternationalSchool of Painting, Drawing Sculpture in Umbria, Italy (2005, 2004) and ThePrado Museum, Madrid, Spain (2007). She holds a Master of Fine Arts from theNew York Academy of Art (2015), the Jerusalem Studio School (2006).

NoelKassewitz is a contemporary artist and third-generation Floridian currently basedin Washington, D.C. After receiving her BFA in Studio Painting from theUniversity of Florida and working with the prestigious Rubell Museum, she latercompleted an artist residency in Carrara, Italy with marble master sculptorBoutros Romhein. In addition to her studio practice, she currently works inSculpture Conservation at the National Gallery of Art. Kassewitz has given anartist talk at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, guest written for the Union ofConcerned Scientists, and her work has been featured in the Washington Post,Huffington Post, Financial Times, BMore Art, and PBS WETA. Her work hasexhibited both nationally and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions atArlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA) and IA&A at Hillyer (Washington, DC),along with exhibitions in Miami, FL; Chicago, Il; and State College, PA; aswell as in Milan and Bologna, Italy. Kassewitz was recently awarded the2020-2021 DC-CAH Visual Artist Fellowship Grant and her work has been acquiredfor the permanent public art collections of both the District of Columbia’sCity Art Bank and the University of Maryland’s CAPP collection. 

Koyoltzintliisan interdisciplinary artist, healer, and educator living in the USA. She grewup on the pacific coast and the Andean mountains in Ecuador, these aregeographies that permeate her work. She focuses on sound, ancestraltechnologies, ritual, and storytelling through collaborative processes andpersonal narratives. Intersectional theories and earth-based healing inform herpractice. Nominated for Prix Pictet in 2019, her work has been exhibited in theNational Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the United Nations, ApertureFoundation in NYC, and Paris Photo, among others. She has been an artist inresidence in the US, France, and Italy and has taught at CalArts,
SVA, ICP, and CUNY. She has received multiple awards and fellowships includingthe Photographic Fellowship at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the NYFAFellowship, and the IA grant by the Queens Council of the Arts. Her firstmonograph Other Stories was published in 2017 by Autograph ABP, and her workwas featured in the Native issue of Aperture Magazine (no. 240). In 2021, herwork was included in the book Latinx Photography in the United States byElizabeth Ferrer chief curator at BRIC. In 2022 she is one of the artists inresidence at Socrates Sculpture Park and she has been awarded the Latinx ArtistFellowship by US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF).

CeciCole McInturff works in sculpture, hand-formed paper,narrative installation, and book objects. She is founder of the 87FLORIDAArtist Collective; formerly owned the non-profit exhibit and performance space87FLORIDA in Washington, D.C.; and is a studio member of the Otis Street ArtsProject. She holds an MFA in Art and Visual Technology from George MasonUniversity, studied two years in the MA/Art and the Book program of theCorcoran College of Art+Design, is a former executive with the CBS TelevisionNetwork, and the mother of two sons. Memberships: International SculptureCenter, Washington Sculptors Group, Washington Project for the Arts, ArtDCForum, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Greater Reston Arts Center.

MirellaSalamé aka ella is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her practiceincludes (but is not limited to) performance art, installation art, writing,public interferences, and painting; working with left-overs and naturalfindings, she uses reclaimed, natural & off-the-grid material such as earthpigments, found wood or recycled paper, seeds, plants, and her own body,together with reclaimed immaterial such as movement, sound,time/memory, herstory and dreams. After being selected for a full grant,ella received her Masters degree in “Art in Public Spheres” from EcoleCantonale d’Art du Valais (ECAV, Switzerland) in 2014, with great distinction,and had won several prizes along the years, namely the Installation Prize atthe Modern And Contemporary Art Museum in Lebanon (MACAM), and the ExcellencyPrize from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HES.SO), WesternSwitzerland. Mirella Salamé also works in reciprocal & spiritualrelationship with the earth and medicinal plants to offer healing & guidancefor others. She founded “the hope sanctuary” where she dedicates space formedicinal seeds & plants, channels the wise teachings and messages of theearth spirit, offering gatherings and 1:1 sessions, as well as workshops. 

SueWrbican lives and works in the Washington, DC metro area. During the Summer andinto the Fall of 2021 she presented work featuring her brother Matt Wrbican intwo exhibitions entitled The Iridescent Yonder at Riverviews Art Space inLynchburg, Virginia and This Iridescent Era at VisArts Center in Rockville,Maryland. In 2020 her work Buoyant Force was installed at Tephra Institute ofContemporary Art in Reston, Virginia. In the Fall of 2017 she presented herextensive artistic exploration into the work of Kay Sage at the Greater RestonArt Center in Virginia (now Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art) In 2015her site specific sculpture “The Eventual Outcome of an Instant” wasconstructed at the Seligmann Center in Sugar Loaf, NY.  Her video  "BackRoof" is part of Miranda July's Joanie 4 Jackie Archive at the GettyResearch Institute, Los Angeles, CA.  In 2014 she presented herinstallation and lecture “Continue the Temporary and It Becomes Forever” at theZizek Studies conference at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design,Art, Architecture and Planning. Wrbican has held residencies at the RobertRauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley,California, The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida andSTUD Residency in Catlett, Virginia. She is a founding member of the FloatingLab Collective whose projects have been exhibited widely in venues such as ZKM,Karlsruhe, Germany and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, NYC, NY. In 2008 sheworked with Mary Carothers on a project addressing gas consumption and theenvironment entitled The Frozen Car.