LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and currently lives and works in Chicago. An artist and activist, LaToya Ruby Frazier uses photography, video, and performance to document personal and social histories in the United States, specifically the industrial heartland. Having grown up in the shadow of the steel industry, Frazier has chronicled the healthcare inequities and environmental crises faced by her family and her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. The artist employs a radically intimate, black-and-white documentary approach that captures the complexity, injustice, and simultaneous hope of the Black American experience, often utilizing her camera and the medium of photography as an agent for social change.

Liz Magic Laser was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Laser’s practice includes video and performance as well as sculpture and installation. Dissecting ideas of power and how it is performed, Laser has worked with such forms as presidential speeches, TED Talks, and nightly news broadcasts. She often integrates audience participation into works that involve social and political critiques, and has staged performances in public spaces such as banks and movie theaters. More recently, Laser has expanded her interest in the construction of identities to include children and the ways in which their self-perception is influenced by the news media.