Heidi Lau was born in 1987 and grew up in Macau, China, and currently lives and works in New York City. Lau received her BFA from New York University in 2008, where she primarily studied printmaking and drawing. Dissatisfied with these mediums, the artist taught herself to make ceramics, creating works that evoke miniature architectures, funerary vessels, and creatures drawn from Taoist mythology. Building her works by hand, Lau channels and fuses her interests and influences into otherworldly objects that perforate the boundaries between the human and the spiritual.

Barry McGee’s drawings, paintings, and mixed-media installations take their inspiration from contemporary urban culture, incorporating elements such as empty liquor bottles and spray-paint cans, tagged signs, wrenches, and scrap wood or metal. McGee is also a graffiti artist, working on the streets of America’s cities since the 1980s, where he is known by the tag name “Twist.” He views graffiti as a vital method of communication, one that keeps him in touch with a larger, more diverse audience than can be reached through the traditional spaces of a gallery or museum.

William Wegman’s interests in areas beyond painting led him to photography and the then-infant medium of video. A central figure in his photography and videos, Wegman’s dog Man Ray became known in the art world and beyond for his endearing, deadpan presence. In 1972, Wegman and Man Ray moved to New York. In 1986, a new dog, Fay Ray, came into Wegman’s life; and soon thereafter another famous collaboration began, marked by Wegman’s use of the Polaroid 20-by-24-inch camera. With the birth of Fay’s litter in 1989 and her daughter’s litter in 1995, Wegman’s cast of characters grew.

Christian Marclay was born in 1955 in San Rafael, California, and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. For more than thirty years, Marclay has explored the relationship between the visual and the audible through a variety of media, including sculpture, video, performance, collage, and music.

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective of women artist-activists who began working together in 1985. Working across various media, the collective challenges the systems and individuals perpetuating discrimination and inequality in the art world by publicly sharing data and statistics about the representation of women and artists of color in commercial and institutional art spaces. Embracing the disruptive, confrontational, and irreverent, Guerrilla Girls draw from street art and the legacies of feminist activism to launch their critique of the art world.