Hiwa K was born in Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan, Iraq, in 1975. His sculptures, videos, and performances slyly weave together anecdotes from friends and family members with his biography. As a Kurdish Iraqi and immigrant to Germany, Hiwa K draws from personal memories to tell stories of our ongoing global crises: war, migration, and the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism. Documenting with video, the artist inserts himself into his works, which often involve participatory dimensions (such as group cooking classes, musical performances, and political protests) and collaborations with a wide cast of players, from Iraqi philosophers to Venetian metal casters. Largely self-taught, his multidisciplinary approach draws upon his peer-to-peer education in Iraq as well as his musical training under the Flamenco master, Paco Peña.

Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Mumbai, India. World renowned for his perception-defying sculptures and large-scale public installations, Kapoor works with industrial materials like mirror, steel, stone, and vinyl to create forms that evoke the metaphysical and challenge viewers’ ideas about physical space. Kapoor’s sublime use of concave forms, reflective surfaces, intense colors, and monumental scale invites viewers to experience both collective awe and private contemplation.

Jon Kessler was born in 1957 in Yonkers, New York, and lives and works in New York City. Kessler creates multimedia sculptures, which he describes as “chaotic kinetic installations” that critique our highly-surveilled world and dependence on technology.

Song Dong was born in 1966 in Beijing, China. Working with humble, readily accessible materials, such as household objects, wooden window and door frames, and even food, Song Dong creates sculptures, installations, videos, and performance works that explore personal and collective memory, impermanence, and the transience of human endeavor.

Jes Fan was born in 1990 in Canada, raised in Hong Kong, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Fan received his BFA in glass from Rhode Island School of Design and works with glass, silicon, and resin to create sculptures that question binary conceptions of race, gender, and identity.

Kevin Beasley was born in 1985 in Lynchburg, Virginia. He lives and works in Queens, New York. Beasley creates sculptures and installations made from found materials, including clothing, sports equipment, personal artifacts, and cultural ephemera. These items weave together Beasley’s own memories and experiences, along with historical and cultural references, in order to examine the role of power and race in American society. Interested in the tactile dimension of sound, Beasley connects sound production and the movement of the physical body through his performances and sound installations.

Isolated as a result of being institutionalized for most of her life due to Down syndrome and deafness, Judith Scott began creating art at age forty-three, after being introduced to Creative Growth in 1987. Scott’s vivid and enigmatic sculptures, which evolved in shape and material throughout her career, expressed her imagination in ways she could not through speech. Her abstract works have been compared to nests and cocoons while her processes alluded to both ritual and play. Described as hermetic and complex, the wrapping suggests protection and concealment.

Alex Da Corte was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1980 and lives and works in Philadelphia. The artist received his BFA from the University of the Arts in 2004, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. Da Corte creates vibrant and immersive large-scale installations, including wall-based works, sculptures, and videos. Colorful and surreal, his work combines personal narrative, art-historical references, pop-culture characters, and the glossy aesthetics of commercial advertising to reveal the humor, absurdity, and psychological complexity of the images and stories that permeate our culture.

Valeska Soares was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1957. Her sculptures and installations utilize a wide range of materials—including reflective mirrors, antique books and furniture, chiseled marble, bottles of perfume—and draw on both her training in architecture and the tools of Minimalism and Conceptualism. Contrasting polished, industrial materials with more ephemeral ones, Soares’s work invites viewers to engage all five senses, evoking the poetic and elusive themes of desire, intimacy, language, loss, personal memory, and collective history.

Nicholas Hlobo was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1975 and grew up in Transkei, South Africa. His works on paper, sculptures, installations, and performances utilize rubber, ribbon, leather, and a variety of domestic objects to explore both his identity as a gay Xhosa man and issues of masculinity, sexuality, and ethnicity in South African culture.