Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984 in Queens, NY) is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist who primarily uses sculpture, performance, video, and community-based collaborations to reimagine new and continually evolving bodies, selves, and futures. Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. They are the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for experimental performance collaborations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers, and lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. 

Kim Ye (b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates performance, video, sculpture, installation, and text. She received her MFA from UCLA (2012) and her BA from Pomona College (2007). Influenced by language and aesthetics from BDSM, drag, and other avenues for self-actualization, her work explores the inversion of power dynamics through creating situations of exchange and intimacy. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally at The Hammer Museum, Getty Center, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Material Art Fair, Human Resources, Machine Project, Morán Morán, Satellite Art Fair, and Visitor Welcome Center among others. As a visiting artist, she has taught and lectured at institutions such as California Institute of the Arts, Pomona College, University of California Los Angeles, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Loyola Marymount University.

Xina Xurner is an experimental music/performance collaboration between Marvin Astorga and Young Joon Kwak, whose cathartic performances combine DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag to expand ideas about queer and trans bodies. Their music combines a variety of genres (including happy hardcore, industrial, drone metal, and techno), in order to create sadical and sexperimental noise-diva-dance anthems that evoke a sense of transformation, rebirth, and renewal. Xina Xurner released their debut album “DIE” in 2012 and their follow-up, “Queens of the Night,” was released in April 2018. Xina Xurner will make you sweat.

Caroline Yoo is an artist and community builder performing history. Born in Lawrence, Kansas to Korean immigrants, Yoo’s lived experiences in Anglo-suburbia as well as her time in Los Angeles surrounded by joyous Asian diasporic culture, have informed her art practice of searching for radical existence in creating safe spaces that allows her communities to dream wild, process unheard traumas, or plant grounds for new futures. Using making as a way to subvert, question and resist the silent, unseen systems of power we are ingrained, Yoo creates to imagine alternative education, unravel cultural colonialism, and pose questions on assumed narratives based on the consumption of other-ed bodies through social practice, intimate gathering space, experimental performance, and lens based installations. Yoo is additionally a member of Hwa Records, JADED PGH, and Han Diaspora Group all artist led collectives focused on producing spaces for diasporic Korean and/or AAPI narratives. Yoo has performed, exhibited, and/or culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art, McDonough Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, University of Southern California, LA Art Show, and more.

London Williams is a practicing artist working in Pittsburgh, PA, and a second-year graduate candidate for a Master’s in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, Williams earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2021. Williams engages with his identity within his practice, exploring intersections of masculinity, sexuality, and Blackness. He imagines a home that cherishes his Blackness and Queerness. Identifying as an interdisciplinary painter, Williams uses multiple mediums as a response to a history of painter techniques. His paintings evolve as documentation of the domestic interior, a reproach of a past that has yet to be lived. Running parallel to how his grandmother curated her home, the influences of childhood guide his imagination of a home, familiar, but not inherited, in its uplifting of Blackness and Queerness. Recently Williams has developed a relationship with Ballroom and the art of vogue performance, utilizing the dance’s five elements—and the community that comes with it—to engage with an uncharted dimension of his identity. London is passionately collaging different themes, skills, and platforms that result in a manifestation of his Black Queer Utopia. 

MICHIYAYA Dance featuring Anya Clarke-Verdery (they/them) Born and raised in Brooklyn, with roots hailing from Trinidad & Tobago, Anya Clarke-Verdery is a queer choreographer, dance artist, and educator. They received their BFA in Dance from Long Island University, where they began their choreographic career, choreographing for the American College Dance Association. Anya has worked with choreographers such as Matthew Rushing, Sidra Bell, Earl Mosley, Clifton Brown, Holly Blakey, among others. Anya won 1st prize for Choreographic Excellence in the 11th International REVERBDance Festival. Described as movement that “moves between lucid and fluid to downright jarring in the most effective way,” Anya’s work has spread nationally at venues such as Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, Gelsey Kirkland Theater, among others. Alongside partner Mitsuko Clarke-Verdery, they were selected as the 2019 Guest Lecturers and Resident Artists at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art & Drama, and 2018 PearlDiving Movement Resident Artists. Anya currently serves on the Junior Board and as guest faculty for Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance. With MICHIYAYA, Anya creates highly physical and visceral choreography that molds with each dance artists’ voice. 

Goofy Toof is an erotic artist and self-proclaimed big weirdo. Winner of the London Fetish Film Festival’s Best Comedy award for directing and starring in- the asexual porn parody CREAMPIE GLORYHOLE. Graphic designer and video vixen of OnlyBans, a game about the surveillance and censorship of sex workers. Animator of sexy cartoons, pole dancer, and probably the neighborhood freak. www.GoofyToof.com

 

 

Swampwalk (they/them) is a Pittsburgh writer/composer/producer/performer/translator who weaves tales of guts and glory, fear and sadness, love and hate, pain and suffering, tapping into the sacred pool of words that rhyme to reveal congruences and connections between things and people and experiences through their voice and whatever instrument(s) they meet, in an attempt to create and/or release energy, in between save points, singing for food or money, for medicine, in its many forms, to stay safe, or simply for the love of the game.

 

Sacred Sauce (Samira Mendoza & Gladstone Butler) – Samira Mendoza (they/them) is an interdisciplinary performance artist, curator, and educator based in Pittsburgh, PA. Their work centers improvisation through different mediums including sound, sculpture, organizing, and movement to investigate oppressive systems, familial history, and personal experiences. Mendoza currently collaborates with Gladstone Deluxe and Lola Machine as Dendarry Bakery, The Universe Online, Ricki Weidenhof, and Johnny Zoloft as WFP, and XC-17 and Yessi as Dyspheric. You can catch Dyspheric deejaying live on their monthly radio residency on Verge FM in Columbus, Ohio every third Saturday at 9PM. Gladstone Butler is a New York based artist working with percussion and electronics. His work takes form in recorded music, installations and performances.Gladstone has performed as a soloist at the Kennedy Center, released multiple tracks charted in the Beatport Top 10, works in fields of research as a technical audio engineer and software engineer, and is an installation artist using sound to address questions of time, percussion and culture. Gladstone was born and raised in Washington, DC and started his journey as a drummer at an early age. His studies of drumming showed him the visceral power in rhythm that inspires movement. The passion he found for rhythm and motion drives his everyday life. After moving from DC, he developed a love for technology and electronic music while at Carnegie Mellon University. This passion was fostered and grew into a new way of experiencing and composing with sound. Gladstone is currently pursuing an MFA in Sound Art at Columbia University, exploring concepts linking rhythm, geometry, the body and technology.

Davine Byon (she/her) is a Pittsburgh-based interdisciplinary media artist from New York City. She received her BFA in Video and Media Design at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. In addition to her background in collaborative design for performance works, Davine is developing an independent practice in new media video and installation art. This work draws from personal archives, Internet culture, popular media, and lens-based artifacts to reveal and remix narrative. She is interested in what documentation of the sacred and mundane might elucidate about intimacy, particularly in the queer community and among people of color. This fascination is informed by her own experience constructing, interrogating, and appreciating her queer Korean-American identity via media found at home and online.”

Formosa aka Stephanie Tsong is a multi-disciplinary Taiwanese-American DJ, artist, and designer who performs as “Formosa” and as one-third of monthly Pittsburgh queer party, Jellyfish. Raised on an eclectic mix of sounds that reflects a youth spent listening to global pop music and dancing in international clubs, you can expect their sets to range from international pop to disco, freestyle, leftfield, electro, boogie, and house. Jellyfish and Formosa have been featured at Honcho Campout, The Lot Radio, Nowadays, Maybeland, Haute to Death, 88.3 WRCT, and Hot Mass. You can catch Jellyfish every month at P-Town Bar (N Oakland) and Formosa every fourth Saturday at Cobra Lounge (Bloomfield).