Emily Edwards is Associate Curator at Dallas Contemporary, where she has curated solo exhibitions of eight artists including Chloe Chiasson, Gabrielle Goliath, and Shilpa Gupta. In 2023, Edwards was the recipient of an ICI Étant Donnés Curatorial Fellowship and served as a juror for the Hopper Prize and the Southern Arts Prize and State Fellowship. Her curatorial practice is dedicated to working with historically underrepresented artists with a specialization in sociopolitical commentary. Before moving to Dallas, Edwards worked on the curatorial team at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. She holds an MA in Art History and Museum Studies from Georgetown University.

Sara Hignite is an independent curator and founder of Hignite Projects, which supports artists through curatorial initiatives and career development guidance. Hignite has worked in the arts for nearly 25 years at institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art, Meadows Museum, Goss-Michael Foundation, and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. From 2020-2022, she oversaw the world-renowned Karpidas Collection, where she curated Texas’s first Richard Prince exhibition and edited the accompanying catalog. Hignite is a longtime activist focused on human rights including criminal justice reform, LGBTQIA+ rights, disability rights, and reproductive freedom. She holds an MA in Art History from Washington University in St. Louis.

Sarah Jené (b. 1988, Starkville, Mississippi; she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work highlights themes of accessibility, healing, and the celebration of Black Joy as a form of resilience. Known for her community-focused public art projects and visual storytelling, she skillfully integrates elements of Black culture and personal connections into her creations. Beyond her artistic endeavors, she co-founded The Testimony Service, a platform dedicated to amplifying community stories.

Viva Ruiz (she/they) is a community/family/nightlife/sex work educated artist, progeny of factory working Ecuadorian migrants born and raised in Jamaica Queens. Proud to be the “daughter” of beloved Chloe Dzubilo, the punk rock trans femme activist and icon. Ruiz has been building power and birthing pro-abortion aesthetics since 2015 with the #thankgodforabortion experiment. Ruiz is a 2022 Creative Capital grantee and 2022 Art Matters fellow. Intentional about time bending intentional about naming the white supremacist class war we are enduring intentionally calling more beautiful worlds into being with and in service to the spirits that walk with them.

Aliza Shvarts is an artist and theorist who takes a queer and feminist approach to reproductive labor and language. Her work came to international attention in 2008 when she was an undergraduate at Yale and the university censored her thesis, which dealt with self-managed abortion. Shvarts' artwork has been exhibited internationally, and her writing and interviews have appeared in October, e-flux, the Brooklyn Rail, and more. She's been a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney ISP, an A.I.R. Artist Fellow, and Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grantee. Shvarts holds a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU. She is Director of the Low-Residency MFA Program and Assistant Professor of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).