A singular figure, Agosto Machado is a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American performance artist, activist, archivist, muse, caretaker, and friend to countless celebrated and underground visual and performing artists. He has been a vital participant and witness to cultural and creative life in New York since the early sixties, from art, theater, performance, and film to social and political counterculture and the dawn of the gay liberation movement. As part of a cohort of queer revolutionaries, Machado participated in the Stonewall Rebellion. His shrine and altar sculptures are held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his work is on display in the museum’s permanent collection gallery.

CJ Salapare is a writer and arts worker based in Brooklyn. His interests blur and juxtapose the fields of art history and the arts of liveness, with a focus on interdisciplinary practices. His past and forthcoming writing has been commissioned by Artists Space, FAR-NEAR, the Hammer Museum, the MCA Chicago, and the 2024 Venice Biennale, among others. He has worked at the intersection of the visual arts and performance at the Whitney, where he was part of the curatorial team for Edges of Ailey (2024), and the MCA Chicago, where he was a curatorial fellow. He currently works in the Modern and Contemporary department of the Met. Salapare received M.Phil. degrees in art history and arts education from the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. in art history from Williams College.