Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist, poet, and theorist whose work explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valences in the public domain. Exhibitions, performances, and expanded publications include Nottingham Contemporary, Serpentine Cinema, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Art Dubai, The New Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Triple Canopy, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Women and Performance, The White Review, Art in America, and The New Inquiry, among others. She was an artist-in-residence at Wysing Arts Centre, Delfina Foundation, Darat al Funun, and Mansion. She completed a Ph.D. at Harvard University and an M.F.A. at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and held a Fulbright U.S. Scholar/Visiting Professorship at Birzeit University. Book publications include a translation of Waly Salomão’s Algaravias: Echo Chamber (nominated for a 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), the poetry volume The Distancing Effect, and the drawing/text artist publication Apparent Horizon 2. Bio is forthcoming from Inventory Press in 2018.
Sowon Kwon works in a range of media including sculptural and video installations, animation, drawing, printmaking, artist books, and writing. Her recent work explores portraiture, perception, and historical memory as our bodies are increasingly submitted to and made (in)accessible through technology. Kwon’s solo exhibitions include coffee table comma books at Full Haus Gallery, Los Angeles; average female (Perfect) at Matrix/University of CA Berkeley Art Museum; Two or Three Corridors at The Whitney Museum (formerly at Phillip Morris, now Altria). Her work has also been featured in many group exhibitions in the US and abroad at: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, ICA Boston, MOCA Los Angeles, The Queens Museum, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Artist Space, The Drawing Center, Artsonje Center in Seoul, Korea, the Gwangju Biennale, the Yokohama Triennale in Japan, and San Art in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She is a recipient of fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Wexner Center for the Arts, and The Asian Cultural Council. Her writing includes contributions in Triple Canopy magazine, Broodthaers Society of America, and 4 Columns. She currently teaches in the Graduate Fine Arts Program at Parsons/The New School.