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Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre & Dance, WSU

Marc Arthur is an artist and scholar whose current body of work considers political encounters around the AIDS pandemic. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Wayne State University and completed his PhD in Performance Studies from New York University (2019). He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in Arts-based Social Justice Research and Practice at the University of Michigan (2019 – 2022) where he studied community-based performance approaches for decreasing HIV stigma and oppression. He is currently working on his first book project entitled, The Art of Crisis: Supernatural Performance in the Time of AIDS, which investigates how artists embrace supernatural metaphors, which are rooted in fear and discrimination, to effect a transformation of conventional representation, management, and memorialization of AIDS.

Arthur’s writing and criticism has appeared in edited volumes and journals including Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, Bomb Magazine, and Canadian Theatre Review, as well as numerous edited collections. He has also written extensively for Performa Magazine, where he was editor (2015 – 2017). At Performa he also served as the Head of Research and Archives (2011 – 2017) where he organized touring exhibitions, curated programs, led interdisciplinary research projects with a wide range of artists, and spearheaded the acquisition of the Performa collection by NYU’s Fales Library.

His performance work has been presented at theatres and galleries internationally, including the Martha Graham Dance Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., Dixon Place, The Living Theater, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, the Wild Project, University Settlement, and Chashama in New York City; New Langton Arts and David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco; Moyse Theatre at McGill University, Montreal; Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels; the Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice; Universität der Künste, Berlin; and FRISE, Hamburg.

Detroit Artist and Professor of Art, Oakland Community College

Tylonn J. Sawyer is an American multidisciplinary artist educator and curator. Trained in the figurative arts based practices Sawyer’s work juxtaposes themes of identity–both individual and collective–with investigations of race and history in popular culture.

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Sawyer has been included in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad including the Venice Biennale, Italy; Texas A & M University, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, The Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan; Heron Arts, San Francisco; Kravets/Wehby Gallery, Rush Arts & The New York Academy of Art, New York, amongst others.

Sawyer holds an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art: Graduate School of Figurative Art program and a Bachelor of BFA (drawing & painting) from Eastern Michigan University. Sawyer currently lives and works in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Detroit Artist

Emilia Nawrocki is a figurative, multidisciplinary artist born in the suburbs of Metro-Detroit to catholic Polish immigrant parents, she earned her BFA at Wayne State University and is currently based in Detroit, Michigan. Emilia creates work using her own likeness to explore the facets of her identity, religious trauma, human evolution, and feminist beliefs through references to mythology and storytelling. Her work includes pixelated abstraction as a form of digitizing the traditional medium of oil painting and as an expression of human evolution of how the brain perceives and interprets images. Emilia’s work has been published in Runner Magazine and featured at multiple galleries in Metro-Detroit and beyond.

Detroit Artist

Kasper Ray O’Brien (b. 1992, Southgate, MI) received his BFA from the College for Creative Studies. Selected exhibitions include Hatch Art (Hamtramck, MI), Simone DeSousa Gallery (Detroit, MI), and AICAD/NYSRP (Brooklyn, NY). He currently lives and works in Detroit, MI.

Detroit Artist and Photographer

SINCE 2010, BRE’ANN WHITE HAS CURATED STUNNING PHOTOGRAPHS AND BRANDING MATERIALS FOR ORGANIZATIONS WORLDWIDE. THE DETROIT-BRED FASHION AND PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER IS KNOWN FOR CREATING AND CULTIVATING STRIKING IMAGES THAT DRAW YOU INTO THE SUBJECT’S WORLD. THROUGHOUT WHITE’S WORK PORTFOLIO, THERE IS A CONSISTENT LAYER OF AUTHENTICITY AND IMAGINATION.

WITH CONFIDENCE IN HER WORK AND HER VISION, BRE’ANN’S CAREER HAS ALLOWED HER TO SHOWCASE HER WORK AND EXPLORE EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITIES TO CONNECT TO A BROADER AUDIENCE. HER WORK HAS BEEN SHOT AROUND THE WORLD INCLUDING NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, AFRICA, SOUTHERN FRANCE, ITALY, AND AUSTRALIA. BRE’ANN WHITE HAS EXHIBITED WORK IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM OF PHIL, ARABIC NATIONAL MUSEUM, PLAYGROUND DETROIT, UICA OF GRAND RAPIDS, N’NAMDI CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, NORWEST GALLERY, AND SAVEARTSPACE AND HAS BEEN FEATURED IN NATIONAL PUBLICATIONS SUCH AS TEEN VOGUE, HOUR MAGAZINE, ESSENCE, NETFLIX AND HARPER BAZAAR.