Michelle Cho has always understood the American landscape from the perspective of cars. Having grown up with her father being a mechanic, she learned about the American economy, politics, and culture from weaving in and out of her family’s auto shops in two different neighborhoods of Seattle. Michelle’s education, prior to attending the University of Pennsylvania for her MFA and The Cooper Union School of Art where she obtained her BFA, was through gas prices and the changing presidential bumper stickers on family cars. She learned about the severity of climate change through the influx of electric vehicles her father would fix, taxes through pothole-damaged tires, and culture from music that would radiate from the back seat of every automobile that entered the garage.

Attending an MFA program at the height of the pandemic cemented an unwavering set of new challenges that altered the pace of her sculpture practice. Studio spaces were scarce, facilities access limited, and she was suddenly absent from a community in a state she had never lived in. Amidst constant change, the only form of ordinary for Michelle existed within a car. To compensate for restrictions, she rented out private parking spots to build and exhibit sculptures, created a community by asking various Uber drivers how they built their makeshift air partitions, drove up and down highways to rummage for materials. The pandemic completely shifted the way she builds objects: completely dependent and attune to changing predicaments. The pipes begin to resemble an extended exhaust pipe that alludes to an unveiling of what happens behind a wall, and the foraged tires begin to create a revised landscape of defeated American highway systems.

Julia Gladstone is an artist operating within the expanded field of choreography to figure socialities. Forms take shape through performance, sculpture, video, and experimental pedagogy. She has presented work at venues such as Center Chorégraphique National (FR), Volksroom (BE), Kelim Choreography (IS), Ada, Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Ponderosa (DE), Abrons Art Center, Brick Theater, Judson Church, Mall of Found (NY), Defibrillator Gallery, Links Hall (IL), Hampshire College (MA), and Inverse Performance Art Festival (AK). Awarded residencies include P.A.R.T.S (BE), Yasmeen Godder Studio (IS) and Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (NY). She is a recipient of the DAAD Fellowship in Performing Arts, organizes Clouds Gathering performance festival, and is a certified facilitator of Deep Listening.

Guava Rhee is a media artist based in Philadelphia. As she has only a semester left before termination of her student visa, she is currently in a desperate search for ways to stay in the States with her Korean passport. Any job or marriage inquiries are welcome: www.guavarhee.com.

Emilio Martínez Poppe is an artist working across installation, performance, participatory projects, and research-based collaborative projects. Their work engages collectivity, its practices and affects, and the politics of its representation. Emilio earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and was a recipient of the SOMA+CU 2016 Scholarship for research in Mexico City. They have exhibited their work at FIERMAN, the Queens Museum, CUE Art Foundation, and Flux Factory in New York City; the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, in Amsterdam; and Tiger Strikes Asteroid and The William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Emilio has been an artist in residence at Abrons Arts Center, and Pratt Institute; a Fellow at The Laundromat Project; and a member of NEW INC at the New Museum. They are currently an MFA-MCP dual degree candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of BFAMFAPhD.