About the Artists

• Maria Gaspar

  Maria Gaspar is a Chicago-born, first-generation, interdisciplinary artist negotiating the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar’s body of work addresses issues of spatial justice in order to amplify, mobilize, or divert structures of power through individual and collective gestures. For the past decade, Gaspar has been recognized nationally for her multi-year projects that attempt to dismantle borders, transcend penal matter, and turn places of precarity into places of possibility. Formative works like “Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall” and the “96 Acres Project” include site interventions at the largest single-site jail in the country, the Cook County Department of Corrections, in her childhood neighborhood.

  Gaspar has received the Guggenheim Award for Creative Arts, the Latinx Artist Fellowship, the United States Artists Fellowship, the 3Arts Next Level Award, the Frieze Impact Prize, the Sor Juana Women of Achievement Award in Art and Activism from the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Chamberlain Award for Social Practice from the Headlands Center for the Arts. Gaspar’s projects have been supported by the Art for Justice Fund, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, the Creative Capital Award, the Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, and the Art Matters Foundation. Gaspar has lectured and exhibited extensively at venues including MoMA PS1 and El Museo Del Barrio in New York, NY; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Santa Cruz, CA; the African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA; the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, FL; and SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico. Gaspar received her BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

• Ben LaMar Gay

  Ben LaMar Gay is a composer who moves sound, color, and space components through folkloric filters producing brilliant electro-acoustic collages. An explorer of many mediums who has been called a “visionary musician” by The New York Times, Gay has found a form of creative expression that begins with improvisation and expands beyond the limits of any single genre. He has been a member of the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 2010. With more than 20 years in vibrant experimental music scenes, his talents have earned him residencies globally. He is a highly sought-after collaborator by some of the most influential artists of today. He has worked with Theaster Gates, Nicole Mitchell, Mike Reed, Dorothée Munyaneza, Ntone Ejabe, and Qudus Onikeku, to name a few. These multidisciplinary collaborations as well as his own projects have brought his work to Danse Biennale of Lyon, African Dance Biennale Maputo, Chicago Symphony Center, The Barbican, Art Basel, and many other international stages. His work has been commissioned by Pierre Boulez Saal, Wet Ink Ensemble, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Northwestern University, University of Zurich, and National Theater of Strasbourg (France). He is recipient of the 3Arts Award, the Worldwide Award from the BBC’s Gilles Peterson, and was a Mellon Foundation Archival Fellow in 2022. Receiving accolades for a parade of more than eight albums, his recent release Yowzers, released via International Anthem Recording, solidified his place as an important new voice in American creative music. Gay adopts global visions while remaining true to his roots as a South Side Chicago native.

• Damon Locks

  Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, and vocalist/musician. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts. In 2025 he stepped down from being the Board President on Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project which allowed him to teach art at Stateville Correctional Center for 11 years. He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Evolving Democracy Fellowship through Project&. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015. In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee. He spent four years as an artist in residence as a part of the MCA’s SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School. He taught Improvisation in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As well as being a visual artist and solo musician, Locks leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of New Future City Radio and Exploding Star Orchestra, and co-founded the bands Trenchmouth and The Eternals.

• Mauricio López F.

  Mauricio López F. is an interdisciplinary artist from Santiago, Chile, currently based in Chicago. Emerging from Chile’s early hardcore punk scene, he later studied Musical Composition at Escuela Moderna de Música and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Aesthetics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he focused on the Chilean avant-garde. He recently completed an MFA in Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) on a full-merit scholarship. His practice explores the entanglement of visuality, sound, and motion through unexpected social synchronizations.

  López F. has received several recognitions, including a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a fellowship from The Arts Club of Chicago. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and, most recently, Monira Foundation. He was also named one of Newcity’s Breakout Artists for 2026. His work has been presented throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including at Centro Cultural GAM, EXPO Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Gallery 400, Kobun Gallery (Japan), and the Ars Electronica Festival (Austria).