Interviews by Brainard Carey

Kristen Sanders (b. 1989, California) lives and works in St. Paul, MN. She received a BA from the University of California Davis, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Solo and two person exhibitions include Dreamsong, Minneapolis, MN, St. Cloud State University, St Cloud, MN, Kathryn Brennan Gallery, New York, NY, Step Sister, New York, NY, Sadie Halie Projects, Minneapolis, MN, and Sediment Arts, Richmond, VA. Group exhibitions include Good Mother, Los Angeles, Night Club, Minneapolis, MN, Hair & Nails, Minneapolis, MN, O’Flaherty’s, New York, NY, Monti 8, Latina, Italy, Moosey Art, London, UK, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ, The Quarter Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Left Field, Los Osos, CA, H.G. Inn, Chicago, IL, White Columns, New York, NY, and Patrick Parrish Gallery, NY. Residencies include The Maple Terrace, Brooklyn, Lacuna Gallery, Minneapolis, David Wurtzel Travel Scholarship, Florence, Italy, and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Sanders has received press in BOMB Magazine, ARTNews, and New American Paintings. She currently teaches at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Rachel Stern (b. 1989, NYC) is a photographer whose work considers the intersection of beauty and power. Her photo-based installations turn to the tableaux and the proscenium creating dialogue between the histories and uses of kitsch and leftist aesthetics. Using materials culled from strip malls and thrift stores she creates images which ask art and visual culture to enter into a discourse of accessibility and, in the spirit of ‘bread and roses’,  demand immediate access to beauty.

Her work images a world that might be, built out of the world that is. It is a kitsch paradise, a queer-washed history, and an attempt at hope. She received her BFA in Photography and the History of Art and Visual Culture in 2011 from the Rhode Island School of Design, attended Skowhegan in 2014, and graduated from Columbia University in 2016 with an MFA in Visual Arts. She has exhibited her work at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Baxter St., Brandies University Kniznick Gallery, Ortega Y Gasset Project, Invisible-Exports, and Asya Geisberg Gallery among others. Her work has been featured in BOMB, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Vice, Hyperallergic, and Matte Magazine.

rafa esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) received a BA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2011. Solo exhibitions have been held at Artists Space, New York (2023); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2021); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2019); ArtPace, San Antonio (2018); and Ballroom Marfa (2017). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Commonwealth and Council, Mexico City (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson (2022); Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston (2020); San Diego Art Institute (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016). esparza is a recipient of a Pérez Prize (2022), Latinx Artist Fellowship (2021), Lucas Artist Fellowship (2020), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017), Art Matters Foundation Grant (2014), and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2014). He has participated in residencies at Artpace San Antonio (2018) and Wanlass Artist in Residence, OXY ARTS, Los Angeles (2016).

esparza’s work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kadist Art Foundation; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles.

Hulda Guzmán (b. 1984, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) depicts her tropical surroundings as she explores perspective and reality. Situated between Impressionistic landscape, psychological autobiography, Mexican muralism, Caribbean folk traditions, endearing comedy, and magical realism, Guzmán’s work engenders an emphatic compassion for the united forces of the living, celebrated through the act of painting.

Guzmán received a BA from Altos de Chavón School of Design in the Dominican Republic and went on to study photography and mural painting at the National School of Visual Arts, Mexico. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Denver Art Museum, CO; He Art Museum (HEM), Guangdong, CN; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), São Paulo, Brazil; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), CA, among others. Guzmán has been featured in the Dominican Republic’s pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Guzmán has shown with Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK; Alexander Berggruen, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Dio Horia Gallery, Mykonos; Arte BA, Buenos Aires; Galería Machete, Mexico City; Gallery Ariane Paffrath Dusseldorf; and at institutions such as the Denver Art Museum, CO; Museo de Arte Moderno, Santo Domingo; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Museo de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil; Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, Costa Rica; and Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC. The artist lives and works in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Li Wang (b. 1995) is a New York-based painter, born in Beijing, China. Li holds a Bachelor of Arts from The Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, where he studied Stage Design. He graduated from the Columbia University School of the Arts’ MFA program in 2022.

Wang is a finalist of the AXA Art Prize and the New American Paintings competition. He is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and the Columbia University Dean’s Project Grant. In 2023, his solo exhibitions were held at Fragment gallery (New York, USA) and NADA New York.

Raymond Saá is a Cuban-American artist born in New Orleans and raised in Miami. He graduated from the New World School of the Arts in 1991, received his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1995, and studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in 1996. In 1997, he earned an M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design. Selected exhibitions include White Columns, the Islip Museum, Wave Hill, the Museum of Art Puerto Rico, and El Museo del Barrio. Saá received a 2019 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, in addition to awards from Public Art for Public Schools, the Pollack Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and New Jersey Fellowship in Art. The artist lives and works in New Jersey.

By Diana Lehr June 12, 2023

Anthony James (b. 1974) is a London-born, Los Angeles-based artist who graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design with a degree in painting.

James is known for his monumental sculptures and installations that embrace Minimalism, Transcendentalism and Light & Space. In the winter of 2023, James became the first and only visual artist to have work exhibited on all seven continents when he installed one of his stainless steel, glass, and LED Portals at White Desert’s base camp in Antarctica near the South Pole. “In my practice I’m trying to give a visual demonstration of the infinite or the divinity inside us all,” says James. “If you’re seeing and experiencing this ever-expanding cosmos, hopefully that’s a window to explore this underlying law of nature, this inner light.”

Masako Miki (b. 1973, Osaka, Japan) is a multimedia artist whose work ranges installation and large-scale sculpture, printmaking, watercolor and felting. A native of Japan, she now lives and works in Berkeley, CA. Her work frequently explores the idea of synthesis—manipulating contradicting spatial elements to suggest a disoriented context and space. The artist bases her narrative on her own experiences of becoming bicultural in the United States at the age of eighteen. Strongly influenced by craft and folk art of different cultures, she remains close to her ancestral traditions, frequently considering motifs and ideologies that arise from her association with Buddhism, Shintoism, and traditional Japanese folklore. The artist’s practice is further rooted in the belief that art can foster social contexts in which contemporary and universally relevant mythologies and social narratives can be generated—replacing or fixing harmful misconceptions and mythologies of the past that have previously sparked social injustices.

In 2020, Miki’s functional furniture was commissioned to be a part of San Francisco’s forthcoming, landmark Minna-Natoma Art Corridor. In 2021, her large-scale sculptures were commissioned as a permanent installation at the Uber Technologies Headquarters in Mission Bay, San Francisco. She has been included in solo and group exhibitions at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, KY (2023); Nassima Landau Art Foundation, Israel (2023); ICA San Jose, CA (2022); Katonah Museum of Art, NY (2022); Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, CA (2022); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA (2019); and de Young Museum, CA (2016), among others. Her work is included in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Byrd Hoffman Water Mill Foundation, NY; Collección SOLO, Spain; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA. She received her MFA from San Jose State University.