Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, visual artist and art educator from Baltimore, Maryland. Luster received their BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture and attended a residency at Chautauqua School of Art. As a curator, Luster has organized multiple group exhibitions, was a Katheryn Pannepacker Curatorial Fellow at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, and is currently developing their curatorial practices as a Vox Populi member and Exhibition Manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.

Luster’s visual artwork focuses on intimacy, vulnerability, and privacy through depictions of domestic spaces. With their “American Bathroom” series, they use bathroom scenes to explore queer Black womanhood with regards to lack of privacy, invasion of the Black queer body, power structures, and isolation. Her work acknowledges the obstacles that burden queer Black women because of the intersectionality of their gender and sexuality and depicts these concepts through the renderings of voyeuristic bathroom scenes. In Luster’s current body of work, she is making work of people in their most vulnerable and personal physical and mental spaces whether it be in their studios, bedrooms, homes, or wherever they feel most at peace.

Jah’s body of work centers black bodies adorned with humanity and elements that may not be of this world. Self-taught, Jah began painting as a means to express themselves and to connect with the world around them. Afrosurrealism is the provenance of their inspiration, a notion that seeks to cultivate alternative and expanded ways of knowing and being. Their work is an expression of Black people being able to imagine themselves in the future in a more liberated and free way.

Zeinab Diomande otherwise known as “Z The Rat” is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist. Diomande was born in 1999 in Virginia. Her family left the United States to relocate back to their home in the Ivory Coast where she grew up and spent most of her life. In 2018, she moved to Philadelphia where she is currently studying, majoring in Fine Arts Painting and Drawing at The University of The Arts. Diomande was a 2021 AXA Art Prize finalist, and she has been a part of exhibitions internationally and across the country, in Abidjan, London, New York and Los Angeles.

Branche Coverdale is artist based in Philadelphia. Originally a New Yorker, Branche works in an expressive and playful manner inspired from cartoons of his childhood with elements of the fantastical. Before moving to Philadelphia, he was a full time studio assistant for Takashi Murakami in NYC and studied at Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently working as a full time artist/illustrator.

Faysal is a 16-year-old Philadelphian native from Germantown. He was diagnosed with childhood brain cancer at a young age, and has been living life to the fullest ever since! He wants to be an inspiration to other people living with cancer. Faysal plays with color, perception, and texture in his stylized artwork. Faysal’s paintings have layers, nuance, and depth. His artwork exudes movement, exaggeration, and multicolor combinations. Faysal also delights in exploring Black culture in the subjects of his artwork. Faysal is currently a rising junior in high school, and he hopes to attend a culinary arts school in the future. Faysal aspires to own a food truck one day, and eventually own his very own brick and mortar restaurant that explores the food of the African diaspora.