Arturo Méndez-Reyes

Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen

Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen is a curator, consultant, and project-based artist from San Francisco. With a long background in the performing and visual arts, Rhiannon is deeply influenced by her own — and her communities’ — intersectional identities. She is driven by her pursuit of “productive discomfort”: her curatorial focus on projects that push boundaries of scale, scope, medium, venue, and dialogue; and her cross-discipline personal work engages symbols, identity, communication, and the unseen.

In 2013 she founded A Simple Collective: an organization dedicated to fostering creative independence for professionals, and professional independence for creatives, and Black & White Projects: an experimental project space in San Francisco’s Mission District. Deeply involved with community-building through the arts, she is on the Curatorial Committees for Root Division and Sites Unseen, is a founding member of Pacific Felt Factory and Invisibility Collective, and is Co-Director of Emerging Arts Professionals.

Esailama Artry-Diouf

Esailama is an Associate Director at the San Francisco Foundation. The Foundation’s mission is to mobilize community leaders, nonprofits, government agencies, and donors to advance racial equity, diversity, and economic inclusion. Esailama is also co-editor of Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities (2019), a collection brings narratives of African dance as it exists within major cities across the United States, demonstrating the power and considerable influence it has in self-identity, empowerment and community mobilization. As a performing artist and scholar, Esailama has lectured throughout the United States and conducted long–term teaching and performance residencies in South Africa, Netherlands, India, Barbados, and Trinidad-Tobago. Much of Esailama’s work focuses on systemic change for arts sector (from individual working artists to anchoring arts organizations) and maintaining the continued vitality of the arts as a solution to community rootedness and belonging.

Therese Davis

Therese Davis (Ms. Mo) is an SF Bay Area Social Practice Artist, Administrator, and Creative, and Life Coach. Therese is a Queer Rebel Resident Artist for 2022, is a Co-Creator of the Immigrant Artist Network, and was a Fellow and Mentor at the San Francisco Emerging Artist Professionals Program.

She is invested in healing-centered practices, restorative justice, culture- and diversity-affirming activities, and training for the community. She supports leveling up, so artists and change makers can become part of the conversation moving justice forward. Her political focus is centered on human rights, fair housing, food, and social justice.

Margot Melcon

Margot Melcon (she/her) joined the Zellerbach Family Foundation in 2015 and manages the arts and culture grantmaking portfolio – including the Community Arts program – where she works to create an equitable, responsive, and accessible relationship in community with Bay Area artists. Prior to joining the foundation, she worked with nonprofit arts organizations for 20 years as a dramaturg, producer, and arts administrator. She is also a playwright, of the Christmas at Pemberley trilogy, co-written with Lauren Gunderson. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

Lauren Benetua

Lauren Benetua is an arts advocate and cultural worker. Their professional background is rooted in community involvement and arts administration. They’ve had the pleasure to work with mission-driven, justice-oriented nonprofits across the Bay Area spanning from San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. They currently serve as the Associate Director of Data and Memberships for OF/BY/FOR ALL, engaging civic and cultural institutions around the globe who aim to build reciprocal relationships with community for a more liberated future. They’re also a dedicated Filipino culture-bearer as an apprentice weaver with Kalingafornia Laga Weaving Circle, as well as a kulintang ensemble music apprentice, playing with the San Francisco Kulintang Project.

Michelle Lin

Michelle Lin is an artist, poet, and cultural worker passionate about building loving and liberating spaces for LGBTQ+ artists and artists of color. They co-host We Won’t Move: A Living Archive, a podcast from Kearny Street Workshop featuring conversations with Asian Pacific American artists whose stories shape the movements and dreams of San Francisco and the Bay Area. She is the author of A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), a lyrical examination on trauma and healing as a second generation daughter of immigrants. Michelle works to support immigrant and refugee artists as a Program Director at ARTogether.

Devi Peacock

Devi Peacock (they/them) is a goofball at QTBIPOC comedy group Snarkzilla, a member of the QTPOC4SHO arts collective, and the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion, a trans queer BIPOC arts crew named to the YBCA 100 and to KQED’s #BayBrilliant list of “ten artists comprising the Bay Area’s soul.” The 2017 Best of the East Bay winner for “Best QTPOC Performance Activist and Status Quo Challenger,” Devi’s featured at the National Queer Arts Festival, United States of Asian America Festival, LitCrawl, American Repertory Theatre; taught comedy at Stanford; and appears next at SF Snarkfest.

Jahsaudi

Wassup, my name is Jahsaudi. I am a cinematographer based in Oakland,CA. I enjoy filming the human condition bringing the rawness out of my subjects. I primarily work on projects out of the corporate and non profit sector. With a focus to move to more narrative storytelling I constantly read, watch and listen to established directors who are able to create and eat based on their skills and creativity within the craft. My work ethic has gotten me to a point where I can support myself fully but beyond that I have a purpose to craft stories that others can gain inspiration from and feed themselves creatively.

Sharmi Basu

Sharmi Basu is a multimedia performance artist, composer, and arts advocate from Oakland, CA, known for creating immersive sound installations, new media controllers, and performance pieces that explore the emotional landscape of marginalized communities. Their work often addresses themes such as conflict, accountability, mental illness, and care work, with the goal of promoting collective healing through decolonial narratives and imaginative worldbuilding. Sharmi earned a BA in Political Science and Technocultural Studies at the University of California, Davis, and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.

As the creative force behind Beast Nest, Sharmi transmutes trauma and chronic illness into vast sonic portals by weaving complex sonic textures across the frequency spectrum. Their work is characterized by layering across the frequency spectrum and utilizes a deep understanding of new media controllers, improvisation in electronic music, and intersectionality within music and social justice. Sharmi’s performances have been featured at prestigious venues and festivals like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.

In addition to their musical pursuits, Sharmi’s workshops on sound, liberation, and decolonization have garnered international attention. Sharmi founded and hosts the MARA Performance Collective, an improvisation and healing performance collective for and by BIPOC. They are also a founder of the Multiverse is Illuminated: A Bay Area Black and Brown Punk Fest, and serve on the board of Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, Safer DIY Spaces, and California FM. Currently, Sharmi is a fellow at Emerging Arts Professionals and an artist in residence at Audium in San Francisco, a mediator for QTBIPIC communities, and the Executive Director of Ratskin Records.