Collaborative Artists
Meet the Artists
Our artists represent new and unique voices within the artistic community. They bring a diverse set of perspectives and approaches.
Jenna Anast, 2022 – Photo By: Courtney Morrison.
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Regina Agu
Dreaming of a FutureRegina Agu was born in Houston, TX and raised between the United States, Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Switzerland. She moved to Chicago in early 2020. Her research-based practice spans photography, drawing, installation, performance, text, and work in the public sphere. Her first solo museum show, Passage, was presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art (2019-2020). Her work has been supported by an Artadia Houston award, grants from Houston Arts Alliance, The Idea Fund, and the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts + Project Row Houses fellowship at the University of Houston for her research projectA Psychogeography of Emancipation Park. She has attended residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, A Studio in the Woods, The Drawing Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, among others. From 2014-2017, Agu was the co-director of Alabama Song, a collaboratively-run art space in Houston, which received a 2016 SEED grant from The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
Rhonda Wheatley
Culture of CareRhonda Wheatley is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist, energy worker, and educator whose installations and interactive projects are grounded in the speculative and metaphysical. Her recent projects include a solo show at Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC); group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), DePaul Art Museum, and Art League of Houston; and performances as part of the MCA’s In Progress series, at Gallery 400, and at the Terrain Biennial, to name a few. As part of her practice, Wheatley seeks to cultivate healing and personal transformation via wellness workshops, such as those she’s facilitated with Creative Capital, The University of Chicago, 3Arts, Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC), 6018North, and more. Additionally, she teaches at HPAC and has taught contemporary art at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis. Wheatley received CAC’s inaugural Coney Family Award and a 3Arts ‘Make a Wave’ Grant, and she was a Loghaven Fellow. She received her MA from DePaul University and BA from Loyola University.
Rodney Simpson, Jr.
In-SessionRodney Simpson Jr. (he/him/his) is a Black queer embodied storyteller and creative. The spirit of his vocation is aligned to fostering Black joy while uprooting oppressive systemic structures. Rodney is driven to unlock therapeutic spaces in community with his company Modos Chicago by changing the way we heal through movement.
Image description: Rodney is brown skinned Black queer man. He is pictured smiling wearing a maroon and dark grey checkered collared shirt.
Sabba Elahi with Ahalya Satkunaratnam & Mohamed Mehdi
In-SessionSabba S. Elahi (pictured above) is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, educator, and cultural organizer. Through her artwork she subverts textile and the craft of embroidery to confront representations of dehumanized Muslim bodies, militarism, belonging/nationalism, and personal/collective/inherited trauma. Elahi’s recent exhibitions include 6018 North, Mana Contemporary, Museum of Design in Atlanta, and Prizm Art Fair Miami. She is at work on a communal embroidery and sound project to commemorate the names of women and children who have died by U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan. Sabba Elahi received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ahalya Satkunaratnam is a dancer and dance scholar who teaches cultural studies at a small liberal arts college in Canada. Her forthcoming book, “Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict” on dance practice and war in Colombo, Sri Lanka will be published with Wesleyan University Press in 2019. Ahalya earned her BA in Political Science at Loyola University Chicago and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Although she lives in Vancouver, BC at the moment, she is a Chicagoan at heart.
Mohamed Mehdi is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Oakton Community College. Since 2012, he has been the main organizer for Creating Justice, an annual celebration of arts and social justice movements that takes place every spring at Oakton. Mohamed has also worked with local publications as editor and contributor, including AREA Chicago.
Safiya Eshe Gyasi
Outside the WallsRad LabSafiya is an award winning Mental Health, Trauma & Creative Release Advocate, and Speaker who has created a technique of using art and storytelling to create artistic healing experiences for individuals who have experienced trauma. Ideal clients include individuals, organizations, and companies who have a desire to shed light on traumatic healing by providing a voice for the misunderstood, unheard, and unseen by turning their trauma into artistic healing experiences.
Safiya is a 16-year+ Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] Survivor and a Multi-media artist with over ten years’ experience of creating and performing through various mediums including film-making, fiber work, and curating. She is a multi- talented and multi-dimensional Creative Director with proven skills in Event Planning and Project Management, invoking Afro-futurism to create healing experiences for communities.
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Outside the WallsRad LabSalvador Jiménez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jalisco, México. He explores the politics of identity and the state of double consciousness. Jiménez-Flores addresses issues of colonization, migration, “the other,” and futurism by producing a mixture of socially conscious installation, public, and studio-based art. His work spans from community-based work, drawing, ceramics, prints, and mixed media sculpture. Jiménez-Flores has created a series of murals and community-based works, such as The Declaration of Immigration mural in Pilsen created with Yollocali Arts Reach students, Nomadic Sculptures and Tortilla Social with students from Urbano Project in Jamaica Plain, Boston to mentioned a few. His project Arcilla Arte Cultura has been realized in the Little Village neighborhood.
Jimenez-Flores is a member of The Color Network, an organization that promotes the advancement of people of color in the ceramic arts and assists artists develop, network, and create dialogue while maintaining a place for a database, resources, and mentorship. He is also a member of the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago, an organization inspired by the socio-political art of Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Print Workshop) and uses art as a platform to inform and generate community discourse about urgent social issues.
Jiménez-Flores has presented his work at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Museum of Art and Design amongst others. He served as Artist-In-Residence for the city of Boston, Harvard Ceramics Program, Office of the Arts at Harvard University, and Kohler Arts Industry. Jiménez-Flores is a recipient of Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants and The New England Foundation for the Arts, Threewalls’ RaD Lab+Outside the Walls Fellowship Grant, and he is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow. He is an Assistant Professor in ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sojourner Wright
Rad LabSojourner Zenobia (They/She), is an embodied sacred space facilitator, multidisciplinary performance artist and earth steward. For over a decade Sojourner has been facilitating Black and queer centered ritual and meditation practice space where hundreds of people have deepened their connection with ancestors, nature and their personal spiritual gifts.
Tarnynon (Ty-Yuh-Nuh) Onumonu with Collaborators Tarynn Jackson and Kayla McClain
In-SessionTarnynon (Ty-yuh-nuh) Onumonu is a poet, performance artist and teaching artist who is practicing in the Southeast side Chicago Jeffrey Manor neighborhood where she is native. She was awarded second place in the 2017 Guild Complex Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards and represented Chicago as a member of Lethal Poetry in the National Poetry Slam 2018. In a ruminant fashion, Ty-yuh-nuh finds joy in and draws inspiration from her clients, formerly homeless members of Thresholds Organization.
