RYAN ALEXIEV was born in Los Angeles and raised in Alaska by Bulgarian immigrants. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 and an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2007 at which he currently teaches in the Graduate Design program. He is the co-founder of the Cause Collective.
As an artist, Ryan had his first solo show in 2003 at the Orchidea Gallery of the Sofia Cultural Center in Bulgaria, his parent’s native country. Subsequently, he has exhibited at galleries across the country including the the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, The Moore Space in Miami, Wadsworth Atheneum, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Armory Show in New York.
Ryan’s artwork explores the ramifications and effects of consumerism, globalization, and the ethos of technological progress upon traditional social-cultural values and symbols. Under this context, he is particularly interested in examining the emerging complexities of identity formation in an increasingly optional and globalized world.
Ryan currently resides and works in San Francisco.
#InSearchofTheTruth #QuestionBridge #TheLongMarch #ComingToCalifornia #ISeeItNow #WheelOfFortune #TheTruthIsIAmYou #AlongtheWay
HANK WILLIS THOMAS is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School ofthe Arts and his MFA in photography, along with an MA in visual criticism, from California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Thomas has acted as a visiting professor at CCA and in the MFA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art and ICP/Bard and has lectured at Yale University, Princeton University, the Birmingham Museum ofArt and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. His work has been featured in many publications including Reflections in Black (Norton, 2000) 25 under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (CDS, 2003), 30 Americans (RFC, 2008). Thomas’ monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture in 2008. He received a new media fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and was an artist in residence at John Hopkins University. In 2011, Thomas was a fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad including, Galerie Anne De Villepoix in Paris, Annarumma 404 in Milan, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, among many others. Thomas’ work is in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Oakland International Airport, The Birmingham International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California and the University of California, San Francisco. Recent notable exhibitions include Hank Willis Thomas at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Strange Fruit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Picture Windows: Hank Willis Thomas in collaboration with Sanford Biggers at the International Center for Photography, and The Istanbul Biennial. Thomas is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City and Goodman Gallery in South Africa.
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JESSICA INGRAM’S practice includes multi-media non-fiction narrative, public art commissions, and community-based programming. Her work is motivated by her desire to understand how people relate, what they long for, and what motivates the choices they make. Her recent bodies of work include A Civil Rights Memorial, about sites where atrocities were committed during the Civil Rights Movement and the related stories and court cases in the American South, and Hilltop High, about young mothers attending an alternative high school for pregnant teenagers in San Francisco. Jessica’s work has been published and exhibited internationally. Jessica was awarded the 2012 Santa Fe Prize, was a recent Fellowship Artist in Residence at Kala Art Institute, and a featured artist in the 2010 New York Photo Festival. Her work has been published in GUP, OjodePez, Etiqueta Negra, and PDN Online. Jessica is a contributing editor to What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art (SUNY Press 2004).Jessica Ingram’s practice includes multi-media non-fiction narrative, public art commissions, and community-based programming. Her work is motivated by her desire to understand how people relate, what they long for, and what motivates the choices they make. Her recent bodies of work include A Civil Rights Memorial, about sites where atrocities were committed during the Civil Rights Movement and the related stories and court cases in the American South, and Hilltop High, about young mothers attending an alternative high school for pregnant teenagers in San Francisco. Jessica’s work has been published and exhibited internationally. Jessica was awarded the 2012 Santa Fe Prize, was a recent Fellowship Artist in Residence at Kala Art Institute, and a featured artist in the 2010 New York Photo Festival. Her work has been published in GUP, OjodePez, Etiqueta Negra, and PDN Online. Jessica is a contributing editor to What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art (SUNY Press 2004).
#TheLongMarch #ComingToCalifornia #ISeeItNow #AlongtheWay
BAYETE ROSS SMITH began his career as a photojournalist, working with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charlotte Observer and Newsday, in New York City. His work has been exhibited through out the U.S. and internationally. “Along The Way”, a video mosaic created with the Cause Collective was an official selection for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. “Along The Way”, was originally a public art piece for Oakland International Airport. Bayeté was awarded a Kala Arts Fellowship in 2008 and a residency at Can Serrat International Art Center, in Spain for 2007-2008. In 2006 Bayeté’s work was featured in the California Judiciary Council’s conference on Language Access in the Courts. His work has been exhibited at the Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana and he has performed at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, in Warsaw, Poland, in addition to exhibiting with Rush Arts Gallery and the Leica Gallery, New York, NY and with the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Patricia Sweetow Gallery, in San Francisco. His photographic work has appeared in publications such as Black Enterprise magazine, Working Mother magazine, and Time Out New York. His work has also been featured in books, such as, The Spirit Of Family, by Al & Tipper Gore, Henry Holt & Company, INC. 2002, 25 Under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers, Center for Documentary Studies & Power House Books, 2003 and Black: A Celebration of A Culture, Hylas Publishing, 2004.
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NATASHA L. LOGAN is a multi-media arts producer and curator who has worked with a broad range of artists on a variety of projects. Recent projects include Question Bridge, a transmedia art platform exploring Black male identity, transmedia campaign production for the documentary American Promise, White Boys, a 2013 exhibition featuring 17 international artists, and the feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty directed by Terence Nance. Prior to launching her independent practice, Natasha served as the Assistant Director of Career Development for NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
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WILL SYLVESTER is at the intersection of art and technology. Having worked in e-commerce, commercial photography, radio broadcasting, television news, cable television, and video editing, he currently works to help integrate art with technology for Songha & Co. in New York City.
While working as e-commerce manager and photographer/videographer for Industialrideshop.com, Will attained his AAS in Film and Television Production, with a concentration in Film and Video Editing, from Scottsdale Community College. There he discovered his passion for documentary film. Continuing his education, he received his Bachelors Degree from the University of Massachusetts (UMass-Amherst) focusing on Documentary Film for Social and Cultural Change. He created such shorts as Thank You For Choosing…, Love: A Documentary, and UVC: Students in Education.
While studying at UMass, Will worked as a cable technician, director for the weekly campus sports television program, and as a visual technology servicer. After graduating UMass, he applied the skills learned to create and tour the Question Bridge: Black Males Exhibition. This included showings at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival New Frontiers, the 2012 Sheffield (England) Documentary Film Festival, and 18 other exhibitions across the United States. Will represented the Question Bridge project at the Sheffield Documentary Film Fest and on the Thinking Big panel at the America University 2012 Media That Matters Conference. Will also worked with the Cause Collective to bring the Truth Booth to three cities in the U.S. in 2012- 2013, as well as creating the methodology that brought The Long March at the Birmingham- Shuttlesworth International Airport to life.
When he’s not “conquering the world”, one medium at a time, he composes music as one half of the band BLEW, digs through dusty record crates across the world, and is rediscovering the joys of analog film.
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JORGE SANCHEZ is an Ethnographer born in Colombia and based in California. He is a researcher at the Cesar Chavez Institute (CCI) and at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality (CRGS) in San Francisco. At CCI, his work has focused on the Family Acceptance Project, a California Endowment funded project looking at familial acceptance and rejection of queer youth. At CRGS his work focuses on the Relations Study, a Ford Foundation funded project looking at how class, race, and ethnicity impact the lives of young adults. The data he collected at CRGS is being analyzed with data from Brazil and South Africa, and will be part of the Foundation’s upcoming publication on cross-cultural sexualities. His work has appeared in several publications including the Journal of Urban Health and the American Association of Anthropology. Since the mid-nineties, he has worked at the grassroots level as a health educator and community organizer for people at risk for contracting or transmitting HIV. He has served on the Board of Directors of several local non-profit agencies and city commissions as well as review panels for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health. He is interested in contributing to the field of visual anthropology.
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JIM RICKS works as a semiological researcher through a form of political collage. His work is research driven, historically and publicly engaged, and site specific, occupying a territory between curation and theft and is an exercise in creolization. Ricks’ work is also influenced by his background as a prolific graffiti artist, photographer, and activist.
Projects include Bouncy megalithic tombs, a global search for the Truth, drone warfare rugs made in Afghanistan, a gable-end mural in Derry, NI, his own methodology of Synchromaterialism, Art Fair interventions, independent curator, and creator of the ‘National Centre of Ontology’ in Mexico City.
Jim Ricks is an Irish and American conceptual artist, curator, and writer. He received a Masters of Fine Art from the National University of Ireland Galway and an undergraduate degree in Photography from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco). Ricks has had solo shows at Casa Maauad (Mexico City, Mexico), Pallas Projects (Dublin, IRL), the Hugh Lane Gallery (Dublin, IRL), Onomatopee (Eindhoven, NL), and shown in a number of group shows including Jack Shainman Gallery (NYC, USA), Ulster Museum (Belfast, NI), Temple Bar Gallery & Studios (Dublin, IRL), Royal Hibernian Academy (Dublin, IRL), Galway Arts Festival (Galway, IRL), Art Basel Miami Art Public (Miami), The Limerick City Gallery of Art (Limerick, IRL), and the Cranbrook Art Museum (Detroit, USA). Residencies include LASA (Havana, Cuba)(Forthcoming), Casa Maauad (Mexico City, Mexico), Nerve Centre Fab Lab Residency (Derry, NI), A.M. Qattan Foundation (Ramallah, Palestine), Heinrich Böll Residency, Achill Island (IRL). Ricks has curated projects with Culture Ireland, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, the Hugh Lane Gallery, Volvo Ocean Race Galway, 126 Artist-run Gallery, Sluice Art Fair, Just Mad Art Fair.
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