Alondra M. Garza (She/Her)

Alondra M. Garza is a Mexican-American artist, curator, and gallerist residing in Minneapolis. She was born in Mexico at the Tex-Mex border and obtained dual citizenship. Garza received an MFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a BFA at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and attended classes at the New York Academy of Art.

Alondra’s interdisciplinary practice embodies the dualities of a Bi-national, Bi-cultural, and Bi-lingual Mexican woman. She unapologetically uses appealing visual components that question societal issues using the body, nature, and the border. She has exhibited internationally across the U.S., Mexico, and Italy. Including solo exhibitions at MCAD (MN), two-person shows at MCAD (MN), group exhibitions at A.I.R Gallery, (N.Y.C), Emerge Gallery NY and Artsy.net (N.Y.), Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN), Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Museo Miguél Alemán (MEX), and YAG Garage (ITL), among others. Her work has been published in the Latin Art in Minnesota Book, Miami Art Week Magazine, and Brown University’s SOMOS magazine. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Forecast Public Art, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Emerging Curators Institute, and the New York Academy of Art.

Garza founded SEMILLAS Galeria, a Latine gallery awarded the 2022 Visual Arts Fund through the Warhol Foundation. She is the Specialist and Curator of Latine Arts and Culture at CLUES, a 2024 grantee of the National Endowment for The Arts.

Alondra Garza

Tamara Aupaumut (She/Her)

Tamara Aupaumut is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist living on Mni Sota Makoce. She descends from the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, the Oneida Nation, and the Brothertown Indian Nation. Aupaumut’s intuitive, contemplative, and experimental creative process involves applying a variety of contemporary and traditional Native disciplines to execute her concepts, with her cultural heritage and ancestors being an integral force behind her research and artistic work. She is a recipient of a 2020 Mitakuye Oyasin Award and a 2022 Next Step Fund. Tamara is working on a collection of multidisciplinary works, This Land Is My Body, that speaks to the healing connection between the land and our bodies.

Vernon Vanderwood (They/she)

Vernon Vanderwood (they/she) is a bio-curious interdisciplinary artist investigating biomaterials and binary juxtapositions. 

Living in Minnesota or Mní Sóta Makoce, the traditional and contemporary lands of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, has fostered a continuous curiosity about the landscape's history and how we come to understand it. Vernons life and practice is spent exploring and connecting with the outdoors. They are deeply invested in learning and questioning the world. Their mother, an immigrant and musician working in Minneapolis introduced them at a young age to the city as a space for art and change. The music scene and social activism have been crucial in opening a dialogue of questioning the status quo and the structures of knowledge. Vernons identity as a gender non conforming person has informed a practice and life that strives to decompose lines between their artistic and social goals. The layered histories of their own identity and the place they come from equally contradict and support a practice in pursuit of understanding and healing. Working with living materials they have found a reflection of this non-binary nature and a step towards radical sustainability. 

Vernon graduated with a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2024, where they concentrated in sculpture and installation work. At MCAD Vernon received 3 Merit Scholarships including the Kinji Akagawa award. During this time of study Vernon also worked as a studio assistant at Makwa studios assisting in weaving and beading for exhibitions such as the 2023 Renwick invitational. In addition to showing her own work Vernon’s also curated 4 group exhibitions dedicated to community outreach and experimental ways of displaying or engaging with art. 

Yasmin Yassin (She/Her) 

Yasmin is a photographer and director based in Minneapolis by way of Canada. Her artistic practice explores sub-cultures and the ways in which communities gather through shared interests to form networks of connection.

With a background in science, Yasmin brings her research experience along with her to build relationships & understand context before creating her art. Her goal is to tell stories as authentically as possible to their essence, with integrity towards those that invite her into their lives—in the tradition of her East African oral-storytelling heritage. Yasmin recreates feelings in her imagery using the dynamic effect of light and color, while considering the lived experiences of those captured in relation to shared spaces and environments.

Yasmin was described as a ‘photographer to watch’ among the Top Ten winners of LensCulture’s 2023 Critics’ Choice Awards, and was featured by Focus Camera as one of ten photographers to follow. She is also a recipient of the 2023 Fresh Vantage Grant through the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network for her directing work, and her debut short film 'Dhaanto' screened at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Film Festival. She was also shortlisted for the 2024 Palm* Photo Prize and her work was recently featured as part of the Photoville Festival in New York City.

YAsmin Yassin