Tammie Dupuis, a Native American artist, draws inspiration from her family’s cultural heritage, which includes the Qlispe’ (Upper Pend d’Oreille) and Séliš (Bitterroot Salish) on her father’s side and non-Indigenous settlers who moved to Montana’s Flathead Reservation on her mother’s side. Dupuis’s art investigates the complex histories of both tribes and explores her multicultural identity. Using a variety of materials—such as paint, wood, fabric, resin, hair, and beads—she communicates “both Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of making and seeing.”

Born and raised on the Flathead Reservation, Dupuis received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston.

Denise L. Emerson, an artist and graphic designer of Diné (Navajo) and Twana (Skokomish) tribal descent, creates artworks deeply rooted in her familial relationships and cultural heritage. Her works merge traditional methods with contemporary practices, exploring and experimenting with self-expression. “I use historical photos of the two tribes I belong to, and create compositions using the tribal people in them. I do this for my beadwork and [two]-dimensional artwork.”

Emerson began painting with acrylics, beading, and sewing before studying graphic design at the University of Washington, Seattle. She has collaborated on a mural project with Native Action Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the representation and leadership of Native women in local, state, tribal, and national affairs.

H.R. Emi, a first-generation Mexican American artist, uses her paintings and drawings to explore “personal intergenerational trauma rooted in the legacy of colonialism, systemic racism, and immigrant-related stressors.” As the first in her family to navigate most aspects of American society, Emi had many “experiences that were unexplainable to her due to a lack of discussion and representation” that profoundly informed her practice. Her artworks strive to make sense of those experiences and introduce themes of identity, memory, and language.

Emi, the first in her family to graduate from college, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio art from Central Washington University, Ellensburg.

RYAN! Elizabeth Feddersen’s public art and site-specific installations invite viewers to meditate on humanity’s relationships with culture, history, the land, and “our non-human kin.” Bison Stack Crane references both the historical mass slaughter of bison and the displacement of Native Peoples from their lands, drawing parallels to modern-day redevelopment and displacement issues. The imagery alludes to a mid-1870s photograph that depicts two settlers atop and before a mountain of bison skulls. In this work, the men are replaced by a tower crane, seen as a “contemporary symbol of irresponsible development and displacement.”

Feddersen is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation from the Okanogan and Arrow Lakes bands.

With his paintings, installations, and sculptures, Christopher Paul Jordan blends “virtual and physical public space to form infrastructures for dialogue and self-determination among dislocated people.” Painting with acrylic on discarded materials—such as window screens, backboards, and debris netting—he portrays conditions of relocation to encourage discussion about human relationships. His other works, including performance, installation, and sculpture, are often staged or permanently embedded in public space.

Along with an independent study at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, Jordan received a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Educator and community activist missTANGQ’s artistic practice is shaped by her Chinese American upbringing, which she describes as, “growing up bilingual, cross-cultural, and queer—a process of diasporic alchemy: navigating plural realities and becoming a multidimensional explorer.” Drawing on Chinese metaphysics and philosophy, she examines “the wisdom traditions of her heritage to explore the intersections of nature, the human spirit, and mysticism” through blended handmade and digital mediums in her sculpture, animation, installation, and performance art.

Also known as Huameng Yu, missTANGQ immigrated to the United States from Chongqing, China, at four years old. She has received awards from 4Culture, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

For Peruvian American artist and curator Rafael Soldi, who incorporates video, photography, installation, text, and performance art into his work, images remain at the core of his practice. He describes his work as centering on “how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss.” Interlacing his personal history with collective memory to create a visual language that others can relate to, Soldi also explores how gendered expectations can be “encoded—and subverted—within language and childhood games.” His recent compositions catalog a “type of masculinity largely governed by a violence that barely conceals an urgent need for intimacy and connection.”

Soldi lives in Seattle and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography and curatorial studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore.

Masterfully commanding space through her artistic practice, Tariqa Waters’s bold, technicolor depictions of pop and consumerist references “reclaim an authentically sincere aesthetic steeped in effortless regality and proudly celebrated traditions.” In her words, Waters is “creating work for little girls that look like me. For little Black girls that have never seen themselves in spaces like art galleries. Growing up, I felt powerless. I felt like I had no right to speak up or say anything. Now, I speak up.”

Her artwork has been shown around Seattle, specifically the Northwest African American Museum, Museum of Museums, and the Hedreen Gallery.

Through her digital compilations, Rene Westbrook skillfully reinvents and redefines her original works using color and content. She digitally overlays a photograph with a collage or painting to create a new image; by boosting the color saturation and rendering it with negative effects, she reproduces the work on canvas or vinyl. Westbrook sees the viewer as “a visual oracle of creative ideas that can stimulate the senses and become the vehicle for hidden mysteries she wants to explore.”

A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Westbrook was a resident artist at the California Arts Council, Sacramento, and the African American Master Artist in Residence Program at Northeastern University, Boston.

Black/queer artist and curator Anthony White creates artwork made from common polyactic acid (PLA)—a kind of plastic used for medical devices, food packaging, and disposable cutlery, among other things. He uses this unique medium to make “intricate portraits and still-life[s] that critique the contemporary cultural landscape, and disrupt hierarchies of status and wealth by placing seemingly trivial, low-brow accoutrements in [palatial] and referential environments.” His imagery is formatted as “Instagram-style photos viewed from a cellphone.”

An alumnus of the Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, White was selected as Amazon Inc.’s 2020 resident artist. He serves as a board member of the Lillian Miller Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing educational opportunities for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Self-taught figurative artist James Wilson specializes in acrylic and oil on canvas. Depicting gender, identity, race, and sociopolitical issues facing present-day America, Wilson’s vibrant portraits are rendered in lifelike imagery to define masculinity and identity for Black individuals. Each figure is “intentional, simple and strongly emotive, represented in a way that viewers can feel as if they relate or identity with the artwork.”

Encouraged by his sisters and family, Wilson was inspired to pursue an art career at an early age. His works are currently exhibited at Frederick Holmes & Company Contemporary and Modern Art Gallery, Seattle.