APAture 2024 Artist Bios
Music Showcase
Ian Santillano (pronounced “San-Till-Yeah-Know") is a Fil-Am singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer from Hayward, CA. As an alternative/indie, singer-songwriter, Ian draws upon his foundations in jazz, soul, folk, rock, and funk. Ian released his debut EP, "1856," in 2019 and the full length “Intropy” in 2022 which has garnered more than 285k streams on Spotify since its release. Ian has also joined Bolo Music Group in which he plans on disrupting what it means to be a Filipino-American artist. His latest release, "Layers On Layers," Ian blends indie, soul, and jazz. As 2024 unfolds, Ian continues to thrive with fresh songs, upcoming shows, and exciting projects slated throughout the year.
Jaeya "Jaeonic" Bayani is a Filipinx singer-songwriter, dancer, rapper, and music industry professional from the Bay Area, CA with a Music Publishing, Hip-Hop Studies, and Pre-Law background. Jaeya released the BAYANI EP in June 2023, and has headlined Bay Area, Chicago, and ATX shows. She recently co-produced her first Fil-Am event, Kapwa Chicago Vol. I. Catch her tracks, "510" and "Believe Me" in Episode ONE of "No Room For Love" by Malou and Randal Kamradt.
Steven Cong is a queer Chinese American emcee and a West Coast native. He found a love for rap as someone who was an "outsider" in every way during his teenage years. Music became a safe haven to share his truths and center his voice. By extension, his songs center the voices of those who are often pushed to the margins, even though our experiences and perspectives can be just as universal. Steven has performed at events across the Bay Area from San Jose to San Francisco, including the A&PI Stage at San Francisco Pride.
Doublegoat (born Kevin Shaw) writes songs in English and Chinese that blend folk, rock, surf, and the sounds of 1960s U.S. and Taiwan. A Pacific Northwest native, his music draws influence from the places he has lived — from Seattle, Taiwan, and China to Minnesota and the Bay Area.
karinyo (they/elle/siya) is a multi-disciplinary artist and performer who was born and raised in Santa Clara, CA. karinyo began writing and performing original music in Seattle, WA, where they released their indie pop/folk EP karinyo in 2021. karinyo has also begun writing music for short film and uses their music as a tool for community healing.
With a mix of Chinese, Dutch, and Japanese ancestry, Yuka Yu has been influenced by a variety of musical traditions. As she grew up, Yuka became serious about making her own music and started DJing in London in Camden Town, training at the London Sound Academy. She has played in premiere venues and nightclubs all over London, East Asia, and North America. Yuka sings and plays the Chinese flute, and DJ’s regularly with live musicians who play the guzheng (古筝), pipa (琵琶), violin, bass guitar, trumpet and didgeridoo. Immersed in a multi-cultural and conflicted atmosphere, her experience in Eastern and Western cultures inspires her creation of music. She plays regularly in San Francisco at venues such as August Hall, the Rickshaw Stop, 1015, Midway, Monarch, Audio, and Halcyon, just to name a few. Yuka’s career highlights include: playing on the Insomniac Camp OG stage at EDC Las Vegas, playing at Ministry of Sound (London), and the Rabbit Hole (New Orleans) during Jazzfest at night. In 2019, she founded the artist exchange program Nu Tekno (女樂) and has been hosting events regularly since 2020. Nu Tekno has had residencies at Asiento, the Endup, Lion’s Den, and Mars Bar in San Francisco.
Visual Arts Showcase
Houyee Chow-Jimenez pronounced HO- YEE (she/her) is a first generation, queer, biracial, multidisciplinary artist, and educator from San José, CA. She earned her bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University in Studio Art with a minor in Philosophy. During the day, she works at a non-profit managing a free arts and multimedia program for youth. She uses painting, mixed media, and public art to depict themes of culture/ancestry, queer experiences, and the exploration of oneself. Houyee makes art to heal from her life and to grow into a better person. She invites you to reflect, explore, and feel connectivity with her work.
Brianna Keely Cheng is a San Francisco Bay Area based artist raised in Oakland. Her illustrations and photographs incorporate realistic self portraiture and bodily forms which synergize dramatic highlights and shadows, embodying a narrative of healing from depression and trauma. Brianna has exhibited work at the Mills College Art Museum and participated in the De Young Open 2023. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Mills College.
Marisa Goudie’s journey spans continents and careers. Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and British father, she pursued a career in Veterinary Medicine. However, life took a transformative turn when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, her husband’s hometown. It was here that Marisa pivoted into a career in ceramic art. Her work explores themes of identity and adaptation, reflecting her own experiences as a migrant. Marisa's art focuses on the deconstruction and reassembly of figures crafted from vessels originally shaped on her potter's wheel. These pieces symbolize the ongoing process of adaptation and transformation that defines the search for belonging.
Grace Jin was born in Ohio but raised by her grandparents in Yueqing, a fishing town in southeastern China bordered by the Yandang mountains and Pacific Ocean. She comes from four generations of village healers and barefoot doctors, a lineage she carries today as a multidisciplinary artist and medical student living on unceded Ohlone land. Working primarily in painting and calligraphy, Grace draws from studies in biomedical science, decolonial feminist theory and ancestral spirituality to reimagine histories and solidarities in the Sino-diaspora. Grace received a BA in Global Affairs from Yale College, is studying at Stanford School of Medicine and pursuing a MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at galleries in San Francisco, Oakland, Albany, Stanford, and New Haven.
Lisa Juachon (she/her/siya) comes from the people of Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija, Philippines. She was born and raised on Ramaytush and Xučyun (Huichin) territory, the unceded lands of the Ohlone people. Lisa is a cultural worker, organizer, operations jedi, and artist. Much of her cultural work and art focuses on reclaiming and re-membering what has been erased & forgotten through colonization. Currently, Lisa is making art for a Free Palestine and continues to return to her first art-love, metalsmithing.
Over many years, Joanna Kao’s artwork has been shown in a wide variety of venues. Recent group shows include Boston University’s Visual Arts Alumni 2024; Jade Wave Rising at SOMARTS with AAWAA; and the DeYoung Open 2023. In 2017 she had a solo show at Boston’s Piano Craft Gallery. Other group venues range from the Berkeley Art Center’s selective exhibit, Feature, to the United Nations, where her piece drew commentary from the conservative group, Concerned Women of America. Earlier years saw solo shows in S. Korea, Hangzhou and Jingdezhen, China. Her exhibitions include more than 54 group and 11 solo shows; curatorial projects include Engendered Species, the Cultural context of Gender, Collateral Damage, When the Battle’s Lost and Won, and The Quality of Quantity. With clear medium and pattern tissue as substrate for paint and collage, Joanna developed images of varying transparency that can be illuminated frontally or from the rear, in the manner of stained glass windows. This opens up possibilities, shown by examples on her website, joannakao.com.. Mood changes, or the passage of day into night can be suggested. She also enjoys constructing three dimensional objects of clay, humble natural materials, paper and glue, producing objects that address anything from ideas of feminism, to honoring deceased family members with tiny shrines of clay.
Kea Kahoilua-Clebsch is a Native Hawaiian artist from Kailua Kona, HI. Primarily working in oil paint, her work often centers her moʻokuauhau (genealogical story) as an entry point to ongoing struggles of colonization, occupation, and cultural reclamation in Hawaiʻi. Kea is a recent undergraduate fellow at the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts as well as a practicing artist at the Office of Hawaiian Education, where she is currently illustrating a book to be published fully in 'ōlelo Hawaiʻi.
Bhumikorn Kongtaveelert (he/him) is an artist working in painting, immersive installation, and research on climate anxiety. By examining personal family archives and cultural objects related to flooding and post-natural disaster recovery, he searches for futurities through intergenerational resilience and examines failures in current political theory. Kongtaveelert’s meditation on collective memory imbued in objects and commodities reflects his hopes for art fostering regenerative and contemplative time: to find better ways to grieve the precarity of climate uncertainties. Kongtaveelert currently pursues a double-major in Computer Science and Art Practice at Stanford. He engages in computational research related to greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation and AI for climate resilient infrastructure financing. He is part of a youth-led international mentorship program for Southeast Asian students, “Southeast Asia Exchange.”
Mehr Kumar (she/her) is an artist, ecologist, and environmental justice advocate. As a first-generation Indian American, her work explores finding a sense of belonging and home in unfamiliar landscapes. An interdisciplinary artist and scientist, she is curious about using art as a method. Her work has included place-based ceramics and a poetry collection blending prose poems with research. She applies scientific methods to art and artistic methods to science because she believes knowing about something and knowing something are not the same. To achieve climate-just futures, we must unwaveringly seek optimism. And imagining those futures is such a vital part of that. Art affords us this in a way science may not. Mehr’s research studies the oceans of the past and how we might restore them. She proposed and developed Stanford School for Sustainability’s first ever Visiting Artist Program in which researchers and artists work together to investigate research questions. She received a B.S. from Stanford University in Earth Systems with a focus on Oceans and Climate and a B.A. in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She was awarded interdisciplinary honors for her thesis research-based poetry collection investigating the institutionalization of campus sexual violence. APAture 2024 is her first ever public showcase. She lives, studies, and creates on traditional Amah Mutsun territory in Santa Cruz, CA.
Jang Lee (b. 1996, Seoul, South Korea) received a Bachelors in Arts from Harvard University in 2019 and a Master in Public Health from UCLA in 2022. He received 1st prize in the national Dorothy Summers Visual Art Contest in 2024 and was awarded the Arts + Social Justice Grant from the Stanford Arts Institute in 2023. He has exhibited with Roots Division, Brea Gallery, and Good Mother Studio, among others. His work is included in the permanent collections at the ASUCLA Union, the Harvard Freshman Dean’s Office, and featured in several art and literary magazines, including the Oxford Review of Books. Lee is a medical student at Stanford University and works in Palo Alto, California.
Michelle Lin is a visual artist, cultural worker, and author of the poetry collection A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). Their writing and art practice are rituals of grief and healing from the violence of patriarchy, capitalism, assimilation, and living within the imperial core. Passionate about building liberatory spaces for diasporic and queer artists, they work as the Artist Growth Program Director at ARTogether and serve on the Advisory Councils for Vital Arts and Artists’ Adaptability Circles.
Jackie Liu (she/her) is a disabled Chinese American painter, writer, and video creator from the Boston area studying Art Practice, Philosophy, and Environmental Justice at Stanford University. By articulating and sharing her own stories of trauma, identity, and resilience, she aims to celebrate vulnerability, invite conversation, and foster communion and healing. Right now, she’s interested in making art that captures moments of joy, while also feeling viscerally joyful to create. Her work can be found at jackieliuart.com or @jackieliuart on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Madi Reyes is a graphic designer from Sacramento, CA, specializing in branding and illustration. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of San Francisco with a B.A. in Design and minors in Advertising and Asian Pacific American Studies in May 2024, where she received the Award for Academic Excellence and Leadership from USF's Design program and the Gloria Osuna Pérez Award from Thacher Gallery.
Laura Ming Wong is an American photographer of Chinese descent. She began as a photographer taking production shots and assisting on television shows in Northern California. From 2012 to 2016 she covered local stories at The Oakland Post, gaining access to diverse corners of the San Francisco Bay Area, and later expanding to wedding and commercial clients. With an assignment and a press pass, she ventured across police lines at political protests, into the homes of well-heeled entrepreneurs, ringside at sold-out arenas of future boxing Hall of Famers, and the spaces in-between. Several solo trips through Latin American and North Africa pushed her to cultivate trust in communities where she was not always a natural fit. Through professional experience and personal projects, Laura has developed an ability to move through diverse environments and produce images that convey the emotions of a moment. She is based in Oakland, California and lives with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs.
Film Showcase
Jalena Keane-Lee is a filmmaker who explores intergenerational trauma and healing through an intersectional lens. She was named a 2023 Adobe x Sundance Woman to Watch, and is the recipient of the Gotham Documentary Fellowship, Creative Culture woman filmmaker fellowship, Wyncote Fellowship and NeXt Doc Fellowship. Jalena is the winner of Tribeca Through Her Lens 2020 and DocPitch 2022. Her short films have streamed on POV and Criterion Collection, played at over 50 film festivals, and won best short at LA Asian Film Festival in 2020 and the Jury Award at Sundance in 2023. Jalena co-founded Breaktide Productions, an all-women-of-color production company that has won two Cannes Lion awards for branded content. Jalena’s first feature-length documentary STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS, which participated in the 2022 Sundance Edit and Story Lab, premiered at HotDocs in 2024 won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary.
aka productions amplifies the voices of bipoc and queer artists through a focus on narrative, experimental and interactive film and media arts. We believe in telling these stories by the people and through the voices of whom these stories belong. Our work has screened at Cinéma Olympia Cannes, British Film Institute and over 40 international film festivals, art galleries and conferences. We focus on process over product to ensure high quality art and high quality human interaction.
Angelique Kalani Axelrode (they/she/ʻo ia) is a multimedia artist and founder of aka productions, a BIPOC and Gen Z centered production company. Their work has been showcased at over 40 film festivals, galleries and conferences worldwide, and they are currently pursuing their MA at NYU Tisch in Interactive Media Arts with anticipated graduation in 2025. With a background in community organizing and a degree in human development, Angelique is primarily concerned with how to indigenize and queer art/film creation processes. On a lifelong journey to embrace vulnerability, they see filmmaking as an intimate medium to connect, transform and heal.
Douglas Pa’ipa’iku Finnegan is an indigenous artist and tech strategist that combines his experiences in business and creative skillset to amplify the voices behind indigenous and queer stories. As a co-founder of aka productions, Douglas utilizes his professional background in the tech industry and academic background in human psychology to bring a strategic lens to their portfolio of work. His focus is not only on the art itself, but also the impact their art can have on their communities.
Joyce Keokham is a director, actor, and poet from Fremont, CA, currently based in Chinatown, New York. Their stories are often rooted in community and radical self-love. Joyce’s mom once described them as a "lover messenger." Joyce hopes to live up to this. Their directorial debut, WYA WYD (“Where You At? What You Doin?”), is a recipient of the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music, and Theatre. The pilot won the B Young and Spirit and Being awards from BRIC Arts Media’s Free Speech Award. Learn more about their work at lilearthling.xyz or on Instagram @fuqr.
Elaine Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American interdisciplinary artist exploring identity, displacement, and the search for home. She uses ephemeral materials and time-based mediums to capture the fluidity of memory and the passage of time, incorporating text to navigate vulnerability. Nguyen seeks to reconnect with her Vietnamese heritage, reclaiming symbols and creating community through shared experiences. She received an MFA from the University of California Davis, and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.
Sophia Perez is a Chamorro filmmaker working toward her PhD in Geography at UC Berkeley. With roots in the Mariana Islands and the Bay Area, she uses film to build bridges across cultural and political divides. She is an inaugural fellow of the Pasifika Entertainment Advancement Komiti’s Writing Program, a Pacific Islanders in Communications grant recipient, and a co-founder of several non-profit organizations in the Marianas including Our Common Wealth 670 and Fåha Digital Media.
Currently dwelling in Oakland - Huichin Ohlone territory. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Teao Sense is a visionary Turntablist / Multi-instumentalist / Producer / Educator + Founder of the cultural community artist collective- Audiopharmacy Prescriptions. As a budding filmaker, he aspires to make timeless films that invoke insight & inspiration.
Literary Arts Showcase
Maw Shein Win's full-length poetry collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in Fall 2024. Her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) was published in 2020. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the USF. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse.
Sam Javellana Hill is a printmaker and poet. They are currently an artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute. Their prints have been exhibited at Kulart's "Queering Pilipinx Aesthetics" and Minnesota Street Project's "Pyramid Scheme." Sam holds a B.A. in Studio Art and English from Wesleyan University. They live in Oakland with their partner and three kittens.
Christine Huang 黃凱琳 (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese-American writer and artist based in San Francisco, on Ohlone land. Her work has appeared in The Offing and ANMLY, among other publications. She joins the large community of artists, activists, and scholars calling for the liberation of the Palestinian people, and she stands in solidarity with all engaged in the struggle against imperialism, racism, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and all systems of oppression.
Eden Julia is a writer and editor. Their work has appeared in The Walrus, Kissing Dynamite, Folkways Press, and Four Leaf Collective. When Eden Julia isn't frantically jotting half-formed thoughts on the edges of napkins, they like to fill their time dancing, exploring new ways love can manifest, and rolling around with their kittens in Oakland. You can connect with them through their website like-the-garden.com or on instagram @edensilog.
Jennifer Ng is an Asian American fiction and creative nonfiction writer in San Francisco. In addition to being a Tin House and Kenyon alumna, her work has appeared in ANMLY, Cagibi, Quiet Lightning, and elsewhere. She is at work on an epic historical novel about the common practice of Chinese men starting a second family in the 20th century.
Megan Jade Mock Noble I grew up in El Cerrito, California: a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area. For my undergraduate degree, I studied English at UC Berkeley and later received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California. These days, I live in Oakland and teach college composition at Saint Mary’s.
Noelani Piters is a writer living in San Francisco, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. She was a 2024 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a 2024 Disquiet Literary Prize Poetry Finalist, and a 2023 Molokai Arts Center Artist in Residence. She has received support from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Poetry, The Offing, Epiphany Magazine, swamp pink, and Pleiades, among other publications. She has contributed to The Rumpus and SOMA Magazine, and is also the former Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Ignatian Literary Magazine.
Danielle Shi (史丹妮) is a writer from Dalian, China. Her writing can be found at The Rumpus (forthcoming), La Piccioletta Barca, The Asian American Writers' Workshop, Jaded Ibis Press, Berkeley Letters & Science, California Magazine, UChicago Arts, UChicago News, ZYZZYVA Magazine Blog, Sine Theta Magazine, The Frida Cinema Blog, The Drift, and Hyphen Magazine. “Rosemary Folk” was nominated for the 2023 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.
Comics, Zines, & Illustrations Showcase
Minnie Phan is an illustrator and writer based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been featured by Google, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco Public Library, for which she illustrated a citywide reading campaign in 2022. She is the illustrator of several picture books including The Yellow Áo Dài, written by Hanh Bui, and Simone, written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Follow her on Instagram @minnie_phan
Cesar Cueva is an artist, illustrator, and proud Filipino American. He is the creator of the web-comic, Buhay, as well as a comic book artist for Kid Heroes Comics and a freelance illustrator. Cesar is originally from Seattle, WA, where he studied American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington and currently lives in Emeryville, CA, where he is a graphic production artist and teaches at UC Berkeley.
Jake Gavino is a Graphic Designer in the Bay Area and an illustrator in his personal time, when he can manage. He works full time as a graphic designer but does illustration on the side for his instagram that deals with his Filipinx identity and upbringing.
Kathy Huang grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, later moving to the East Coast for study and work. Ten years ago, Kathy moved to Shanghai, which transformed how she thinks about China and her heritage as an ABC. Now calling San Francisco home, she spends her working hours at IDEO, a design and innovation consultancy, and many of my other hours climbing outdoors.
Nhien Le is a second-generation Vietnamese American. He was born in the Dallas, Texas area and currently resides in Oakland, California. His main photographic interests include photographing moments that capture the Asian American identity, the Asian diaspora, and Vietnamese cultural traditions. Besides photography, Nhien has also been involved in short film and documentary projects, most recently having co-produced and hosted a YouTube docuseries titled Our Diaspora.
Lauren Miller is an artist and designer from Fairfield, California where she grew up with her large family. She is currently exploring her creativity and majoring in Design at the University of California, Davis. Her artwork is a culmination of her imagination and personal experiences she hopes will inspire others.
Alexis Paneda is currently living in Davis, California and has art and poetry published in Pile Press, Issue 05 and San Joaquin Delta College's Artifact Nouveau. Currently, she’s majoring in Design at UC Davis and draw and write mystery and fantasy.
Performing Arts Showcase
Kim Requesto is a Philippine born, Mission District raised Cultural Worker and Interdisciplinary Artist based in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Territory also recognized as San Francisco, California. With an artistic foundation in Philippine folk dance, Requesto has dedicated herself to cultural expression and advocacy through movement, photography, and community outreach. Requesto has been part of the Philippine Folk Dance community since 2005 and is currently with Parangal Dance as part of their Artistic Team.
Teo Lin-Bianco is a dancer and choreographer with a background in modern, contemporary, and tap dance. Growing up in a family of artists, Teo has been dancing for as long as they can remember, with influences from gymnastics and circus arts shaping their unique approach to movement. As the founder of Tether Dance Company at UC Berkeley, Teo enjoys exploring creativity through collaboration with fellow dancers, nature, and other art forms. They are grateful for opportunities to choreograph and perform, including recent work with Printz Dance Company.
Lily Gee (she/her) is a hapa movement artist and Bay Area native. In 2024, Gee participated in ODC’s Pilot 74 Program, choreographed for Shawl Anderson’s Youth Ensemble, and completed a RAW Residency with SAFEHouse Arts. Gee has danced with Paufve Dance, Nol Simonse, the NYC-based 46 Minutes Collective, and Blind Tiger Society. In 2023, Gee completed a B.A. from Vassar College in Science, Technology, and Society as well as correlates in both Dance Performance and Mathematics. While at Vassar, Gee produced over ten dances, including two longform works. Her piece Mine, Yours, Ours. was shown at Battery Dance Festival in 2021. As an Arts Administrator with roots in concert and event production, Lily presently serves as the Program and Communications Coordinator at UC Berkeley’s Arts Research Center. Lily believes in the integrity of a dancer’s personhood, practicing kind & empowering leadership, and creating art guided by both the heart & gut.
D. Kaur, also known as Damneet Kaur is a writer, spoken word artist, and educator raised on Kumeyaay Land (San Diego, CA) by way of Punjab. Moving to the United States at a young age, Damneet connects her childhood experiences to her writing. For her, poetry is one of the truest and most ancient forms in which people are able to tell their stories, validate their experiences and find solidarity amongst each other.
Taneesh Kaur is a US-born Punjabi teaching artist based in San Francisco, a social justice advocate who uses nature to understand and dismantle systems of mental and physical oppression. Her visual art has shown in galleries around California and has received praise from the Luxembourg Art Prize 2023. Her poetry appears in journals and anthologies around the nation, most recently in great weather for MEDIA's Beacon Radiant. Her full-length poetic memoir, "Thawing," was published in 2024 from Collapse Press. Taneesh has a Master's in linguistics from San Francisco State University, and is currently an MFA student of poetry at University of San Francisco. More of her work can be found in English and Spanish at www.TaneeshCantos.com.
Maya Rau Murthy is a konnakol artist, Bharatanatyam dancer, rapper, mridangist, director, composer, performer, choreographer, and co-director of Natya Anubhava Academy. Passionate about using the arts as a medium for social justice awareness education, she has directed, choreographed, and composed original music scores for numerous productions performed globally: notably "Anyatha Naasti," explores 'othering,' "Janani," on climate change, and "Ardhanareeshwara," challenges restrictive gender roles. Currently touring Steps Beyond Silence, which amplifies survivor voices, Maya is an Unrehearsed Artists Resident, NEFA NDP finalist, and Global Asian Creative Awards finalist.
Tatyana Topasna was born on the beautiful island of Guam, raised in the Arizona desert and currently lives in San Francisco, CA. With around 30 years of dance experience, she began her journey as a hip-hop/break dancer and has since evolved into jazz, contemporary, waacking, and house movement. She explored many other dance forms as well, auditioned for groups, competed and performed with the Classic Image Performing Arts Company, the Pinnacle High School pom dance team, Arizona State Dancing Devils, Funkanometry hip hop dance crew and No Mirror Movement dance collective. Her favorite dance spot? In Nature, on a cliff's edge!
Alder and the Kindred
Alder Duan Hurley (he/they) is a mixed-race Taiwanese American poet living on Ohlone land. Alder & the Kindred is a new project that emerged out of friendship, collaboration, and the need to incorporate music for the poems to be the poems they are. He is currently an MFA student at SFSU. Their work appears in The Margins. IG @alder.duan.hurley
Leo (he/they) is a trans, second gen Indian American from Edison, NJ who’s called the Bay home since 2019. He is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. He’s played with jazz, classical and Charanga ensembles on trumpet, and is trained as a tabla player in the Hindustani classical tradition. He’s performed original songs for voice and acoustic guitar in Kearny Street’s APAture and Bushwick Bookclub Oakland. For sporadic updates, follow him on IG: @soundwithleo
rai (she/her) is a transfemme southeast asian drummer residing on Ohlone Land for the past 16 years. her drumming and creative practice is informed by her connection to trans spirit, relationships, community, love and rage. she is part of Comrade Lover, an anti-imperialist punk lion dancing group, has played latin percussion in a Charanga ensemble, and is currently performing with Tierra Suelta, mixing drag and live performance with an array of genres and musical styles.