Dr. Yanique Hume is a multifaceted scholar, priestess, dancer and choreographer with extensive research expertise and specialization across the Americas and the African Diaspora. Operating from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and performance studies. Dr. Hume’s research experience and teaching areas include: religious and performance cultures of the African diaspora, Caribbean cultural thought, popular culture, migration and diasporic identities. As a multilingual researcher, her fieldwork experience in the sacred arts and African diaspora performance expressions are centered in the Caribbean and Latin America, especially Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil and Colombia. In applied research, her work has focused on the creative industries and cultural policy; migration and tourism; museological production and management.

Yina Jiménez Suriel is a curator and researcher. She has a master’s degree in History of Art and Visual Culture, with a focus on Visual Studies. She has collaborated with different institutions, among them Casa Quién and the Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellín. She is part of the curatorial team at Centro León in the Dominican Republic, where she lives and works. Together with Puerto Rican artist Pablo Guardiola, she co-curated the exhibition One month after being known in that island open until November at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger in collaboration with Caribbean Art Initiative.

Elfrieda Bissember was Director/Curator of the National Gallery of Guyana from 1996 to 2014, presenting a public events programme promoting contemporary and historical Guyanese art, and the literary, performing, film and video arts. She was Tutor in Drawing, Painting and Art History at Guyana’s Burrowes School of Art (1986-1991), and Art critic of the Guyana Review (1993-2001); an elected member of the International Association of Art Critics (1998), and an institutional member of the Museums Association of the Caribbean Executive (2004-07/2007-10). She was a Judge of the Clico Caribbean Regional Art Prize (2003) and the Guyana Prize for Literature 2006 and 2010; and Visual Arts Representative on the Caricom Regional Task Force for Cultural Industries (2008-2009).

Russell Watson works as an interdisciplinary visual artist, multimedia educator  and media professional. Since completing his MFA in Film, Video and New Media at The School of the Art  Institute of Chicago in 2004, he has lectured and instructed in photography and  video production in both public and private tertiary institutions in the United States and Barbados. As a media professional, he has led a multimedia production studio since 2010  that offers photography, graphic design, video production and digital projection  services to a broad spectrum of commercial clients including government  agencies, academic researchers, marine contractors, financial institutions, theatre companies, restaurants, heath and wellness professionals, artists and  event designers. His work in experimental and conceptual media allows him to explore the  synergy between digital imaging and live performance as a way to challenge and expand the conventional audience relationship of cinema and theatre.

Dr. Marsha Pearce is a lecturer and Visual Arts Unit coordinator at the Department of Creative and Festival Arts, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. She has worked as the Senior Editor and Art Writer for ARC Caribbean Art and Culture Magazine and is a consulting editor for Moko Caribbean Arts and Letters Magazine. Her scholarly work includes her practice as a curator, with exhibition projects done in collaboration with the Pérez Art Museum Miami, National Portrait Gallery London and the British Council. In the midst of this current pandemic, she led an artists’ conversation series titled Quarantine and Art.

In 1996, Lusette Verboom started Kas di Alma Blou, Gallery & Giftshop to promote local art in Curaçao. She first rented a space for 10 years before buying the gallery’s current location, Landhuis Habaai, a former plantation house with a special section dedicated to Curaçaon folk art. To empower women, she has also organized courses on making crafts from recycled materials, involving artists in the creation of new products. Lusette writes about art in local newspapers, published small books about the arts, and has co-organized large curatorial exhibitions, publications, and even an art quartet game for  schools with a website. She was a curator for the Aruba Art Fair 2019, and has curator exhibitions for 3 Caribbean Artists in 2020 so far.

Johanna Auguiac-Célénice is the founder of the JM’Arts Gallery (2002-2012) and Scientific/Artistic Advisor on Caribbean contemporary art for Kréyol Factory Exhibition, Paris, La Villette, among many others. She is an independent Exhibition Curator and has been Co-curating for the Festival Tout-Monde, Miami; for the Memorial Act, Turning Tide, Guadeloupe; for the Festival Les Météores, France; Les Francophonies, France; Maditierra, Cuba. She participated at Momentum (Edinburgh), Tilting Axis 2 (Miami), and the C-MAP/MOMA (New-York). She is the initiator and director of the BIAC Martinique. Today she is in charge of the restoration of the house of the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire and of the FAC (Foundation Aimé Césaire).

Alim Hosein is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies, University of Guyana. He lectures in Linguistics and has also lectured in Literature and Art. He has a longstanding interest in art and culture, and has been publishing articles on Guyanese art in the respected Stabroek News for over thirty years. He has been a member of many national committees on cultural matters, and is currently Chairman of the Guyana Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition (GVACE), Guyana’s national Art exhibition. He tries to create his own art in his spare time, including most recently, different series of drawings, some influenced by Guyana’s past, and others featuring birds.

Kendel Hippolyte is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright and director. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies regionally and internationally. His sixth book, Fault Lines, won the Bocas Poetry Prize in 2013. He has taught poetry workshops in the Caribbean and UK and performed at literary events in the Caribbean, Europe and beyond. He has written nine plays, three of them published and directed numerous productions in more than forty years of theatre. He has also written and directed radio and television drama for public education and was artistic director of his own company for eighteen years.

As a child Marieke Visser (Bennekom, the Netherlands, 1962) lived in Saudi Arabia, Burundi, Thailand and Suriname, respectively. She studied journalism and linguistics and literary theory in the Netherlands and has returned to Suriname since 1993. In 2000 she founded a creative communications company, Tabiki Productions. Her main subject is art and culture. Most of her work includes editing, writing and coordinating. In 2009 she started a digital platform for Surinamese visual arts: Sranan Art Xposed. This proved to be a great way to reach out beyond national borders and to connect to the Caribbean art world. In Marieke’s literary work, her theme is the quest for identity; a quest that makes her feel at home in Suriname, a country where the people are struggling with the same questions as she is.

About Ian Bethell-Bennett: Born in New Providence and raised around the colonial world, I am deeply connected to Caribbean spaces and agency as a peoples of migration,  displacement and creole connectivity and creativity.  I have worked with Caribbean islands, mainlands and identities repeating across time and space through Benitez-Rojo’s work as well as works of Edouard Glissant, Aime Cesaire in postcolonial studies to inform my understanding of colonialism in Caribbean experiences left after the end of direct colonial rule.  I work through these themes in my photography, poetry, creative non-fiction and critical essays. My creative expression finds some home in the earlier works of theorists like Gloria Anzaldua, Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde who challenge constructs of unbelonging and colonialism as they pertain to spatial displacement, occupation, sexuality, and identity formation. My creative, academic and critical work has focused on moving beyond time-bound understandings of space, agency, time and the limited agency of sexualised subjectivity.

Andre Bagoo is a Trinidadian poet and writer, the author of four books of poems. His essay collection on literature and art, The Undiscovered Country, is published by Peepal Tree Press.

D.J Simmons is a pure Bajan poet. This award-winning spoken word artist and acclaimed writer has been performing and developing the art of poetry and creative writing in Barbados for the past decade. He is a multiple award winner at the National Independence Festival Of Creative Arts (NIFCA), including Gold, and the inaugural winner of the Bruce St. John Award. He represented his country proudly at Carifesta XII, XII and XIV in Haiti, Barbados and Trinidad respectively promoting Barbadian literature. D.J also is the Co-Founder of the Bajan arts and culture web platform GineOn.com, produces works through his company DoJangles Publishing, and provides copy editing and copywriting services to corporate entities. This animated storyteller also enjoys working with children of all ages, performing with the Read2Me initiative, and acts as the tutor for Creative Writing at the annual NCF Arts Camp. His dynamic attractive personality provides a song for every season and a rhyme for every reason.

Natalie Urquhart is the Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. She holds degrees in Art History and Arts Management and has twenty years experience in the cultural sector specializing in the development of creative strategy, programming and exhibitions for arts organizations and heritage sites. Urquhart has served as President of the Museums Association of the Caribbean since 2017, where she works to increase opportunities for the Caribbean creative sector through conferences and workshops with diverse partners including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, UNESCO, ICOM, the EULAC Foundation, and others. She is a former core committee member of Tilting Axis (2016-2020); and a member of the Cayman Islands National Cultural Policy Committee, where she represents the Visual Arts, Fashion and Creative Industry sectors.

Alex Martínez Suárez is an architect, researcher, and curator. He holds a master’s in advanced architecture from the Berlage Institute, Netherlands, and an ALM in museum studies from Harvard University. Along with his independent curatorial practice, he is currently general coordinator and museographer at the Museo Fernando Peña Defilló, He is also columnist and editorial board member of Arquitexto Magazine. Currently teaching at Harvard University, Universidad Iberoamericana, DR, and Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. He has also taught and lectured in Colombia, Puerto Rico, and Haiti. He is principal of Archipiélago, an interdisciplinary and collaborative platform based in Santo Domingo.

Raquel Paiewonsky was born in Dominican Republic, 1969. Lives and works in Santo Domingo. Between 1991-2001 lived in New York where she began her work with painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, often combining several of these mediums. Her work has been exhibited widely in Europe, the United States, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. She was invited to the 53rd and 55th editions of the Venice Biennale; also participated in the VIII, IX and XXI Biennial of Havana, Cuba; the X Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador and the Third Biennial del fin del mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina. Raquel has been an active participant in art circuits in her country; she has a particular interest in promoting spaces for dialogue and education within cultural platforms. She was part of Quintapata art collective and together they created public art projects that connected art with the community.