Jackie Milad is an Egyptian-Honduran first generation American. She is a practicing visual artist and curator based in Baltimore City. She began her curatorial career as the Co-Founder of the now popular Transmodern Festival, an artist-run performance art and experimental media festival now in its 12th year. Throughout her curatorial career Milad has had the good fortune of working with many internationally recognized artists. She served as the Exhibitions Director for the Rosenberg Gallery at Goucher College, and has held the position of Gallery Director and Curator for the Stamp Gallery at University of Maryland in College Park. Milad now serves as the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art for the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington.
In her role as an artist she has exhibited and performed internationally and nationally in venues such as the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, the Arlington Art Center and The Richard Foreman Ontological Theater in New York City. Milad has participated in numerous solo exhibitions most notably with Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts in Mazatlan, Mexico and Culiacan, Mexico. In 2010 Milad was awarded an individual artist grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2005 she earned her M.F.A. from Towson University where she was a recipient of a competitive Graduate Fellowship. In 2000 she received her B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusetts. In 1998, Milad studied painting at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy. More recently, she participated in an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2015. www.jackiemilad.com
To view Jackie Milad’s curatorial project Bend and Hold at VisArts click here.
To view Eames Armstrong’s curatorial project Noise, Body, Music at VisArts click here.
Eames Armstrong is an interdisciplinary artist and curator, and the founder and director of Aether Art Projects, an organization which emphasizes experimentation, performance, and collaboration through exhibitions and events. Eames received a B.F.A. from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2010 with emphasis on painting, writing, and performance. Eames is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in studio art at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
I bring principles of flexibility and collaboration from my own visual and performance art work to my curating. I believe in an integrated studio, writing, and curatorial practice. One of the many roles of the curator is to facilitate exchange among artists, I try to do this through organizing events independently as Aether Art Projects and in conjunction with galleries and organizations and through maintaining an online art journal, PERI0D. I know how Hans Ulrich Obrist felt when he said, “I feel an urgent need to produce communities.”
Through art, and for me especially through performance, we can learn much about each other. We can learn about how another person thinks and experiences the world, and new ways to see and interact with other people through their expression of ideas. In organizing and facilitating a lot of art over the last few years, I have had the opportunity to be closely engaged with so many various creative processes. Each of these experiences makes up the basis of my curatorial approach. www.eamesarmstrong.com
Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell is a Washington, D.C. based curator, writer, arts manager and arts advocate. A writer for all things art, her work has been featured in The Washington Times, Examiner.com, CBS Local DC online, Brightest Young Things, and Plinth, among others. In 2014 she outfitted a series of professional development seminars, as well as a residency program for local emerging artists in North Bethesda, in addition to curating five exhibitions throughout the DMV region. As an independent curator, Kayleigh continues to work with art galleries and centers, with upcoming exhibitions opening in the Mid-Atlantic region, including VisArts and the Stamp Student Union Gallery in Maryland, and CUE Art Foundation in New York City.
Kayleigh has worked with many cultural institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the Walters Art Museum, the National Archives and the David C. Driskell Center Collection at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her insights on art and culture have led to cooperative efforts with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Annual Downtown Hyattsville Arts Festival. Kayleigh earned her B.A. in Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Museum Studies from the George Washington University. She serves as Regional Programs Chair of ArtTable in Washington, DC, as well as serving on the Steering Committees of Emerging Arts Leaders DC . She is affiliated with Americans for the Arts, Emerging Arts Advocates – an initiative of Maryland Citizens for the Arts in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Young Patrons Committee of Torpedo Art Factory in Alexandria, Virginia.
Laura Roulet is an independent curator and writer, specializing in contemporary and Latin American art. She was one of five international curators chosen for the citywide public art project, 5 x 5, a major initiative sponsored by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2012. She has organized exhibitions in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.S. including at the Art Museum of the Americas, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Artisphere, Hillyer Art Space, Project 4, Fusebox and the DC Art Center. Recent exhibits include the National Drawing Invitational (Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR), CSA: 40 Years of Community-Sourced Art (Arlington Arts Center, VA), Frances Gallardo: Meteorology (Target Gallery), Sculpting Outside the Lines, an outdoor sculpture exhibit in Foggy Bottom and Medios y ambientes in Mexico City.
Laura’s publications include catalogue essays, encyclopedia entries, articles in American Art, Art Journal, Art Nexus, Sculpture, and the book Contemporary Puerto Rican Installation Art, the Guagua Aerea, the Trojan Horse and the Termite. She worked on the Ana Mendieta retrospective, organized by the Hirshhorn Museum in 2004, and contributed to that catalogue.