About The Artists

Serena JV Elston

Serena is a curator and  transdisciplinary sculptor contemplating the body and its relationship to structures of power. Her research-based practice explores ecology, posthumanism, disability, and embodiment through a post-colonial lens. At its core, her practice asks if an institution has the power to disable a body, does the body have the power to disable an institution? Grappling with the identity of disability, Serena investigates the precarious materiality of structures to reveal them as inherently temporal. 

With a background in architecture and production, Serena has initiated ambitious curatorial projects such as SPACORE, a platform centered around lived experiences within wellness capitalism, and Siren Island, a floating stage reimagining land mythologies through live theater events on the open water. Her work has been exhibited both in the United States and internationally, including at Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco, VideoDrome Paris, S.O.F.A. Italy, G99 in Brno, CZ and the MOAH Museum in Lancaster, California. Serena was a finalist for the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a recipient of the 2024 City of Chicago (DCASE) Individual Artist Grant, 2024 ArtsMidwest Award for Artists with Disabilities, and an awardee of the 2024 3Arts Ignite Fund.

Vince Phan

V, a.k.a Vincent Phan, et al. (Valienese, b. 1992 A.D.) is an earthly-alien collective. Their works are systems-oriented investigations of chaos in nature and the nature in the chaos. V et al. adopts furniture and composts organic materials to create a hybridized existence of humans and nature. These creations are then traded for soil in human-occupied territories in order to create a new terra of possibility. Hybridizing objects and materials, V et al. re-naturalizes the man-made back into a natural ecology that once was its birthplace but has now become foreign.

V et al. trades earthly-alien creations for the soil of colonized territory. This accumulated soil then builds Valien, a new continent that exists within colonized continents. As long as V et al. lives, this terra expands as the soils are added. As long as Valien exists, V et al.’s reality exists as do the earthly-alien creatures that constitute Valien.