CURATOR AND WRITER

Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy is a curator and writer of contemporary art and craft advocating for underrepresented communities, stories, materials, and approaches. She has curated and juried exhibitions across the United States and has written for many publications. Recent projects include curating R & Company's second triennial Objects: USA 2024 and the critically acclaimed Funk You Too!: Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture in 2023 at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY. Her book, New Women's Work: Reimagining “Feminine” Craft in Contemporary Art, highlighting contemporary artists continuing the legacy of women's work came out in 2024. She holds a BA in art history from the University of Florida and an MA in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center, New York.

INDEPENDENT CURATOR AND ART STRATEGIST

Lauren Hirshfield (she/her) is an independent curator, arts strategist, and writer based between Brooklyn, NY and Newburgh, NY. Her practice centers emerging and under-represented artists through curations linked by the anthropology and sociology of systems, structures and futures. Currently she researches and develops presentations around topics like material transmutation, personal myth-making, speculative fiction, collectivism and eco-futurism. Since 2016 she has curated over 40 exhibitions and worked with over 200 artists through across galleries, platforms, and fairs both online and across the East Coast. Hirshfield is the co-founder of the curatorial project turned artist professional development network PARADICE PALASE, and the founder of the experimental dealer account @temp.img. Hirshfield received a BFA in Painting and Minor in Art History from SUNY Purchase (2013) and has been a visiting critic and lecturer with numerous universities and residency programs since 2018, most recently with The New York Arts Program. Hirshfield has written reviews and interviews for TUSSLE and Cultbytes, and her curatorial work has been reviewed in The New York Times, artnet, The Art Newspaper, Cultbytes, and The Observer.

GALLERIST

KAPOW

Kourosh Mahboubian has been a New York based art dealer, collector, curator, and advisor since 1988, when he founded Cyrus Gallery. With an egalitarian approach to representing good art, he became an early promoter of the Black Art Movement. The list of artists he has shown includes Howardena Pindell, Tyrone Mitchell, Maren Hassinger, Dindga McCannon and Khari Turner, among others.

He is currently the principal of Kourosh Mahboubian Fine Art, a private art advisory firm he founded in 1993, and of KAPOW, his latest gallery venture, located on NYC’s Lower East Side. KAPOW, is exclusively dedicated to supporting and developing the careers of exceptional emerging to mid-career artists.

PHILANTHROPHIC ADVISOR & ART COLLECTOR

Akinyi Ochieng is a Gambian-Kenyan philanthropic adviser and nonprofit board director who identifies, incubates, and scales innovations advancing a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient world. She leads strategic planning and operations at the Autodesk Foundation, investing in nonprofits and startups that leverage design and engineering to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges.

Previously, she served as a Director & Vice President at APCO, advising corporations, foundations, and nonprofits on social impact programs supporting economic mobility and inclusive innovation across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She began her career in financial services, developing economic mobility campaigns at Nova Credit and WorldRemit.

Akinyi holds an MSc in Global Politics from LSE and a BA with distinction from Yale. She also collects contemporary art, focusing on African diaspora artists whose work engages memory, history, and identity, reflecting her long-term commitment to ideas that shape how we understand the past and imagine the future.