Ed Clark was born in 1926 in the Storyville section of New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved to the South Side of Chicago in 1935. After joining the air force and spending two years stationed in Guam, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then continued his studies abroad at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1957, he moved to New York City. Soon after, he created and exhibited America’s first documented “shaped canvas.” Today, at the age of eighty-seven, he continues to paint in his Chelsea studio while spending summers in Paris. His works can be found in museums around the globe, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Detroit Institute of Arts; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Pieter Hugo, born in 1976 in Johannesburg, is a photographic artist living in Cape Town. Museum solo exhibitions have taken place at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, MAXXI in Rome, and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. He has participated in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, and the Bienal de São Paulo. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Hugo received the Seydou Keita Prize at the Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was short-listed for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012.

Hew Locke received an MA from the Royal College of Art in London, and has exhibited in biennial, solo, and group shows in many museums, galleries, and public sites internationally. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.

Pushpamala N. is a photo, video, and installation artist, writer, theorist, and curator. Born in Bangalore, India, she studied sculpture at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda. As a sculptor with an interest in narrative figuration, she transitioned into casting her own body as various characters and personae in the medium of photo-performance. Through the structured compositions of her “photo-romances,” studio photographs, and experimental short films, her work deals with postcolonial theory and feminist historical gaze. Her work has been shown widely in India and internationally in venues such as the Johannesburg Biennale; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi. She lives and works in Bangalore.