Irene Hsiao is a dancer, writer, multidisciplinary artist, and 2024 artist in residence at the Heritage Museum of Asian Art. She creates performances in conversation with visual art in museums, galleries, and public spaces, a practice that includes site-specific interaction with visual artworks and experimental engagement with artists, institutions, and the public. She was the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Smart Museum of Art in 2020 and 2021, 2022-23 Fellow at High Concept Labs, first Artist in Residence at 21c Museum Hotel in 2022-2023, and a 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist. Her performances have been presented at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, EXPO Chicago, Chicago Textile Week, Ragdale Foundation, Krannert Art Museum, Alma Art Gallery, Kavi Gupta Gallery, and more. She has received individual artist grants from Chicago DCASE, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Night Out in the Parks, and the Awesome Foundation. 

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Photo by Penny Li

Vocalist, pianist and composer Paige Brown believes in the use of voice as a channel, and the use of the instrument/body as a voice. Having inherited a version of the deep, resonant voice of her father and her late grandfather, she rejoices in the ability to play inside that resonance, bringing that sound to bear in songs that speak of joy, love, grief, and hope. She draws from a broad spectrum of influences that range from high school madrigal singers to college gospel choir, skipping from soul to funk to folk and weaving through sounds somewhere in between. Emerging from her compositional chrysalis, she is currently developing the inner mechanisms and connections to deepen and externalize her own artistic practice more fully, reacquainting herself with the simple, playful practices that attracted her to Music, her first love.

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Photo by Ricardo E Adame

Hunter Diamond is a creative woodwind and sound artist living and performing in Chicago. A mixture of conceptual, composed, and improvised performances keep him fully embedded in the Chicago creative arts community. In 2021 Hunter founded Curio Records which serves as the primary outlet for his recorded projects. Diamond's new double-album from his project Black Diamond (co-led since 2011 with saxophonist Artie Black) will be released by the Helsinki label We Jazz in July 2024. His next album will be the debut of Flesh of Fruit, a collaborative work with artist Allen Moore. Diamond performs with several groups of his own: Black Diamond (co-led with saxophonist Artie Black), the Hunter Diamond Quartet, Metal and Wood, Herbsaint (New Orleans traditional), and Strange Frontiers: sonifying the poetry of his father Eric Diamond. Diamond frequently contributes to collaborative work, often bringing a one-man-orchestral sound to projects with poet Marvin Tate, storyteller Sam Lewis, sound artist Allen Moore, movement artist Irene Hsiao, vocalist Ana Everling, singer/songwriter Hannah Frances, and the Wonder Wagon. 

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Photo by Ricardo E Adame

Young Kim is a Chicago-based educator and interdisciplinary artist from South Korea who works with painting, installation, weaving, hand papermaking, and performance, among others. She received a BFA in Textile Art from Hongik University in Seoul and an MFA in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago and has participated in considerable solo and group exhibitions throughout Korea, the U.S., and abroad. She is a recipient of the Albert P. Weisman Award and the Haystack Fellowship in 2023. Young values Buddhist conversations that express this world as the suffering world, sabba, where humans undergo dukkha, meaning unhappiness, despair, or pain, due to excessive attachment to tangible or intangible materials. These conversations also promote practicing wisdom and loving-kindness to reduce dukkha and achieve nirvana, the ultimate state of serenity. Believing that the work of art can be another instrument to lessen individuals' hardships, Young composes artworks to deliver life-affirming sensations – such as hope, joy, respite, transcendence, or tranquility. She dreams of her showcase offering a sanctuary to the people of sabba.

Penny Li is the development and program manager at the Heritage Museum of Asian Art. Having spent 90% of her days in China, Penny came to Chicago to pursue Arts Management at Columbia College Chicago. She is passionate about the transformative possibilities of art interpretation and engagement. Alongside her day job, she explores her creativity as a photographer and singer-songwriter. Penny is a lover of food, psychology, and theatre. Multilingual, she is fluent in Chinese, English, and Korean, with a conversational level of Japanese.

Amanda Maraist is a movement deviser + improviser from the Texas gulf coast, and co-directs bim bom studios. She works collaboratively with movers, musicians and artists; most recently with Helen Lee, Freedom From and Freedom To, Khecari, Irene Hsiao, Ayako Kato / Art Union Humanscape and independently. Her movement work exists as both dance-making and physical space-making towards creating spaces of community abundance, with a do-it-together demeanor.

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Photo by Ricardo E Adame

Darling “Shear” Squire is a Chicago Native but has roots in Atlanta where Darling started dance training. Darling attended North Springs Charter School of the performing arts, began dancing professionally right out of high school and in that time worked with many great choreographers. The highlights were working with Bubba Carr choreographer/artistic director to Cher for 12 plus years, Rhonda Henriksen soloist with Hubbard Street and Twyla Tharp, Tracy Vogt former Philadanco dancer, Lauri Stallings Hubbard street soloist and founder/artistic director of gloATL. Darling moved back to Chicago the summer of 2011 to start as a freelance dancer/choreographer. Darling has worked with The Fly Honeys of the The Inconvenience, Links Hall, Victoria Bradford, Ayako Kato, chances dances, no small plan productions, Slo' Mo, the Public hotel, Soho House Chicago, Growing Power inc., EXPO Chicago, Queen at Smart Bar, SAIC,  Depaul museum, University of Chicago,  University of Illinois in Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago Film Archive, Salonathon, and Open TV beta. In 2018 Darling was chosen as the cover model and also quoted in Micah Salkind's Oxford published book 'Do you remember house? Chicago's queer of  color underground'. Followed by receiving  the Between Gestures  scholarship to Austria to attend Impulstanz in Vienna also the Chicago Dancemakers Forum fellowship and Links Hall CoMission Fellowship  along with a 3Arts nomination in 2019 and 2022 and 2020 Darling became a cohort to Hubbard Street Dance. In September of 2023 Darling choreographed and performanced alongside Grammy winning artist Corrine Bailey Rae at B.A.R(Black Artist Retreat) created by Theaster Gates and performed  in the Stoney Island Art's Bank to promote her album Black Rainbows. To close out 2023 Darling Made history co-directing, choreographing and performing with Slo'mo Queer dance party and NBC Chicago airing a live broadcast cast for NYE for at the newly renovated Ramova Theater in Bridgeport. Darling's mission has been one with a strong spiritual center and allowance of universal well-being. 

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Photo by Lisa Predko

Peter Wong is a fifth-generation practitioner of Yang Style Taijiquan. He has been practicing Traditional Kungfu for over fifty years and has been an instructor of Tai Chi at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Peter Wong was a director of the 26th and 27th Board of Directors of the Chin Woo Athletic Association Hong Kong Limited. He is also the appointed Traditional Martial Arts Advisor and Sanshou散手 Advisor（2008-Now) of the Hong Kong, China Wushu Union.

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Photo by Penny Li