Showcase Lineup

Nathan Abia Lawer-Yolar is a Ghanaian-American curator, imagemaker, and filmmaker based in Seattle, WA. He is the President and Co-Founder of Arrived Creative Collective, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to platforming Black and Brown artists through transformative exhibitions and public programming. His multidisciplinary practice is rooted in storytelling, accessibility, and cultural memory, working to lower barriers to both creating and experiencing art. His most recent curated exhibition, At The Garden, brought together photography, botanical art, fine art, mixed media, and film to explore themes of rest, resilience, creativity, collaboration, and community.

Negarra A. Kudumu is an independent scholar and curator of contemporary art. Her curatorial interests focus on Afro-Surrealism, Black Abstraction, contemporary art from the Pacific Northwest, Africa, South Asia, and their respective diasporas. Negarra’s curatorial expertise includes the 2023 25th Anniversary Neddy Award Exhibition in Seattle, a group exhibition at the 2021 ARCO Madrid art fair for the Lisbon-based art gallery MOVART, and three exhibitions, also in 2021, during her tenure as curator at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle (CoCA) In 2017 and 2018, Negarra curated a series of online exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists based in the United States, Canada, and The Netherlands titled, Curatorial Lab. Negarra’s writing has been published in notable volumes such as Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 (Delmonico Books, 2024), Atlantica: Contemporary Art From Angola and Its Diaspora (Hangar Books, 2018) and Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art From the Walther Collection (Steidl/The Walther Collection, 2017). She has also contributed essays to gallery publications and art world magazines in the United States, Canada, and France.