VADS 2022 Jury

Sydney Pursel

Sydney Pursel

Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in interactive, socially engaged, and performance arts. Through art she explores personal identity drawing from her Indigenous and Catholic roots. Some of Sydney's projects are used to educate others about food politics, assimilation, language loss, appropriation, and history in addition to projects amongst her own community focusing on language acquisition, culture and art. Her work has been shown at public parks, universities, galleries, and alternative spaces in Columbia, MO; Fort Collins, CO; Fulton, MO; Iowa City, IA; Kansas City, MO; Lawrence, KS; Muncie, IN; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Seattle, WA; Sheridan, WY; Toronto, ON; Ucross, WY; Vermillion, SD; and White Cloud, KS. 

Sydney received her MFA in Expanded Media at the University of Kansas and her BFA in Painting from the University of Missouri. She was the first recipient of the Ucross Fellowship for Native American Visual Artists, received a Rocket Grant through the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art, was selected for the Indigenous Arts Initiative Residency program through the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission and the University of Kansas, was awarded a BeWildReWild Community Art Grant through the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, a PlySpace Residency Fellowship, and the Harpo Foundation Fellowship for Native American Artists at the Vermont Studio Center. Sydney is an enrolled member of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. 

https://sydneypursel.com/

Drew Nikonowicz

Drew Nikonowicz

Drew Nikonowicz (born in St. Louis Missouri, 1993) earned a BFA from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2016. His work employs analog photography, computer simulations, Community-building, 3D printing, Raspberry Pi’s, open-source software, and more to address exploration and collaboration in contemporary culture. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2015 he recieved the Aperture Portfolio Prize and the Lenscratch Student Prize. In 2017 Nikonowicz completed a one-year residency at Fabrica Research Centre. His first photobook, This World and Others Like It, was co-published by Yoffy Press and FW:Books in 2019. It was awarded Jurors' Special Mention at the 2019 Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards. Drew can be found hanging out with artists in the Localhost School of Art Discord, making art in his studio, and live-streaming art & games on Twitch from Saint Louis, Missouri. He is also the Photography Technician at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts.

Kat Cua

Kathryn Cua

Kat is a writer, editor, and cultural organizer based in Chicago. Kat graduated from the University of Missouri in 2018 with a BJ in journalism and BA in art history. She is currently an MA candidate in the Dual Degree program for Modern and Contemporary Art History & Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Kat has dedicated her work in arts and culture to imagining and building new systems that support the expansive vision and lived experiences of emerging queer, trans, and BIPOC artists and arts workers. Through her curatorial, administrative, and editorial practices, Kat is committed to creating experiences and producing scholarship that validates alternative methods of knowledge production. Kat’s professional experience in the arts spans curatorial work, development, arts administration, and communications. She has worked in galleries and museums such as Sager Reeves Gallery in Columbia, Missouri, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2019, Kat was selected to participate in the Lagos Biennial’s inaugural curatorial intensive in Lagos, Nigeria. Most recently, she edited the 2021 issue of SAIC’s emerge: journal of arts administration and policy, was one of two 2021 Resident Fellows at The Residency Project in Los Angeles, and co-organized an exhibition on Southeast Asian photography for the Terrain Biennial in Chicago. Kat is happiest when she’s eating or cooking.

https://www.kathryncua.com/

Some images of the projects Kathryn Cua has worked: