2024 Ignite Fund Jury
LaRissa Rogers, Charlottesville, VA
Rogers is a visual artist and educator born in Charlottesville, VA. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a MFA from the University of California Los Angeles. Rogers has exhibited and performed in institutions such as Super Dakota (Brussels), Fields Projects (NY), M+B Gallery (LA), LACE (LA), the California Museum of Photography, Riverside (CA), The Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (CA), The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (VA), and Documenta 15 (Germany), among others. She received the Visual Arts fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2022) and The Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2023-2024). She held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2024), BEMIS Center of Contemporary Art (2022), and Black Spatial Relics (2022). Rogers was named 2024 Forbes 30 under 30 in Art and Style, and cofounded the alternative monument and community gathering space "Operations of Care" with Luis Vasquez La Roche, located in Charlottesville, VA. In 2024, Rogers will be installing "Going to Ground," a public sculpture with the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston.
Rogers is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture within the Department Art at The University of Virginia, and is currently represented by Super Dakota.
Juan Silverio, Los Angeles, CA
Juan Silverio is a curator and arts administrator. They are invested in championing and building community with artists, curators, creatives, and cultural workers from LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and communities of color across Los Angeles (Tovangaar) and beyond. Currently the Assistant Director of Programs at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Juan joined LACE in 2019 as an apprentice, and now runs all exhibitions, programs, and operations. With LACE, recently they co-curated ABUNDANCE (2024), an interdisciplinary and performance art festival held at the L.A. Dance Project. Juan joined the arts and culture field by way of the Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship program, holding curatorial internships throughout Southern California at the Getty Research Institute, Self-Help Graphics & Art, and the 18th Street Arts Center. They were awarded a Leadership Institute fellowship in Visual Arts with the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) (2023) and was an AllPaper Seminar inaugural fellow at the Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, CA (2022). A member of the National Performance Network (NPN) Board of Directors, Juan contributed writing to the 60th Venice Biennale exhibition and catalogue, Stranieri Ovunque/Foreigners Everywhere (2024), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and has co-edited the LACE publication for CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak and Mutant Salon (2018). Juan holds BA degrees in Book Arts from the College of Creative Studies and in Chicana/o Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Born and raised in a Mexican Zapotec family in Koreatown, Los Angeles, Juan currently resides in Los Angeles.
Asha Iman Veal, Chicago, IL
Asha Iman Veal is a curator of interdisciplinary contemporary art (the Museum of Contemporary Photography) and an art school professor (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). Her exhibitions Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part (2022) and LOVE: Still Not the Lesser (2023) brought together cross-diasporic conversations between global artists Xyza Cruz Bacani, Widline Cadet, Cog•nate Collective, Sunil Gupta, Kelvin Haizel, Ngadi Smart, and more; and celebrations of love and desire by Jorian Charlton, Jess T. Dugan, and Mous Lamrabat, among others.
Her Chicago Architecture Biennial exhibition and public program/radio series "RAISIN vol 1" (2021) commissioned several new artworks and generated community among more than 30 global artists including Işıl Eğrikavuk, Amanda Williams, and Tintin Wulia. She has separately worked on projects and/or arts research in Chicago, New York, Brazil, Darby UK, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Edinburgh, Havana, Vietnam, Juárez MX, and more.
Veal bridges interdisciplinary relationships between the arts, human rights, and international affairs sectors through her role as a Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action (EU/UK/US), member of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network (Global Table), and a Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Emerging Leader. She is a board member at Filter Photo, and was a recent board member of Experimental Sound Studio. Previous grant supporters of her exhibitions include the National Endowment of the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation, The Joyce Foundation; BMW Foundation, Humanity in Action/Alfred Landecker Foundation, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and others.
She has been invited as a distinguished jury reviewer for awards and residencies, including the East African Photography Awards, Earth Photo Award by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society, Rome Prize / Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship, Visual Studies Workshop NY, University of Chicago Arts + Public Life, Arts Work Fund Chicago, and more. She has been an invited portfolio reviewer and crit panelist for the FORMAT International Photography Festival UK, Rencontres d'Arles France, Belfast Photo Festival, FotoFest Houston, University of Chicago DOVA, RISDI, Chicago Artist Coalition, and others.
Veal has been a guest lecturer and panelist for international cultural institutions such as GRAIN Projects UK, Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Chicago, Humanity In Action – Netherlands, San Diego State University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and more. She is active in the ORACLE Conference of International Photography Curators, and Independent Curators International – Curatorial Forum and Chicago Assembly (2023 cohorts).
Through her classes in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy at SAIC, Asha Iman expanded direct curricular links to global arts, culture, and multimedia discourses by inviting and hosting more than 100 virtual and in-person discussions with guests such as Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, 2015 International Venice Biennial – Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia artists; the late Bisi Silva, CCA Lagos founder; and David Ennio Minor, ballet dancer and movement adviser for global science and robot technology. Her additional innovations include piloting and co-teaching a full-semester graduate-level course between in-person and virtual classrooms in Chicago, US and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; piloting and leading a core professional development undergraduate course “Being a Woman of Color in the Arts”; co-developing and leading the "Spheres of Cultural Valuation" graduate-level course on comparative cultural policy and global arts ecosystems; and expanding the department’s undergraduate advanced curatorial theory and practice course.
Asha Iman began her career as the VOTE campaign staff and as a festival producer for playwright Eve Ensler’s V-Day global movement to end violence against women and girls (New York). In 2012, she founded and directed The Places We’ve Been publishing project and public humanities series. Her previous professional roles also include: editor-in-chief for the multilingual emerge: Journal of Arts Administration and Policy ; artistic director and curator for RAISIN (vol. 1); and staff roles at Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, Molloy Art (SoHo NYC), and others.
Her publications include Apsaalooke: Art & Tradition (editor, 2006); The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35 (editor, 2013); Ground Floor Biennial (co-editor, 2018); and Dark Matter: Celestial Messages of Love in these Troubled Times exhibition catalogue and LP album (production administrator, 2020).
(BA, New York University Gallatin School; MFA, The New School, Creative Writing; MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Asha Iman Veal earned her BA at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, focusing on contemporary literary practices, nonfiction narrative, and creative examples that deepen the understanding of contemporary multiculturalism. She earned her MFA in creative writing at The New School (NY), where she completed her literary nonfiction thesis Brooklyn (the Black), which she later published in 2015.
She earned her MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her thesis, “The Tokyo Show: Black & Brown Are Beautiful,” presented research on: Tokyo-based arts ecologies and possible site-partners for an independent exhibition (field study, 2014 and 2016); the identification and analysis of curatorial models based on historic exhibitions and contemporary projects; a visual critical review of global arts depictions of Black America c.1960s; and interviews with historic American artists including sculptor Richard Hunt, Warhol actress Abigail Rosen McGrath, and with Louise Greaves, the partner of late filmmaker William Greaves.