Project Space Openings

Julia Kouneski investigates empathy, embodiment, and the fluidity of the self through a multidisciplinary practice spanning performance, video/film, and participatory projects. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Southern California, and has independently studied somatic movement and bodywork practices over the last 10 years that contribute to her research of the body and performance. Her work has been shown in spaces such as Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Annka Kultys Gallery (London), and De Hallen Haarlem Museum (Netherlands), and has been supported by grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. She is a former artist of the Studio Artist Program at the Atlanta Contemporary, and has guest taught and lectured at Otis College of Art and Design (Los Angeles), Goldsmiths University (London), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MN), Macalester College (St Paul, MN), and Emory University (Atlanta, GA).

Antonio Jacob Martinez (b. 1979 – present) is a visual artist and educator who was born in California, raised in Oklahoma, and earned professional art degrees in Nebraska and North Carolina. Since 2005, Martinez has been instructing a variety of photography and digital arts-related courses at Southern Illinois University. Martinez is known for his process-based experimental photographic work that combines alternative darkroom-based techniques and materials with digital tools and methods of production. The underlying themes in most of his work blends moments of sorrow and wonder with a side of entropy and vulnerability. This is evidenced in Near the Egress (about a modern circus), How to Hug and Other Sublimations of Men (about amateur cagefighters), Skeletons + Heavens (about ecological loss), Acorazar y Amor (about pandemic fatigue), and Anonymous (a long term series about sperm/egg donors and donor-conceived children). Martinez’s work has been exhibited at notable venues such as Blue Sky Gallery, KlompChing Gallery, Gallery 1 of 1, and The Light Factory; and collected at Portland Museum, LeHigh University Museum, and Freeport Art Museum; and published in arts magazines such as PetaPixel, PDN, Hand, and Diffusion magazine.

Photographer and Georgia native, Tokie Rome-Taylor focuses on the notion that perception of self and belonging begins in childhood. Children are the subjects she centers within her works, with a focus on representing a visual elevation that had been omitted from mainstream “western art history”. Her works have a painterly aesthetic, using both digital and analog image making techniques. She often incorporates multiple mediums, including embroidery, pigments, beading and wax. The resulting works challenge the viewer’s expectation of what a photograph should look like.

Working in tandem with her centering of children, Rome-Taylor explores questions that stem from ethnographic and historical research. These questions probe material, spiritual, and familial culture of descents of southern slaves act as entry points for Tokie Rome-Taylor to build symbolic elements that communicate a visual language. The sitters’ family heirlooms, and recollections of family history, are combined with the historical research about the lives of Africans brought to the Americas.The research centers on their material culture, spiritual practice, and traditions. These have all been used to create a visual language that speaks to our shared history. Children and their family heirlooms, the real or imagined histories of these children’s families and their ancestors all collide to spark conversation around material wealth, familial and cultural traditions of African Americans in the South.

Rome-Taylor’s work is held in multiple private and institutional collections including the MOCA GA, The Fralin Museum at UVA, and the Southeastern Museum of Photography. She has an extensive national and international exhibition record including the Atlanta Contemporary, the Fralin Museum, The Southeastern Museum of Photography, The Griffin Museum of Photography, SP-Foto SP-Arte Fair in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, amongst others.

Rome-Taylor is a native of Atlanta, 20+ year veteran educator and working artist.

Amy Miller is an independent art consultant based in Atlanta, GA. She received a BFA from University of Georgia and an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in New York. While in New York, Amy worked at Alan Klotz Gallery.

After receiving her MFA, Ms. Miller moved to Atlanta and worked as Gallery Director for Fay Gold Gallery, a position she held for seven years. In 2007, Amy became Executive Director of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, a nonprofit that produced the largest annual photography festival in the United States, a position she held for 14 years. Ms. Miller is now a full-time art consultant and curates exhibitions, reviews artist’s portfolios and jurors photography competitions around the world.

Whitney Bradshaw (American, b. 1969) is an artist, activist, educator, mother, and former curator and social worker whose practice seeks to empower her subjects while challenging the social systems that marginalize and oppress them. Her photographs have been widely exhibited including solo shows at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives, Villanova University Gallery in Philly, The Moreau Galleries of Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame IN, the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University, the Show Gallery in St. Paul Minnesota, McCormick Gallery Chicago, and Wave Pool Contemporary Art Fulfillment Center in Cincinnati. Her work has been juried into some remarkable group shows, including Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2022, Director’s Choice PhotoSchweiz 2021, Female in Focus, 2020 at the Center for Fine Art Photography, Dock6 Design + Art 13 and 14 2020 +2022, Well Behaved Women at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts 2020, and In a Time of Change 2021 at the Colorado Photographic Art Center. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the DePaul Art Museum, Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern School of Law, and the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell collection in Cincinnati. Her photographs have been published or reviewed in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, Time Out New York, Vogue, Float Photo Magazine, and Esthetic Lens Magazine to name a few. WTTW Chicago Tonight ran a piece on Bradshaw’s social practice project, OUTCRY, in 2018 and again in 2021. Bradshaw is currently an Artist-in-Residence with the CPS RE:ALIZE program. She was the chair of the visual art conservatory at the Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts) for ten years, and an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago for 13 while working as a curator for the renowned LaSalle Bank Photography Collection and later the Bank of America Collection. More of her work can be found on her website whitneybradshaw.com.