Roxana Pérez-Méndez

Philadelphia artist Roxana Pérez-Méndez uses video and Pepper’s Ghost holograms—a mirror-based form of optical illusion developed in the 1860s—to imagine a future Puerto Rican space program. In her New Espacio project, a tiny hologram of the artist clad in a space suit wandersacross a barren, rocky world, planting Puerto Rican flags in an act of reverse colonization. In his videos, objects, and performances, multidisciplinary Chicago artist Jefferson Pinder explores Afrofuturism: the mixing of science fiction, fantasy, and Afro-centric imagery in order to interrogate the African Diaspora. Pinder will be creating a new work for the WPA show depicting the corona of a super-massive black hole.

Bio courtesy of the artist.