With a focus on creating conditions for collaborative survival and equitable planetary futures, Luna Mrozik Gawler is an artist, writer and independent academic working with the fugitive and feral narratives that (un/re)make worlds. Their transdisciplinary research-led practice refuses dominant ideological frames of the past to propose radical and emergent futures that amplify the queer bodies, articulations and agencies beyond the human. Luna creates participatory environments and processes that fuse storytelling with natural science, design fiction with ritual and live-art with futures thinking.

Granville Carroll is a visual artist and Afrofuturist using photography and poetry to explore representation and identity. Carroll’s work also explores the multidimensionality of blackness through spatial blackness, temporal blackness, and spiritual blackness. At the core of his practice is the investigation into metaphysics, specifically the ontology of self and the universe. Carroll’s work highlights the imaginative qualities of the mind through storytelling and world building to create new speculative futures and states of being.

US-born, UK-based artist Jana Nicole is renowned for her exuberant mixed-media collages that fuse traditions of papercutting and relief sculpture with the raucous energy of pop art. Her most recent series, Botanical Troupe, saw her awarded the prestigious Prix Puvis de Chavannes by France’s Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the first non-French artist to receive the honour. This series mixes photographic and hand-drawn imagery with organic materials to explore the hidden worlds beneath our feet: mosses, mushrooms, fungi and the extraordinary mycelial networks that connect the natural world.

‘There is something wonderful about printmaking. Often thought of as the poor relation of painting, it is hard on the hands, messy, brain-tanglingly difficult, (you work in mirror image) and frequently frustrating but to those of us who love it …well there is nothing quite like it.

However difficult it might be to explain why one makes prints, it’s even harder to explain how. In fact, I’m often asked to describe the process of my own intaglio methods of mezzotint and drypoint, only to find a look of mild panic cross my listener’s face as I wave my hands about, produce tools and bits of copper and talk of rockers and scrapers, scrim and swan-skins, pressure and blotters. Truthfully, it has to be grappled with. You have to get your hands dirty and have a go – and I would recommend that to anyone. ‘

Day Schildkret is internationally renowned as the author, artist and teacher behind the Morning Altars movement, inspiring tens of thousands of people to make life more beautiful and meaningful through ritual, nature and art. BuzzFeed calls his work, “a celebration of nature and life.”

‘I’ve spent the past 20-years empowering tens of thousands of people in 5-continents to make their lives more meaningful while connecting them to the moments that matter. My work transcends borders and cultures because it teaches people they can make sense of life, especially as it changes, by returning to the fundamentals: Nature, art, and meaning. ‘

I'm influenced by Buckminster Fuller's designs and philosophy, and inspired by land art including: Walter de Maria's Lightning Field, Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Yoko Ono’s poetic, conceptual, wild woman persona made an early impact, as well as Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Nevelson and Louise Bourgeouis, all powerful women icons who pioneered and created a feminized art world. Ruth Asawa's incredible floating world of wire hanging sculptures, Yayoi Kusama's “Fireflies on the Water”, and Olafur Eliason's “Weather Project”, all stand out as well as Joan Mitchell's and Cy Twombly's frenetic lyrical paintings. Anselm Kiefer and Lee Bontecou, artists who hybridized painting and sculpture. Paying homage to a great contemporary artist here in Joshua Tree that pioneered the high desert as an art site, Andrea Zittel, an artist whose work I relate to on a deeper level now that I am here.

Daniels’ research interest lies in the invisible ties between history and the present and how the representation of historic events and personal memories can reshape how we read and understand contemporary events. Her aim is to explore counter-hegemonic narratives in order to challenge established knowledge and resculpt the boundaries of the world as we traditionally know it, often starting out in the shadows, in the less visible.

Her work has been exhibited world-wide and she is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Maja works as a lecturer in film at the unit for Film, Photography and Literary Composition at Gothenburg University (HDK-Valand).

Ingrid Weyland was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Being part of a family of sculptors and architects, she grew up among coloured pencils, art papers, blueprints, inks, and clay. Her passion for form, image, and composition arises from them, which led her to study Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and set up her own practice. Later she decided to dedicate herself to learning photography, something she had always been passionate about, attending several workshops by Ana Sánchez Zinny, Angela Copello, Fabiana Barreda, Julieta Escardó, Juan Brath, Proyecto Imaginario, and Verónica Fieiras, amongst others. Initially a portrait photographer, Ingrid now focuses on evocative landscapes expressing fragility of the natural environment.

Nishant has a deep interest in the photobook as a medium. He co-founded BIND (2015-2020) - a platform for photography and a library, examining the photobook as an art object. He received The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts: Photobook grant (2016) which enabled the publication of his first book. Seeking Moksha (2017) explores the search for transcendence through a collection of photographs, written notes, found objects and sound that memorialise his own experience. Nishant’s photography is guided by a documentary approach, where he makes portrait, still life and landscape studies, abstracting the tangible to present a quiet ambiguity. The act of seeking is a central motif in his work, which engages with the struggle for purpose and meaning. By presenting his own personal journey, Nishant invites the viewer to contemplate their own path.

Sam Lee plays a unique role in the British music scene. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam's helped develop its ecosystem inviting in a new listenership interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today.

Working in photography, installation and moving image, I create symbolically charged works which aim to bridge the separateness that we as humans create in our minds between ourselves and nature.

Over the past decade I have distilled the conceptual narrative within my work to make the simple and succinct point that humanity is neither separate nor superior to nature. Rather, acknowledging that we are a part of nature, as vulnerable to the same environmental pressures as every other living creature. To see ourselves as different and separate from the ecology and ecosystem of our planet is leaving humanity unprepared for the world we are shaping.

My intention with my work is to make the point that this is personal. Represented by Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin

Samantha has been a professional storyteller, guiding transformational journeys and holding ceremonial space using story, ritual, and creative expression for 10 years. She has studied with some of the best storytellers and mythologists in the world including Martin Shaw (School of Myth), Roi Gal-or (Emerson School of Storytelling), and David Novak.

Samantha has had the privilege of sitting with aboriginal aunties in Australia and listening to their cultural wisdom and stories over a life-changing year. This has had a huge influence on her and her work. She is currently working as Professional Storyteller, a Transpersonal Art Therapist, and as a Ceremonial Guide holding Sacred Storytelling Ceremonies every 6 weeks with the Earth Celebrations (Solstices, Equinoxes, and Quarter Festivals) in Devon.