After more than a decade away, returning to the Midwest has injected my research with a renewed specificity. I source materials and inspiration from various historical locations in Indianapolis and my backyard. The repossessed house next to my studio, an abandoned playground on my property, and local businesses that have “gone under” in historically Black neighborhoods have become sites for my studio production which functions as a praxis of revision and reclamation.

 My work is anchored in the image-making process and invested in generating relationships with and between images. My work takes on a distinct spatiality as a point of departure to bring into focus sharp-edge geometric shapes, some representational, interplayed with color.

 Nik Cho’s palette and expressive brushstrokes contrast with his upbringing with a domineering father and in an austere Korean culture. His inspiration stems from exploring and expressing his identity and actively combating the societal Korean expectation to be reserved in regard to sexuality. Coming to the US, he has been able to create the space to “come out.” His work conveys hidden glimpses of memory and a hint of playful provocativeness.

 If I were to classify my work, it would be as landscape painting. However, that description at times fluctuates between the representational and the abstract. Ultimately, the practice has become about exploration. My work as an observer is about discovering the unorthodox, often overlooked beauty seen within the landscape and presenting it to the viewer.

 In my paintings I try to capture a feeling, or the feeling of several thoughts. Lately they’ve been related to the climate crisis, but sometimes it’s not that serious. Through introspective writing exercises, play, and exploration of train-of-thought, I look for recurring themes and intertwine them with current interests like ecofeminist ideology and cowboy culture. It should be noted that this work is not necessarily encompassed by a narrative, although perhaps a narrative could be drawn.

 My paintings are about complexity. Richly dense, abstract surfaces created through an ouroboric process of sanding, stenciling, and extruding, as well as the more traditional application by brush. References to Renaissance paintings—whether in image or color palette—populate the recent work, establishing a ground for exploration and excavation. The resultant density becomes paradoxically responsible for imbuing the compositions with vibrating luminosity, even as it roots their presence in the material world.

 As a queer body raised in a postcolonial context in Colombia, my identity was shaped in the shadows of North American normativity. My sense of self was further confounded by a series of migrations that my family undertook in search of work and a more prosperous future. Moving through varying conservative and homophobic cultures in Louisiana and Texas, I have formed a disembodied identity that is not attached to any specific homeland and has always been challenged by the general norm.

 Martyna Alexander works primarily in painting and design. Her large-scale works typically involve nuanced color palettes and frequently reference the rigidified aspects of culture and society. Her practice pushes back against institutional structures through self-nurturing methodologies. Through simplified shapes and organizational systems, she represents the structures that contain the daily activities or larger political systems that influence or control our lives.

 My work is about the press of time on the female body and the wear and tear of our cultural beliefs on the contemporary female psyche. It looks back at the assumptions and fantasies of my particular era—coming of age in the ‘80s; motherhood in the ‘90s—and identifies the misogyny, both internalized and external. My work also considers how the body is measured and evaluated, and speaks of the relationship we have with our own bodies in a shifting context.