Furen Dai’s practice has focused largely on the economy of culture industry, and how languages lose function, usage, and history. Dai’s hybrid art practice utilizes video, sound, sculpture, painting and collaboration. Her years as a professional translator and interest in linguistic studies have guided her artistic practice since 2015. She has been researching and developing the nearly extinct language of NüShu. The language, derived from Chinese characters, was created and used exclusively by women.

Dai received a Bachelor in Russian Language studies from Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2010, a Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurial Management from Boston University. She also holds a MFA degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2016. Her work has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and around the world. Past exhibitions include 13th Athens Digital Arts Festival (Greece), OSMOSIS Audiovisual Media festival 2017 (Taiwan), Illuminus Boston 2017, Now&After'16, The State Darwin Museum (Moscow). She is a recipient for The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2017, Excellence Award for the 21st Japan Media Arts Festival. The exhibition at 456 Gallery will be her first solo show in New York.

During Dai's residency, she created Dear Mother.

Rosa Nussbaum is a British/German visual artist based in Austin, Texas. Rosa works at the intersection of performance and sculpture, of object and objectification. Her work explores the place where the (female) body touches the institution, submitting to it’s projected desires.

During Nussbaum’s residency, she created Keeping Young & Living Longer: How to stay Active & Healthy past 100, or How to avoid Life Shortening Errors with fellow Kevin Brophy.

Michelle Lisa Polissaint is a visual artist & arts organizer based in Miami, Florida. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University in Photography & Fiber Based Painting. Her current practice is focused on producing community based activations that encourage artists and community members to form collaborative relationships. As an artist she explores the nature of human interaction through textiles and photographs. Her most recent work moves from a previous series of self-portraits, Dancing With Myself, which explored her relationship with herself away from the guidance of her parents, into a new body of work documenting trips and interactions with her parents and family, If Home Was Home. She is currently a resident at Bakehouse Art Complex. Her upcoming project, Moonshine Moanin’, is a research performance project exploring identity and queerness as it relates to her upbringing in the South.During Polissaint's residency, she created Dine nan Nwa.

Kevin Brophy is a language-based performance artist based in Tampa, FL, and Pittsburgh, PA, most recently residing in Lawrence, KS as visiting faculty and artist at the University of Kansas. Her research includes the Internet of Things, biased training of AI, our changing psychological response to the screen, and how language functions—past, present, and future—in relation to these cultural occurrences. Kevin works at the intersection of digital and physical space; as in, the ‘crash’ of these two bodies and their mutual creation within the construct of the social. Our politic embodied and our personal beyond the site-of-self. Through exaggerated forms of communication, she critiques in satirical and self-implicating ways: these days, she performs more for machine than human.

During Brophy’s residency, she created Keeping Young & Living Longer: How to stay Active & Healthy past 100, or How to avoid Life Shortening Errors with fellow Rosa Nussbaum.

Diana needs some soup right now and then maybe you'll find them in the bedding section, swimming in linen duvets for a bit. She feels fulfilled in some kind of cul-de-sac upbringing, couch shopping not so different from any experiential art. 'walkie check', She confirms and performs for the visitor, 'yes, that is a thing we have and it is of different value on different kinds of days'. Framed moments in time no different than now, just a different space-time in the spectrum of a when she's walking around a bed thinking about what information you will need from another room in another space. Fulfillment, Depends on the season of art-making, apparently some on custom order or are just made to be consumed by some other process.

During Caramat’s residency, they created Social Sensory Stimulation.

Clare writes about participatory arts practices in independent arts organizations, museums, and archives. Right now she is focused on Elsewhere for the third chapter of her dissertation on artist project spaces between 2001 and 2016. She began her American life as a participant in an artist’s pedagogical project – the Sponge HQ –  where there was a beehive, a fish tank full of plecs and neon tetras, a discarded skateboard and a felted library platform in a hard to define but restful color. Back in the UK she had moved from educational roles to organizational ones in art museums, built environment advocacy, and a rural artist studio. Clare teaches undergraduate museum studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a candidate in the Media, Art, and Text Ph.D. program.

During van Loenen's residency, she created An Atlas of Administration.

Leiva’s research-based practice exists at the crossroads of installation, video, animation, and photography. Within this multidisciplinary approach, she explores issues related to migration, displacement, alienation, loss, the media and the effects of violence on the central American individual and society.

In Leiva’s work, personal and collective stories intertwine to create narratives that posit the individual’s vulnerability within institutional and social hierarchies. In some of her site-specific works, she forges a dynamic that engages the space’s history to reveal specific human rights issues. Her video work, which often incorporates found footage or text, explores surveillance, online culture, coded language and the impact of mass media on the individual’s perception of reality.

During Leiva’s residency, she created Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (The Last Supper).

Josh T. Franco is an artist with an art history Ph.D. He often builds or suggests environments that invite haunting by ancestors and disincarnate peers. Enfleshed folks are invited into these settings to share stories with Franco and make something new together, be it physical, experiential, or spiritual. He is devoted to handwriting, printed text, and beeswax as mediums that can command visual attention and physical space while also transmitting and preserving knowledge between generations. Franco is guided by the understanding that art history is made by hand.

During Franco’s residency, he created PICTURES ELSEWHERE combines three acts of reverent and irreverent gratitude to art historian Michael Baxandall and Elsewhere matriarch Sylvia Gray.

2 Elephants In The Room is a podcast focused on reducing the stigma around mental health. The hosts, Erin Steele, MA LMFT and Alicia Tetteh, MSW LCSW,  are two licensed clinicians based in Charlotte, NC. They discuss real experiences from popular culture or their own lives and demonstrate how to improve communication and have the difficult conversations to reduce barriers in relationships. Tune in to episodes on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher Radio.

Mavis Gragg is an attorney and art enthusiast based in Durham, NC. A solo legal practitioner dealing with death and dirt (estate planning, estate administration, and heirs property), Mavis also loves to mediate conversation between art and the art consumer. She believes this allows her to champion making art accessible to her community. Mavis served as a docent at the prestigious Corcoran Gallery of Art where she also helped raise money for the Corcoran's youth arts program as an active member of the 1869 Society. Since her return to the Bull City (Durham, NC) in 2015, Mavis has continued to prioritize art and community. In addition to hosting a coloring book party for adults, artists’ talks and studio visits,Mavis recently curated an art show of work by lawyers. She also plays the Dobra with theSamba-Reggae drumming group, Batalá Durham. Mavis is an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (B.A., Industrial Relations)and Pepperdine University School of Law (Juris Doctor and Master of Dispute Resolution).

Brother Wesley is a native of Raleigh, NC. His current focus of work at the Beloved Community Center includes immigrant and worker justice and youth organizing. Brother Wesley is a dedicated mentor, facilitator, and reconciler. He actively works, building better relationships among the races, especially African American and Latino Unity. Brother Wesley also serves as Youth Pastor at Faith Community Church for the youth ministry called the “Dreamzone”. Wesley considers the work of social justice and healing as a major inspiration of his call to Christian Ministry. Brother Wesley currently serves as the Youth and Student Initiatives Coordinator.

Riley Cox is a Greensboro native currently studying sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She grew up surrounded by a family working in textiles, which led to an early love for texture and material exploration. She is interested in the healing properties of creative play and working in a communal setting. Riley loves collecting discarded items, exploring and any event she has the excuse to wear a costume.

Mindy is a self-proclaimed master-of-none that enjoys taking things apart almost as much as she enjoys cozying up in dark corners. Currently working on her Bachelor's in Parks and Recreation Management, she loves getting dirt under her nails and has a well-honed talent for googling things to assist in the problem-solving process. In her free time, she writes, concentrating on narrative writing and performance poetry. She hopes that her time at Elsewhere will inspire her to refocus her creative energies both in work and in play.

Haley is an artist from Virginia. She graduated in 2018 from Virginia Tech with a BFA in Fine Arts as well as a BA in Art History. She would say that her focus is in mixed media sculpture but that’s because she does not really have a focus. She is interested in woodworking, metal working, painting, drawing and fiber arts. She likes collection, recycling of materials, and anything with a nice texture.

Jon Pulse is a flamboyant Aquarian and embroidery artist based in Savannah, Georgia. Utilizing his composition skills and strong eye for color theory, Jon likes to experiment with unconventional materials in creating art that dazzles the eye. He draws inspiration from the bright colorful patterning and geometric shape he finds in discarded fabrics, as well as his experience as a genderqueer person in the South.

Paige has BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work involves exploring human connections with nature. One can often find her outdoors, turning over rocks and logs to find a new critter to study.

Dammit Wesley is a dynamic multi-disciplinary artist who uses his work and platform to provide context and commentary on the black experience through the lens of pop culture. He has played a very active role in the southeast arts community for the past decade as the Founder and Director of BLK MRKT CLT, developing monthly minority based art exhibitions and showcases, instructing hip hop-themed figure painting classes, and working as a teaching artist for local institutions. Dammit Wesley holds a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design from Winthrop University.

Dr. Maxwell is an international community-engaged health researcher and behavioral research scientist with extensive experience designing and conducting community-engaged and evaluative research on social determinants of health. Her program of research centers on the impact of media (e.g., music and social media) on the mental and physical health of young ethnic minorities, and the influence their intersectional identities.

Kidd is currently an art student at UNCG (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), obtaining a BFA in sculpture.

Aviva is a mom, an entrepreneur, an artist, and professional marketer. She received her BA in Art and Design from NC State. Her career has zigzagged from freelancing, to entrepreneurship, to corporate management, to startup marketing. She specializes in building marketing teams with a focus on social impact. Currently, she leads a team in Durham at TransLoc working to improve mobility options for transit riders. Outside of work, Aviva sticks to her roots in art by continuing to explore new techniques for mixed media pieces.