Yara Asmar is a musician and video artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. Her music has been described as "Strange, adventurous, elongated and highly idiosyncratic” by Cyclic Defrost's Bob Baker Fish. Her video works include i like it better when we lived on see-saw hill, clocks for dinner, and Mr. Samuel’s Teatime Stories (For Good Kids & Confused Adults) and often incorporate puppetry and music. Her album Synth Waltzes and Accordian Laments was included in Pitchfork’s roundup of 30 Best Jazz and Experimental Albums of 2023. In addition to touring internationally, she is a regular resident on Radio Alhara.

Mona Benyamin is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Palestine. In her works, she explores intergenerational outlooks on hope, trauma, and different temporalities. Through appropriating formats from mass and popular media and tampering with their apparatuses, and utilizing dark humor, she questions notions of authenticity and veracity, and challenges concepts of agency and victimhood. Her recent works have been screened — among others — at The Museum of Modern Art, REDCAT, Sheffield DocFest, The Mosaic Rooms, and Columbia University.

Huda Takriti superimposes personal and national narratives in her video works and her image-text or text-text collages, aiming to spotlight gaps in historical and national memory. She is currently pursuing a PhD in practice at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, where she is examining the notion of archival erasure relating to the (hi)stories of female freedom fighters from the Middle East in times of armed anti-colonial struggle. Questioning the construction and production of historical narratives, as well as the potential that contamination can carry as a way for surviving archival gaps. She completed her master's studies at the TransArts department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2020. She also completed her bachelor's degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, Syria, in 2012. Her work has been awarded several scholarships and prizes, including the Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (2022), the Kunsthalle Wien Prize (2020), and the Camargo Foundation Fellowship (2023), among others.

Artists Alliance Inc fosters the forward-thinking and experimental practices of emerging and underrepresented artists and curators with funded residencies and paid exhibition opportunities. Through artist-centered programming, AAI provides a free and accessible platform to produce, experience, and understand contemporary art in the Lower East Side–a longstanding epicenter for creative experimentation and cultural diversity–and advocates for art-making that challenges how we experience ourselves and our communities.

As an advocate of affordability and sustainability for NY-based artists and the enduring community benefits of free and accessible contemporary art, AAI offers programs within larger institutions that hold vital social and cultural significance on the Lower East Side of New York City. Cuchifritos Gallery in Essex Market and the LES Studio Program in The Clemente are strategically located to improve art access and distribution while serving emerging artists, curators, NYC’s creative communities, and the art world in general. Established as alternatives to the limitations of a commerce-oriented art world, AAI offers a professional framework for career development, self-representation, and experimental production.