Ck Ledesma Borrero, Creator, Lead Curator & Creative Director

Ck Ledesma Borrero is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, now living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for nearly two decades. Their artwork is rooted in community engagement and social practice, using performance, sculpture, and multimedia to create experiences that expand the definition of art beyond the object and into the realm of dialogue and collective meaning. A core method in their process is call and response: creating work that is in dialogue with—and responsive to—current events, social conditions, and contemporary life.

Ledesma Borrero is the owner of satélite gallery in Milwaukee and currently serves as the City of Green Bay’s Public Arts Coordinator and contributes their leadership to the field through service on boards including Woodland Pattern and co-chair of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. As an educator, they have served as an adjunct professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and as a guest lecturer at institutions including the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts, and Harvard University, among others.  

They are a 2025 40 Under 40 honoree, 2023 gener8tor Art x Sherman Phoenix Fellowship, 2022 Mildred L. Harpole Milwaukee Artist of the Year, and a 2020 Established Artist Mary L. Nohl Fellow. They have held artist residencies with Milwaukee’s Cesar Chavez Drive Business Improvement District and the Milwaukee Public Library. Their work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Haggerty Museum of Art, Racine Art Museum, and through the Museums Association of the Caribbean–and, most notably, within our communities.

Marcela "Xela" García, Associate Creative Director

Marcela “Xela” García is a Xicana artist, cultural organizer, and public servant working at the intersection of arts, education, and community leadership. She is the Executive Director of Walker’s Point Center for the Arts (WPCA) in Milwaukee and was elected to the Milwaukee Public Schools Board of Directors in 2021. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership, English Literature, and Chicanx/Latinx Studies.

Her work draws on Xicana futurism, cultural memory, and ancestral knowledge, using participatory, community-rooted practices to create spaces for healing, resistance, and transformation. Under her leadership, WPCA has expanded its youth arts education programs, deepened partnerships with local schools, and increased opportunities for emerging and established BIPOC artists, guiding the organization through a period of strategic growth that has strengthened its role as a cultural anchor in Milwaukee’s South Side. Her tenure has emphasized cultural equity, community‑centered programming, and accessible arts education for young people across the city.

Xela serves on the City of Milwaukee Arts Board, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies Board of Directors. She is also co-founder of Raíces Revolucionarias, a collective uplifting Latinx mujerxs and cultural power in Milwaukee’s barrios.

Adam Ossers, Creative Content Producer & Curator

Adam Ossers (oh-sirs) is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography, film, writing, installation, and mixed media. Originally from Whitewater, Wisconsin, he studied art and technology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 2016, he founded DocMyArt, a small business offering photography services while building a free digital archive of artists and artworks he has documented.

A storyteller at heart, Adam has spent over a decade creating and exhibiting work centered on place, time, community, and transness. He has collaborated with and supported numerous arts nonprofits, galleries, and cultural workers across Southeast Wisconsin. He currently serves as co-chair of the board at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts and is committed to creating spaces where LGBTQ+ stories can be shared, preserved, and celebrated.

Amal Azzam, Curator

Amal Azzam is a Muslim American interdisciplinary artist based in Milwaukee, WI. Her practice explores the layered complexities of identity, trauma, and freedom through mediums including screen printing, found objects, fiber, and photography. She aims to reflect society back onto itself, showing its contradictions and the struggles of belonging.

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In 2025, Azzam was awarded the Mildred L. Harpole Artist of the Year by the Milwaukee Arts Board. Her work has been nationally exhibited at the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN), the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), Woman Made Gallery (Chicago, IL), and the James Watrous Gallery (Madison, WI). She has also co-curated exhibitions such as Wherever Home Is at the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters and Al-Nisa at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. Her work and story have been featured in WUWM – Milwaukee’s NPR, PBS Wisconsin, Artdose Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, and Cream City Review, where her art appeared on the cover in 2024.

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Amal is also the co-founder of Fanana Banana (“Fanana” meaning female artist in Arabic), a Milwaukee-based arts movement that creates space for Muslim, MENA, and underserved artists to share their work. Fanana Banana has grown into a community hub for exhibitions, panels, and collaborations.

Hannah Samoy, Curator

Hannah Samoy is a Filipino-American artist, archivist, and curator based in Milwaukee. Working with documentary photography and family archives, her practice explores intergenerational memory and diasporic belonging, tracing practices, and beliefs that are shared, altered, or lost across time and distance.

Hannah earned her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. She was a recipient of the 2023 gener8tor Art x Sherman Phoenix Fellowship and completed a two-year curatorial fellowship at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. In 2025, she was named one of Lenscratch’s Top 25 Student Photographers to Watch and has developed community-centered curatorial projects, organizing exhibitions at satélite Gallery and Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. Extending her research practices beyond the studio and museum spaces, she currently serves as an archivist for the CR8TV House, where she is organizing, cataloging, and activating its media library.

Rita Jennings, Curator

Born in China, adopted in the U.S., grown in the suburbs of Chicago. 

Rita Jennings (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist who examines culture where culture is void. Using Food as a muse, Jennings creates landscapes of meals to investigate the intricate relationships between the consumer, the cook, and the culture. Being an international transracial adoptee, she uses Food to analyze the intricate relationship between her heritage, her Chinese self, and her American self. 

Rita received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2025 and currently resides in Milwaukee. She is currently an artist in residence in ArtStart’s 2025-2026 Emerging Artist Residency.

Jeanette Arellano, Curator

Jeanette Arellano is a proud public school art teacher ,cultural worker and artist who identifies as a Latinx cisgender mujerx, at la Escuela Elemental Hayes Bilingüe/Hayes Bilingual Elementary School.She dedicates her efforts with Milwaukee’s Latino community by advocating and creating works on issues  in  cultural social change and immigration. Through her artwork Jeanette has continued to collaborate with artist activist groups such as Voces De Los Artistas, Artbuild Workers, and Raices Revolucionarias and co-founded AyudaMutua MKE, an all volunteer collective that was formed to address food justice for residents on the city’s South Side, for all families without a need for documentation status. Jeanette also teaches citizenship classes to adults through Voces de la Frontera. Jeanette is currently Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) Along with a group of similarly dedicated art teachers, she formed an art education advocacy committee through MTEA, which successfully lobbied the school board to commit to better supporting students and art teachers in the district. In the Art Build Workers, Jeanette creates designs, organizes volunteers, and works on the banner painting crew.

Iuscely Camila Flores, Curator

A community mobilizer from the south side of Minowakiing, aka Milwaukee, a traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland. Iuscely uses her voice and organizing skills to proactively write, generate conversations/events/rallies/workshops that focus on self determination and liberation; Aiming for the same North Star towards freedom and autonomy for all oppressed communities. Currently she serves as the organizing director of the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition who is going to end gerrymandering in Wisconsin once and for all. At her volunteer capacity she organizes Milwaukee’s community defense network. And for beloved community she hosts culturally relevant art workshops.

Daniel Jonas Schuyler, Curator

Daniel Jonas Schuyler is a Milwaukee-based professional ballroom dancer, arts advocate, and proud member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. With more than two decades of experience in ballroom dance, he has earned national titles and specializes in the American Rhythm styles of Cha-Cha, Rumba, Swing, Bolero, and Mambo.

Schuyler holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History, with certificates in American Indian and Indigenous Studies and European Studies, from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He currently serves as Training Director at Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Downtown Milwaukee and is pursuing a master’s degree in Tribal Museums and Culture Center Administration and Arts Administration at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He also serves as a member of the Oneida Arts Board in Wisconsin.