Review Panel

Marcus Civin received an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine, and a BA in Theater from Brown University. He is Assistant Dean in the School of Art at Pratt Institute. His writing about art and interviews with artists have appeared in publications including Artforum, Art in America, Art Papers, Afterimage, Boston Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Camera Austria, Damn Magazine, and Maake Magazine. Poetry and short stories have appeared in The Capilano Review, Clementine, Full Bleed, Memoir Mixtapes, Mirage Period(ical), Nerve Lantern, The Paper, Urbanite, and No, Dear, among other publications. He has lectured, read, exhibited, and performed in classrooms, basements, bars, parking lots, parks, apartments, galleries, museums, and online. He is often interested in artists whose work addresses or involves politics, protest, history, community engagement, education, unusual materials, performance, text, collage, and humor. He grew up in Baltimore and appears ever-so-briefly in Prince’s last video about the city. You can find much of his writing at marcuscivinwriting.com, or on Instagram @marcuscivinwriting.

Folasade Ologundudu is a curator, podcast creator and writer, based in New York, whose practice seeks to uncover ideas related to the universal human condition. She has written art criticism, profiles, interviews, and essays for ArtForum, ARTnews, Cultured Magazine, Frieze, Photograph Magazine, among other publications. Ologundudu is also the founder of Light Work, a creative media platform rooted at the intersection of art, education, and culture. Through her podcast, Everything Is Connected, she holds conversations with artists, curators, and entrepreneurs deeply rooted in visual arts, and community building. Light Work is a US-based creative media platform at the intersection of art, education, and culture. Founded by Folasade Ologundudu, Light Work, collaborates and partners with artists, curators, academics, and creative contemporaries through engaging conversation on art, and culture, and the state of our society capturing the energy and complexities of the contemporary moment. Light Work takes a ‘community first’ approach to storytelling, archiving, and building new narratives by recognizing that culture starts in communities. Confronting the challenges our society faces in an increasingly technology-driven, resources-extracting world, Light Work uses the power of conversation and deep storytelling to develop thought-provoking intellectual conversations that spark inspiration. Through intimate conversation, engaging dialogue, and stimulating content, Light Work seeks to inspire the next generation of artists, creators, and cultural producers, to lead their best lives.

August Thompson was born and raised in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, before he attended middle school in West LA. After surviving California optimism, he moved to NYC for his bachelor’s, studied in Berlin, and taught English in Spain for two years. He recently received his MFA at New York University’s creative writing program as a Goldwater Fellow. His debut novel, Anyone's Ghost, releases with Penguin Press in July of 2024. 

Samantha Hunt is the author of five books. The Unwritten Book, a non-fiction investigation into our relationships with the dead; The Seas, about a girl who might be a mermaid; The Dark Dark, a collection of short fictions; Mr. Splitfoot, a ghost story; and The Invention of Everything Else about Nikola Tesla. Hunt is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize and a blue-ribbon winner of the Montgomery Place Pie contest. She has been a finalist for the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner. Hunt teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She is mother to three, sister to five. She is a gardener and beekeeper; a singer and forest enthusiast in upstate New York.

Berlin Reed is an independent curator, author, community organizer, and chef based outside of Tiohtià:Ke/Montréal. A Brooklyn transplant raised near Seattle, his roots in the language of gastronomy sprouted in 2009, when Berlin began curating multidimensional pop-ups in artistic ecosystems from San Francisco to Brooklyn to Montreal — culminating in the 2013 publication of his memoir, The Ethical Butcher: How Thoughtful Eating Can Change Your World. As a 2023 fellow of both the Toronto-based Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism and the New York-based Art for Artists, Berlin creates spaces and opportunities for interactions between multiple disciplines without regard for conventional lines between curator and artist, always seeking to clear space for a more challenging, engaging, and immersive audience experience. His collaborative installations with transdisciplinary artists take advantage of the ability to infiltrate the viewer’s world through sensorial works. Berlin’s current focus is “On Rupture,” a curatorial research project consisting of experimental practice, collective projects, and exhibition development in residencies across the world in the interest of interrogating the role of independent curators in dismantling oppressive norms within art institutions.

Alex Santana is a writer, editor, and curator with an interest in conceptual art, political intervention, and public participation. Currently based in New York but originally from Newark, NJ, she has held positions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Joan Mitchell Center, Mana Contemporary, and Alexander Gray Associates. Her interviews and essays have been published by Hyperallergic, CUE Art Foundation, Terremoto Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Precog Magazine, NXTHVN, and Artsy. She is currently Associate Editor for Intervenxions, a publication of The Latinx Project at NYU.

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