Queer Spectra
Artist Residency
2025 Cohort
You can see the artists’ work at the showing January 16th and 17th, 2026 at the Sorenson Unity Center. Stay tuned for more details.
Alise Anderson
Alise Anderson, originally from Houston, TX, is an artist and educator living in Salt Lake City, UT. She received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute with a focus on New Genres and Sculpture. She received the outstanding student award in both the New Genres department and the Sculpture department. She has exhibited in venues both locally and nationally. Her work was selected to be a part of the White Columns Artist Registry. Since 2016 she has participated in the following artist residencies: CalArts in Los Angeles, CA; San Jose Museum of Textiles in San Jose, CA; Recology in San Francisco, CA and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, UT, and Uncommon in Jackson Hole, WY. Anderson’s work has been published in Southwest Contemporary Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and Kole Magazine. Her work was published into a book titled “My Grandma Is a Meme” published by UMOCA press. It included the exhibition as well as related archives and both an essay and interview from the director and curator of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Most recently she had a show at Finch Lane Gallery in Salt Lake City, UT. She has been accepted into the 2025 Canopy mentorship program with NY Crit Club, where she will participate in a year-long cohort alongside ten other selected artists.
Jade Swayne
Jade Swayne has always had an eagerness to create. Since childhood they have eagerly and resourcefully used what's around them to express themself through art. Whether it's writing, spoken word performance, public speaking, photography, zine making, or film the fountain of Jade's inspiration is their inner world. Being Black, Queer, Non-Binary, (They/Them) and Trans -- Jade holds many identities, and seeks to use their art to showcase their inner exploration of said identities to aid others in understanding their own internal topography. Jade seeks to utilize visual, spoken and written art, as well as event curation, social awareness projects, activism, and community organizing to play their part in making interconnected existence sustainable in our current political, social, and environmental climate.
Mālia
Mālia is a queer, disabled Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist and disability advocate, passionate about challenging how we approach, perceive, and integrate disability and queerness as they pertain to indigeneity into our community structures. They are committed to generating conversations that lead to change and to creating counter-narratives about what it means to be a queer, disabled revolutionary in a society that focuses on what disabled people lack rather than what we liberate. Our very existence within a space unearths the flaws buried beneath.
St. Moan
St. Moan, the solo music project of actor and interdisciplinary artist Ava Kostia, evokes a keening sincerity and haunting warmth. From her exploration of life, love, and loss, St. Moan sings from the unspoken threads that connect us all. Her ability to speak through the lens of a character has led her to create original music, perform, and write for stage and screen productions across the USA and UK. St. Moan's music is available at https://stmoan.bandcamp.com and at https://www.saintmoan.com.