Based in Vienna, Austria, OMAi and the Tagtool Crew lead public art projection events and collaborative light painting workshops around the world.

Markus Dorninger is a digital artist and designer. His work comprises projection interventions as well as stage performances. He invented Tagtool to bring to life the images that inhabit our imagination.

Josef Dorninger is a true-to-the-game Tagtoolista who takes care of business at OMAi. With his extensive experience as youth worker and workshop leader, he explores the educational benefits of creative projectionism.

Matthias Fritz is an active VJ who joined forces with the Dorninger brothers. As a versatile visualist with a strong community focus, he has taught Tagtool to thousands around the world.

William Plummer is fascinated by the way objects can reflect culture, and by extension, a sense of place and belonging. As a gender non-binary individual with American and Taiwanese heritage, they live an experience that falls between standard lines of definition. Their most recent work concerns generational archive, using laborious processes such as beading and weaving to both celebrate lineage and mitigate cultural dissonance.

Mahedi Anjuman is on a journey to find her authentic artistic self through a contemporary avant-garde way. Currently she is living Reno, NV. She was born in Bangladesh, the land of the mystics. Anjuman was selected to represent Bangladeshi contemporary art in an International Contemporary Sculpture and Installation Exhibition OPEN 15 in Italy with artist Yoko Ono (2012). She was accepted to participate in an artist residency program with Transart Institute in 2013 and Picture Berlin in 2018 in Germany. She is researching on contemporary conceptual art related with existential philosophy and experimenting sculpture, video art and performance art. She is curious about being’s psychological impact on action-reaction.

Craig Deppen Auge is an artist currently residing in Kansas City, Missouri. His works explore the relationship between material, shape, color, gesture, mark-making, site and self. He merges and flows between collage, alternative bookmaking, salvage assemblage, and impromptu public intervention. Ephemeral, formal explorations reflect through-lines of self, and potentially activate collective deja-vu. Craig previously attended the ON::VIEW Residency at Sulfur Studios in Savannah, GA. He is a 2019-2020 Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident in Kansas City

David Alpert is an artist and curator living and working in Kansas City. He likes interactions, connections, and exploring feelings. He believes in listening compassionately to yourself and others. Through a visual dialogue, he promotes and researches his interests and beliefs.

Alyzza (they/them) is an angelic troublemaker, moving in the lineage of cultural workers and popular educators. They bring 15 years of experience in building community centered creations from the ground up in Greensboro. From helping bring the first participatory budgeting process to the south with PB Greensboro, curating over a dozen community engaged murals with Greensboro Mural Project (gso_murals), to helping steward local mutual aid efforts as part of Greensboro Mutual Aid (@gso_mutual_aid), they move with a commitment to cultivating the commons and building a transformative and just future.⁠

Alexandra Joye Warren is a native of the Washington, D.C. Metro area. She received her BA degree in Drama with a concentration in Dance/Pre-Medicine from Spelman College and her received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Dance Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Alexandra performed, choreographed, and taught in New York performing with Christal Brown's INSPIRIT, a dance company. Alexandra has been fortunate to work on projects with Urban Bush Women, Bill T. Jones in FELA!, Paloma and Patricia McGregor’s Angela’s Pulse, Maxine Montilus, Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, Maverick Dance Experience, and Van Dyke Dance Group. Now based in Greensboro, NC, JOYEMOVEMENT, was launched in 2014. Alexandra is married to Hashim Warren and mother to Madison and Moses. Alexandra is an Assistant Professor of Performing Arts at Elon University.

Sophie Sanders’ paintings, prints, and fiber works use gesture and iconic imagery to convey the inner potency and tenacity of her subjects. In recent works, she visualizes a space of feminist sanctuary, where individuals can find a sense of restoration and rejuvenation. Other works explore interconnectivity through the visual metaphor of a mandala, the human eye, and brain.

Charis Fleshner is a mixed media visual artist who calls Colorado home, along with Goober cat, the best and worst studio assistant ever. Charis was accepted into University of New Mexico's MFA program under painting and drawing but rebelled against categorization and fell in love with soft sculpture there instead. She is inspired by the middle schoolers she currently teaches art and fiber arts to, color, play, fabric, and intersectional feminism.

Mia Cinelli is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. Driven by curiosity and informed by design methodologies, her practice produces a variety of creative outcomes— including digital typefaces, discursive objects, public installations, and sewn sculptures. In all of her work, she is most interested in designing experiences which engender meaningful interactions and discussions. She’s fascinated by language, longing, history, gesture, and corporeality.

Cara Hagan is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics. In her work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is.

Kelsey Sharpe is a queer multidisciplinary conceptual artist and filmmaker of color from Jersey City, NJ of Jamaican-Indian and Irish-Slavic descent. Sharpe graduated from Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema Studies and Anthropology. Sharpe’s practice examines the intersections between the digital and physical world and the ways in which those spaces alter human connection.

IG: @sharpekelsey

Website: kelseysharpe.com

Thea Cohen (she/her) | Productions Manager 2020-2021

In her creative practice, Thea places an emphasis on process and experimentation and likes to learn by doing. She has a background in multimedia installation, furniture making, and methods of fabrication including woodworking, welding, and machine sewing. Her creations utilize various combinations of set, prop, puppet & costume design, video, animation, sculpture, projection, and performance. Thea enjoys non-linear storytelling and is especially interested in the distortions that occur within repetitions across materials, scale, and time. She is fascinated with functionality (or the lack there of) regarding the ways in which physical characteristics influence movement and provoke assumptions around how to inhabit space. Community is an integral part of Thea’s life, and she is always looking for ways to collaborate in all aspects of creating and living.

Christian Lee is a Puerto Rican comic who draws comics, poetry, and books. Their illustrative work varies from subcultures, to horror, to speculative fiction. Under the skin, the heart of their art and uses fiction as metaphor to explore real human relationships.

As a performer, their drawings accompany them to the stage in mixed-media performances using humor and storytelling to digest their experiences as a Hispanic POC, gender expectations, and grief.

Rae Red (they/them) encourages the radical act of laughter in the face of darkness by translating everyday realities into performance and play. Their work exposes the magic and wonder within our daily functions, from the wizardry of sight and color theory, to the way water invisibly keeps our lives flowing smoothly like a ghost within the walls. They explore subjects that are universal like blood pumping through veins, while bringing light our own mortality and to the death that is continuously occurring around us. Through performances across the United States Rae Red investigates topics that unite viewers by exposing commonalities while examining the disparate facets within them. They have presented their work in every type of space imaginable from dive bars and the backs of donut shops to The Museum of Human Achievement, High Concept Labs, Cucalorus Stage Festival, and The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. They received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Towson University’s Theatre Arts Program.

Shelter Elsewhere Fellow

Kinari Council (he/they) is a Community based mixed media artist, designer located in North Carolina.

He attended NCA&T’S VISART Program and utilizes the skills he learned to create socially conscious art centered around creating awareness and engaging subjects concerning marginalized groups. His passion is to use my creativity to speak to and for those that often go overlooked.

Travis Laughlin (Board President / Executive Committee / Governance Committee Chair)

Former Elsewhere Interim Executive Director Travis Laughlin has worked within the intersection of arts and education for over 25 years. As the former Senior Director of Programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Travis was responsible for the oversight of the Foundation’s various artist support programs and a member of the Foundation’s senior management team. In his previous role as the Art Education Director for the Joan Mitchell Foundation, he served as the visionary and implementer of all Foundation art education initiatives. Prior to his role as Art Education Director, he worked with the Foundation as the Professional Development Program Coordinator creating and implementing comprehensive and equity-focused professional development for the Foundation’s Artist-Teachers. Travis began his career in education as a teacher at an alternative high school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Upon moving to New York City, he worked with the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement House as a Program Coordinator for their after-school pregnancy prevention program. A North Carolina native, Travis earned his BA in Secondary Social Studies Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his MS in Education from Bank Street College.

Nicole Asselin is a textile artist and educator based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her work explores the intersection of craft, technology and the natural world. Asselin’s practice is narrative, telling the story of an object or material and its potential, both real and imagined. Her work utilizes magnification, abstraction, hyper-local material, and a hybrid digital/analog approach to making. She addresses and challenges themes of locality, tradition, innovation, handcraft, and sustainability.

Zach Whitworth (b. 1996) is a scholar, art worker, and educator from southern Oregon, USA. He studies ecology, networks, information, and some other things. He likes books, conversations, long walks, and skipping rocks.