Democracy in the Crossfire began as an investigation into various ways that democracy is threatened by war and societal upheavals that impact societies across the globe. Starting as a partnership with the Diplomatic Courier and the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, the concept for the exhibition expanded to include DC area artists, and an additional partnership with the Millennium Arts Salon to reflect local, regional, and national perspectives. After releasing a “Call for Submissions,” Hillyer selected a diverse range of artists to expand the aesthetic and conceptual interpretation of themes explored in the exhibition. For example, Renée Stout in The American Way, paints the word “judgment” as a critique of those who demonize members of society in an effort to undermine their rights as citizens, while Kristy Little in The RightNOW Project deploys the use of montages in fragmented human forms to emphasize the  local, national, and global struggle for women’s rights. Other works consisting of painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and multimedia address the impact of war through the destruction of land and the displacement of people, while others explore social protests against injustices, and the general quest for freedom amid societal constraints.

Anna U Davis

Anna U Davis (b. Lund, Sweden) is known for her bold, colorful mixed-media paintings, where she explores social inequalities. Davis began expanding her artistic practice and developing her signature “Frocasian” characters after moving to Washington, D.C. in the 1990s. Frocasians appear in her art as abstracted grey-toned figures, inspired by her interracial marriage and her strongly held belief in social justice. Davis is a two-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and has received multiple fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2020, Davis was featured on the cover of the scholarly journal Feminist Studies. Recent solo shows include the Swedish American Museum (Chicago), Galerie Myrtis (Baltimore), the Embassy of Sweden (Washington, D.C.), and Davis Gallery (Copenhagen). Her work has been shown in additional solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Cuba (13th Havana Biennial) and Qatar and is held in public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe. In 2023 Davis was invited to speak about art and female empowerment during the State of the Arts Night at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. Davis lives and works in Washington, D.C.

Carter Wynne

Carter Wynne is a self-taught artist and apprentice curator based in Washington D.C., practicing primarily with acrylic paint and digital illustration. She utilizes visual rhetoric as a means of challenging hegemonic structures and as a subversive tool to amplify social discourse. Wynne graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College, double-majoring in Art History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has exhibited artwork in various galleries and art spaces around the DMV, and currently serves as the Apprentice Curator at the DC Art Center’s Curatorial Initiative.

Helen Zughaib

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, living in the Middle East and Europe before coming to study at Syracuse University, earning her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Her paintings are in public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, US Consulate in Vancouver, American Embassy in Iraq, Arab American National Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Barjeel Art Foundation and DC Art Bank. She received the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship award each year since 2015. Her work has been in Art in Embassy exhibitions in Abu Dhabi, Brunei, Nicaragua, Mauritius, Iraq, Belgium, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sweden. She served as Cultural Envoy to Palestine, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Her paintings have been gifted to heads of state by President Obama and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The John F. Kennedy Center/REACH, selected Helen for the 2021-2024 Inaugural Social Impact Practice residency.

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, living in the Middle East and Europe before coming to study at Syracuse University, earning her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Her paintings are in public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, US Consulate in Vancouver, American Embassy in Iraq, Arab American National Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Barjeel Art Foundation and DC Art Bank. She received the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship award each year since 2015. Her work has been in Art in Embassy exhibitions in Abu Dhabi, Brunei, Nicaragua, Mauritius, Iraq, Belgium, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sweden. She served as Cultural Envoy to Palestine, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Her paintings have been gifted to heads of state by President Obama and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The John F. Kennedy Center/REACH, selected Helen for the 2021-2024 Inaugural Social Impact Practice residency.

Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis (Greek, b.1936) was a performance artist and sculptor associated with the Arte Povera movement. He attended college in Athens before traveling to Rome in 1956 and enrolling at the Academy of Arts. His earliest works experimented with stenciled numbers, letters, and words on canvas, eventually incorporating found objects and staging performances that reflected his ideas about society and politics.

In 1967, he became associated with Arte Povera, a movement dedicated to attacking the established norms of government, industry, and culture. During this time, Kounellis increasingly created works that juxtaposed disparate materials, including stone, cotton, coal, bed-frames, and doors.

Kounellis has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Paris Biennale, Documenta, the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and the Sydney Biennale. His work is also included in prestigious public collections, such as the Tate Gallery in London, UK; the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; and the Musèe National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France.

Kirsty Little

Kirsty Little is a Sculptress and art activist who strives to find honest organic movement in both spheres. Formerly a circus aerialist from the UK for two decades, she when a move to US in 2011 to begin her new path to becoming a sculptor in the art world. She is drawn to working with themes of womankind, organic anatomy, and the struggling environment. She makes sculpture with porcelain, wood and wire, and mixed media. Her art activism works with communities and focuses on raising awareness of the plastic pollution disaster and the Women’s Equality crisis, through huge installations. She was an artist in residence at Otis St Studios and is a founding member of the Chevy Chase artists group. Her works have been shown at the Phillips collection DC, The Athenaeum VA, The Fisher Gallery NOVA, Honfleur gallery and the Katzen gallery—American University DC. She was lead artist on the RightNOW project – a women’s equality interactive public art installation with over 1000 participants in MD. She is in the Guinness book of World Records with the most aerialists choreographed on silks. She teaches aerial skills at various studios in MD.

Nebojša Šerić Shoba

Nebojša Šerić Shoba was born in Sarajevo in 1968. He studied at the School of Applied Arts from 1983-1987, then Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts from 1989 – 1992. In 1999 he moved to Amsterdam to attend Rijksakademie, an international two-year artist residency and studio program. 

Nebojša was conscripted to fight in defense of Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War – an experience that profoundly impacted his life and subsequent work. Underlying his practice is the renunciation of the idea of a fixed national history; he is concerned with the constant flux between place and its past. He has exhibited internationally at venues including Jeude Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle, Bern; Mass MoCA, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris; MUMOK, Wien; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; P.S. 1, and the 50th Venice Biennale.

Orna Ben-Ami

Orna Ben-Ami is an Israeli artist who joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1971 and became the first female military correspondent for the Army Radio station. Following her military service, she was a reporter and news editor for the Israeli Broadcasting Authority radio station and enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she studied International Relations and History.

Currently based in Israel, Ben-Ami transitioned from working with words to working with materials when she began learning gold and silversmith at the Jerusalem Technological Center. Between 1990 and 1992, she studied sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art located in Washington, D.C., and then continued her studies in Art History at Tel Aviv University. Since 1994, Ben-Ami has been engaged in sculpting and uses iron as the main raw material for her artistic expression.

Ben-Ami has had solo exhibitions in museums all around the U.S., as well as in galleries and museums in Israel, Italy, France, Taiwan, and Mexico. In addition, forty of her outdoor sculptures are placed in public spaces in Israel and Germany. Shimon Peres, the late President of the State of Israel wrote: “Orna, you prove that there is nothing softer than iron, and nothing stronger than a woman.”

Patrick G. Ryan

An award-winning photojournalist and photo editor, Patrick Ryan's career focused on Congress, the White House and the campaign trail as photo editor at The Hill Newspaper for six years and subsequently as founding photo editor of Politico when it launched. As a freelance editorial photographer, his work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Congressional Quarterly, The Washington Times, Gourmet, Scientific American, The Chronicle of Higher Education,  Real Clear Politics, the late lamented DCist, etc  A solo exhibition, "Red Carpet DC: The Capital and the Cult of Celebrity" premiered at the Embassy of the Czech Republic. He's currently Photo & Video Manager at The Catholic University of America. Instagram @hillpix

Renée Stout

Renee Stout grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980. In 1985 she moved to Washington, D.C. and began to explore the roots of her African American heritage. She looks to the belief systems of African peoples and their descendants throughout the African Diaspora, as well as to the world and her immediate environment, for the inspiration to create works that encourage self-examination, self-empowerment and self-healing. The lives of Stout’s imaginary characters unfold in a variety of media, including painting, mixed media sculpture, photography and installation. The recipient of awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Stout has shown her work in solo and group shows throughout the United States, and in England, Russia and the Netherlands.

Sebastian Rich

Sebastian Rich has been a photographer /cameraman in hard news, documentary and current affairs all his working life.  He joined Independent Television News (UK) in 1980 and developed a gift for being in the right place at the right time on some of the world’s biggest breaking news stories; he gained a reputation, not just as an uncompromising cameraman in the theatre of war, but also as an insightful and highly talented photographer. Jon Snow, the highly regarded British television journalist, describes Sebastian as “Probably the finest news cameraman and photographer of his time… his camera work is amongst the most sensitive I have ever witnessed.” NBC News calls Sebastian “The consummate professional, a seasoned veteran combat photographer."

He received high acclaim and an award from the ‘Rory Peck Foundation’ for his work with U.S. Marine bomb disposal teams in Afghanistan. Sebastian was honoured with the prestigious Royal Television Society’s Cameraman of the Year award for his dramatic pictures of war and famine throughout Africa.

During his career Sebastian has filmed and photographed every major war and conflict: El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Iran Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Lebanon, The Gulf, Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq, Syria Ukraine the list goes on. He has been wounded several times and was kidnapped and held hostage while on assignment in Beirut.

http://www.sebastianrichphotography.com

Shamila Chaudhary

Shamila Chaudhary is a foreign policy professional who worked in the US Department of State, US Agency for International Development, and the White House National Security Council. After working for over a decade in the US government on policy issues related to the 9/11 attacks, Chaudhary began to explore policy issues through the creative process. A mostly self-taught multimedia artist, she studied photography at The George Washington University Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, co-edited the documentary photography book UnPresidented: The Inauguration of Donald J. Trump and the People’s Response, and served as president of the Board of Directors for “Focus on the Story,” an organization using visual storytelling to highlight critical issues, bridge cultural gaps, and spark social change. At Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, she served as executive director of “The Big Picture,” a forum exploring international affairs through arts and culture.

Steven Cummings

Steven M. Cummings is a photographer and documentarian who has a studio in Northeast, Washington, DC. He was born in Okinawa, Japan in 1965 and traveled through Europe with his military family as a child. Cummings depicts black life in Washington, DC and shoots almost exclusively in black and white. He captures people as they are, outside the studio, in natural light, and going about the business of living. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010 with an M.F.A. in Photographic and Electronic Media. Exhibitions by Cummings include D.C. Undercover: Photographs by Steven M. Cummings, Artuare, and Chocolate City Rest in Peace.

Tracy Meehleib

Tracy Meehleib is an American photographer. Her interest in photography started as a child, making portraits with a family Polaroid in the 70s in San Diego, CA, continued through junior high and high school working with a twin-lens reflex in B&W, and through her university days at UCSD. Many of Meehleib's influences derive from image archives and collections that she worked with as a visual materials cataloger in the Library of Congress' Prints & Photographs Division during the 90s. Meehleib has lived in Adams Morgan and worked in DC for more than 35 years--and her interest in DC residents, their lives, and history, continues to deepen. Meehleib's work reflects her experience as a long-term DC resident, the social justice and human rights actions that she has witnessed here, and local and national events in this capital city.

Vahram Aghasyan

Vahram Aghasyan was born in 1974 and studied at Yerevan Academy of Fine Arts, Yerevan, Armenia. Poetry sits quite comfortably alongside the social content of Aghasyan’s work. It is very difficult to categorise him as a documentary maker because thanks to his poetic approach to reality, one can sense in his works a caution towards and an avoidance of dry and bare restraints through the use of such media as video and photography. This poetry is expressed in his slow tempo, in the absence of any sort of action, in freeze frames that lend a sad and melancholic mood to his video work and even in his use of poetic text itself.

If one were to trace Vahram Aghasyan’s work from its very beginnings to the present day then one could say that all of his work is united by a single philosophy – the philosophy of time. Because the unfinished nature of this architecture is what is so attractive to the artist due to the fact that it allows him to finish building it himself using his imagination. And this is a type of unfinished game, a game played with eternity.

Zoe Kosmidou

Zoe Kosmidou is a fine art photographer now focusing on alternative photography processes with a strong dedication to preserving and reviving historic photographic techniques.

Enchanted by the beauty of nature and the world, she travels globally (but also in her backyard) in search of captivating moments and subjects. She uses her camera to capture that very special image that intrigues her interest and evokes memorable emotions.

Kosmidou studied fine arts photography at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, The Corcoran School of Art and Film and Media Arts, and the School of Communication, American University, Washington D.C.  She is a long-time member of the Photographic Society of America (PSA) and participated in exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.

I’m an artist and mother focusing on homemaking and gender roles. I use repurposed domestic materials salvaged from the homes of women. The work reclaims the disposable through decoration. It draws attention to the overwhelming and constant nature of homemaking and how those tasks relate to labor hierarchies, labor distribution, and pay. When I clean my home, rags, mop pads, and dryer sheets have utilitarian value. However, when my labor is worked through these objects, they are widely regarded as worthless. Societal norms suggest that the only tangible result of my time and action is garbage. As part of an ongoing mission to make women’s labor visible, I save used cleaning supplies to record my dirt and to build a portrait of my family. Through craft, I rescue the disposable and imbue it with the tenderness I feel toward my family without disguising the dirty truth of gender inequalities in the labor force.

April Webb was born and raised in Florida. She received her undergraduate degrees from Flagler College in St. Augustine and her MFA from Florida State University in Tallahassee. Webb’s work has been exhibited internationally. In recent years, her work has been shown at CICA (Czong Institute for Contemporary Art) Museum, Rollins Museum of Art, The University of Central Florida Art Gallery, and The B-Complex in collaboration with Strange Matter Atlanta. Her work is on permanent display at the Florida State University Coastal Marine Laboratory. In 2022, Webb was a finalist for Pathways: The Carlos Malamud Prize, and in 2020, she received the Jim Boone Endowed Art Scholarship which rewards exceptional achievements to graduate students making work about social justice issues. Webb currently works as an adjunct professor and studio manager at Florida State University. She teaches in the Foundations Department and The Painting and Drawing Department.

As a lens-based artist, my practice focuses on creating portraits and large handmade prints in the darkroom. I use printing techniques like platinum palladium, silver gelatin, and cyanotype to make my prints look painterly.

I value the importance of capturing and safeguarding the narratives of the individuals I photograph. My proclivity towards long-term photography projects allows me to delve deep into human experiences and share stories. I use both digital and film cameras to capture these stories, and also employ a range of hand-based editing techniques.

I plan every detail from the photo shoot to final printing. My process relies heavily on in-depth interviews and creative sessions to gain trust and insight into the people and subjects I photograph. These processes enable me to grasp the essence of the story I share, focusing on moments that stir emotions, movements that reveal vulnerability, and times that encourage deep introspection.

Redeat Wondemu’s journey began in 2005 in a university darkroom where she shot film for the first time. After a decade hiatus, she re-entered the darkroom and began to refine her printing skills through internships and residencies. Traveling to her home country of Ethiopia has since allowed her to tell long-form, visual stories of women using both digital and film techniques.

Redeat is currently a scholar in residence at the Hillwood Museum and a faculty member at Photoworks, where she recently served as an Artist in Residence. She just became a Humanities DC: Community Culture and Heritage grant recipient for her photography series, “The Games We Played”. 

Redeat’s photography has shown in many solo and group exhibitions across the DMV and she continues to prioritize community engagement alongside. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and numerous other local and national publications.