Jack Straw New Media Gallery

River Coello is a Guayaquil-born writer, translator, performer, facilitator, speaker, and researcher based in Orlando. They are the author of HAMPI, a multilingual, multimedia collection exploring their reconnection with the Andean cosmovision, published by For the Birds Trapped in Airports. Their previous collections, faith/fe and self/ser, were published by Homie House Press. Their writing is featured in the eXpuestXs anthology by El Beisman Press; the Chicago Reader’s Poetry Corner by the Poetry Foundation; and the Sweeter Voices Still anthology by Belt Publishing. River has earned an Independent Publisher Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, a Parry/Billman Fine Arts Award, and a Canada Council Translation Grant. River has held residencies at Lambda Literary and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts—and, most recently, Jack Straw Cultural Center.

New Media Gallery 2025-26: HAMPI (“medicine” in Quechua), a multilingual, multimedia, autobiographical, and autoethnographic project that chronicles a journey of ancestral reconnection in conversation with the Andean cosmovision

KTNA (かたな) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and musician based in Seattle, operating under the creative vision of Entangled Oceans. As the first Black female visual artist with major works displayed at Western Washington University, KTNA uses art to transform spaces and create pathways to healing and resilience. Supported by the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute through the Create and Thrive grant, KTNA continues to explore the intersections of art, community, and storytelling.

Her visual art practice is a dynamic blend of large-scale murals, textile installations, and immersive public art experiences. KTNA’s upcoming kelp forest textile installation will envelop audiences in a world of woven narratives, using color, texture, and form to explore the deep connections between people, history, and nature. Each piece is a sanctuary where stories are honored and communities are given room to breathe, reflect, and reimagine.

Musically, KTNA co-leads Kataniica, a genre-defying band that merges hip-hop, electronic, and sound bath experiences. The band’s sound is rooted in Indigenous, Black, and queer joy, offering transformative sonic experiences that heal and invigorate. Their song “No Me Digas Nada” is a raw and powerful exploration of boundaries and self-preservation, blending ethereal melodies with potent lyrics that confront external pressures and reclaim space for truth and authenticity. The track is an anthem for those seeking to navigate complex emotions and find their voice amid the noise.

During the Jack Straw Residency, KTNA will intertwine her visual and musical practices, crafting immersive experiences that draw audiences into a world of art, sound, and storytelling. Through Entangled Oceans, she continues to cultivate creative spaces where resilience blooms, offering pathways to healing through communal engagement and artistic expression.

New Media Gallery 2025-26: Entangled Oceans, the culmination of art, music, and design to create a showcase of the seas through joy and awareness of self

Mia Mulvey’s studio process investigates the environment, wonder, and material and digital technologies. Conceptually, her work addresses the recording of time, climate change, and our relationship to remote landscapes. This line of inquiry is supported by her overall creative practice and interest in the interplay between art/science and ceramics/technology. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA from Arizona State University. She is currently a professor of studio art at the University of Denver. Her work has been shown in numerous venues such as the Denver Art Museum (Colorado), the American Museum of Ceramic Art (California), ASU Ceramic Research Center (Arizona), and Goodwin Fine Art (Colorado). She is a recipient of a Colorado Council on the Arts fellowship, a PROF grant from the University of Denver, and residencies at Kohler Arts in Industry (Wisconsin), Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center (Denmark), The Arctic Circle (Svalbard), and The Montello Foundation (Nevada).

New Media Gallery 2025-26: I Contain My Outside, a project that explores the use of sound in sculptural, interactive artworks and their playback through nontraditional devices such as paper speakers and conductive/resonate sculptural objects

Tara Youngborg is a Maryland-based artist, educator, curator, and arts administrator. She has a B.A. in Art and Art History from St Mary’s College of Maryland and will receive an MFA in Studio Art from Towson University in May 2025. Her work uses digital technologies to create video and audio compositions that are combined into immersive installations that explore place, memory, and technology. She is also the manager of the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she directs the exhibition programming and has advised the Contemporary Art Purchase Program since 2018. She has shown her work in solo exhibitions at the George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and the University of Mary Washington Media Wall, and in group exhibitions from coast to coast in the United States, internationally in Australia, and always on the web at tarayoungborg.com.

New Media Gallery 2025-26: not a town but a landing page, an installation about a ghost town that questions the role of data, archives, and recreation in understanding place, loss and memory