Gatherings

Julian Rosefeldt

Julian Rosefeldt is a Berlin-based artist and filmmaker whose meticulously staged film and video installations examine the structures and beliefs that shape society. Trained as an architect, he approaches film through composition, scale, and spatial choreography, using humor, satire, and theatricality to explore ideology, history, capitalism, and identity.

His work has been presented internationally and is held in major collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the National Gallery of Australia. Since 2011, Rosefeldt has been Professor of Digital and Time-Based Media at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich.

Mariana Villegas

Mariana Villegas is a chef whose practice is shaped by a constant curiosity for flavor, place, and the cultures that surround food. Born in Querétaro and raised in Monterrey, she trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York before working in the kitchens of Union Square Café, Blackbird, Pujol, and Cosme, where she served as chef de cuisine. Her culinary perspective was further expanded through ten months of travel across Southeast Asia and work at Fulgurances L'Adresse in Paris and with Grupo Contramar in Mexico and California.

Villegas later became executive chef of Contramar and Entremar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco. Lina, her first independent project, brings these experiences together through a cuisine that is expressive, vibrant, and deeply focused on flavor, color, aroma, and texture. The restaurant has been recognized by the MICHELIN Guide, establishing Lina as a distinctive voice in Mexico's contemporary culinary landscape.

Laura Kirar

Laura Kirar builds worlds. Her practice moves fluidly across contemporary art, design, architecture, performance, hospitality, and cultural initiatives. From immersive art installations and collectible design to the restoration of the nineteenth-century Hacienda Subin and the transformation of Mesón Hidalgo, her work explores how material, place, and the spaces we inhabit shape perception, memory, and everyday life. Her social practice extends this inquiry through collaborations with makers and traditions rooted in Yucatán, where she is based.

Kirar studied sculpture and interior architecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over more than twenty-five years, she has developed an internationally recognized multidisciplinary practice. Her work has been presented at and through Museo Tamayo, Design Miami, Salón Art + Design, LongHouse Reserve, AGO Projects, Zona MACO, Maison Gerard, The Winter Show, and Centro Cultural Olimpo.

Julian Rosefeldt

Julian Rosefeldt is a Berlin-based artist and filmmaker whose meticulously staged film and video installations examine the structures and beliefs that shape society. Trained as an architect, he approaches film through composition, scale, and spatial choreography, using humor, satire, and theatricality to explore ideology, history, capitalism, and identity.

His work has been presented internationally and is held in major collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and the National Gallery of Australia. Since 2011, Rosefeldt has been Professor of Digital and Time-Based Media at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich.

Katinka Kleijn

Katinka Kleijn is a Dutch-born cellist and interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves between improvisation, composition, and performance art. Classically trained, she places the cello in unexpected contexts to explore relationships between instrument and body, sound and environment, performer and audience. Her work has involved submerged cellos, shared electrical circuits, brainwaves, film, and collective improvisation.

A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, Kleijn has performed as a soloist with major orchestras and presented work at Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. The New York Times has called her "a player of formidable expressive gifts."

Carn Crua

Carla Romero Sans, known as Carn Crua, is a Barcelona-born performer, actress, singer, and songwriter whose work moves freely between music, poetry, theatre, and performance. Working with voice and a loop station, she constructs layered compositions live, building rhythm, language, song, and theatrical gesture into performances that unfold in the moment.

Across more than twenty years, Carn Crua has performed throughout Spain and Mexico, from experimental music and independent performance to cabaret and contemporary dance. She has appeared in productions by La Veronal and collaborated with electronic music producer Yulia Niko on Fire In My Soul. Her practice is rooted in improvisation and transformation, with the stage as a place where music, character, and performance continually reshape one another.

Kieren Gadhia

Kieren Gadhia is a writer whose work explores consciousness, selfhood, and the ways identity and belief shape how we understand ourselves. Moving between philosophy, poetry, and personal inquiry, his writing draws from years of solitude, literary study, silent Vipassana meditation, and time in the Brazilian Amazon.

Gadhia is the author of An Antidote to Me: Essays on Being and Becoming Whole. Across his work, he returns to questions of attention, transformation, and what it means to live with a deeper awareness of oneself.

Rebekah Heller

Rebekah Heller is a virtuosic bassoonist, conductor, and composer who has spent her career reconsidering what a bassoonist can be. Stepping away from a conventional orchestral path, she built a practice around living composers, commissioning, improvisation, and experimentation, treating the bassoon as territory still open to discovery. Her work moves through electronics, ensemble, and performance, at times incorporating space, memory, clothing, and light to expand how the instrument can be played, heard, and encountered.

Heller has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, and New World Symphony. The New Yorker has called her "an impressive solo bassoonist," and The New York Times has praised her "flair." A longtime member and Co-Artistic Director Emerita of the International Contemporary Ensemble, she has helped bring hundreds of new works into being. She teaches bassoon and improvisation at Mannes School of Music at The New School. Her 2026 album, Righteous Rage, pushes further into the possibilities of an instrument she continues to reinvent.