Above artwork by Alonso Galue
WRD Emcee
Collins Oteba is a Ugandan immigrant who moved to Chicago in 2018. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business information technology and a diploma in sustainable development in sub–Saharan Africa as a leadership course from Drake university in IOWA. He is currently working for BMO Harris bank as a customer experience representative but has a dream to be a software engineer and AWS solutions architect. He has a passion for philanthropy and has helped with community work and volunteering in his community. He loves philanthropy, nature, working out and finally he also does not mind pet cuddles.
Alonso Galue (Venezuelan, b. 1994, Chicago Based) BFA at University of Los Andes, is a multidisciplinary artist whose experimental use of traditional painting and sculpture articulates speeches on labor, existential crisis, and totalitarianism. In his Immigrants to go series, for example, he uses clay to portray the faces of food industry workers on floating plates with actual food. As the exhibition progresses, the food rots, creating an uncomfortable situation for the observer who faces the hidden laborers.
芷嫻 Chih-Hsien (Joan) Lin Chih-Hsien Lin, a native Taiwanese, is a movement humanist, dancer, and psychotherapist/clinical counselor. She enjoys and appreciates that she gets to experience diverse populations and vibrant communities through her professional work in both psychotherapy and performing arts worlds. As an immigrant artist, Chih-Hsien works passionately with an integrative and authentic sense of self and movement directions. She forges continuous collaboration into inclusive embodiment and emotional experiences in her own being and dance making. Chih-Hsien believes that by engaging in embodied realities, wholeness and fulfillment can be brought forth. 
Samir Al Omar سمير العمر  resettled in Chicago in 2017 from Turkey. He left Syria in 2013 from Kufrnebel, a town known as the symbol of the revolution. He is multi-talented as a musician, singer, and songwriter in Arabi and Turkish. Samir's performance is sponsored by the Syrian Community Network, which was established in 2015 as a refugee support organization in Chicago. SCN offers case management, ESL, after school programming, teen focus groups, and more.
Clever Kenese is originally from Chicago, and currently going to school at Harold Washington. She is a professional singer and songwriter. Through my music I want to inspire and educate not only the youth, also people of all ages, so that they can be the best version of themselves. My passion is to empower young girls to be leaders, and to be successful in their communities.
Rubén Pachas and Jessica Loyaga began to learn the dances of his ancestral Peruvian cultures at a very young age in Peru, where they later began to research dance and to perform as a professional cultural dancers on stage. In 2009 they created the Peruvian Folk Dance Center in Oak Park. In 2020 Pachas was awarded an Master of Art in Art Education by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, having conducted a study of and written his thesis on the teaching of Peruvian indigenous dances to non-indigenous people as a way of recovering ancestral values and culture
Abdullah Zaheri is originally from Kabul, Afghanistan. He came to Chicago in 2015 with his wife and 7 children. Abdullah started to teach himself how to play the tabla, piano, and keyboard in 2008 in his free time in Afghanistan when he wasn’t able to find work. In Afghanistan, Abdullah was invited to perform at parties and this was a way to earn money. Now he continues to sing and create music at home and at parties because it makes him happy. He sings in Farsi, Pastho, Urdu, and Arabic to recreate Afghan music from home.
Tzu-Tsen Wu is a native Taiwanese who appreciates and performs a remarkably wide range of international music, from Taiwanese music, Chinese music, and Western classical to jazz, and contemporary pop around the world. Specializing on Chinese zhong ruan and liuqin, Tzu-Tsen plays a variety of instruments, mostly plucked instruments, such as ukulele, guitar, piano, banjo, Thai Jakhee. In addition to performing, Tzu-Tsen composes and directs music groups that explore and adopt musical idioms from all over the world. She is currently a graduate student at Northern Illinois University majoring in world music (performance) and is a member of the newly founded Chicago Immigrant Orchestra and Wild Blue Ukulele Orchestra.    
Maya Odim's work as an artist and extracurricular educator has been designed to meet people where they are, to investigate relationships between movement and poetry in performance and to normalize dance experience. Working in both Spanish and English, Maya purposefully directs productions, teaches classes, and collaborates in workshops and to mount performances in ‘non traditional’ performance spaces to both remind people of what they’ve known and to challenge the occidental framing of performance as it is known. Maya works in K-12 schools, with community based organizations, nonprofits and individuals to share and create space for poetry and dance. Maya holds a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and lives and works in Chicago, traveling often. Maya is African American, Igbo and a dual citizen of Nigeria and has an Afro-Cuban lineage. More of Maya's work can be found here: www.mayaodim.com and on Instagram here: @maya.odim 
Seres de Luz (Beings of Light) is an interconnection of Latin folk, Jazz, rock and psychedelic sounds that invite people to heal with music and lyrics.