Altered States
Saturday, October 17th
1- 5pm EST
KMAC Contemporary Art Museum
715 W. Main Street
Free to the public
KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, in partnership with the Great Meadows Foundation, will host “Altered States of America,” a symposium on contemporary art and self-reliance in the United States.
During a time of precarity, art-makers and viewers may become inundated with information and images whose sources remain hard to name or confirm. Certainty about who, where, and how we are, seems increasingly elusive. What role can artists and art play in navigating these tectonic shifts? How can art serve as a space for transformation, for transcendence onto more steady ground?
The Great Meadows Foundation Symposium Series is sponsored by the Great Meadows Foundation, which funds visual artists and arts professionals and continues the generous legacy of philanthropist Al Shands. The Great Meadows Foundation launched its statewide annual symposium series to advance critical contemporary art discourse across Kentucky. Each participating region hosts a unique program centered around the shared overarching theme, “Altered States.”
The Altered States Louisville Symposium, the third event of the series, has been organized by Leslie Millar, Alice Gray Stites, Vincent Tiley, and Joey Yates, with operating support from KMAC Contemporary Art Museum. The next iteration of the series will take place at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green on November 18, 2026.
The program consists of two panels and a keynote address. At 7pm, there will be a special performance by Arewà Basit at B-side, located at 1076 E Washington St, 2nd floor, Louisville, KY 40206 (above Decade restaurant).
Speakers
David Antonio Cruz uses painting and performance to explore the visibility and intersectionality of brown, black and queer bodies. He received his BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and his MFA from Yale University. He attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and completed the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum, New York.
Arewà Basit is a story-teller, musician, and performer whose work moves between sound, image, dance, and the divine feminine. Basit rose to fame as the subject of an Amy Sherald portrait, “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024). As both a creative and model, Arewà has become a vital voice at the intersection of trans identity, Black aesthetics, and futurist performance.
Letitia Quesenberry lives and works in Louisville, KY. She earned a BFA from the University of Cincinnati. The investigation of memory, sight and perception has preoccupied Quesenberry for over three decades, driving a body of work that spans painting, photography, sculpture and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include New Discretions, New York; David Smith Gallery, Denver; and group exhibitions at Eric Firestone Gallery, New York; and Galeria Itinera Arte, Rio de Janeiro. She is the recipient of grants from SouthArts, Great Meadows Foundation, as well as the Al Smith Fellowship, the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, and the Vermont Studio Center Helen Frankenthaler Fellowship.
Monique Long lives and works in New York City. She is an arts professional who operates primarily as a curator of contemporary art and as a writer and educator. She has organized exhibitions at institutions including Princeton University Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, Guild Hall, Museum of the African Diaspora, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. In 2022, Long was the Great Meadows critic-in-residence, and in 2025, she mounted her first exhibition in the region, All Four Seasons in Equal Measure at The Carnegie in Covington, Kentucky. Prior to working independently, Long held curatorial positions in New York including The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is also a critic who has contributed to publications widely on contemporary art, artists, and personal essays. She is currently editor of the forthcoming exhibition monograph When the Children Come Home. moniquelong.com
Tom Holmes (lives and works in Jackson Co., TN) is an Internationally exhibited contemporary artist with recent gallery shows in NYC, Berlin and Seoul, Korea. Holmes mounted their first solo museum show Temporary Monument in 2013 at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Their work has been included in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and the Whitney Museum. Work resides in the public collections of Buffalo AKG Art Museum, FRAC Bourgogne, Stiftung Kunsthalle Bern, and The Frances Young Tang Museum at Skidmore College. The artist has been awarded fellowships at both The Edward F. Albee Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Center.
Dana Potter is an educator, user experience designer, media artist, and printmaker. She acts as the co-coordinator of Open Air Media Festival, an outdoor media arts program (funded by the NEA and Andy Warhol Foundation). As a studio artist, her work investigates the mechanics, visualizations, and applications of biometric technologies including eye-trackers, computer-mouse movement recordings, and facial recognition. She has a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa and an MFA from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She currently works as an Assistant Professor of Art and Design in Graphic Design at the University of Louisville.
Shohei Katayama is a Japanese American artist who investigates how natural, technological, and scientific forces shape human experience. Working across drawing, sculpture, kinetic objects, and installation, he probes the spaces where opposites meet: His practice draws on ecology, physics, material phenomena, grief, and Eastern philosophy. Katayama works with mechanisms that adapt, mutate, or shift, revealing connections between bodies, environments, and machines and invite reflection upon fragility, interdependence, and ecological awareness. Katayama received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the inaugural recipient of the MTV RE:DEFINE Art Award. Other honors include the International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award and the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier Award. He was also a finalist for the 21c Artadia Award and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy; 5 Manhattan West in New York; Plaxall Gallery in Long Island City, NY; and Littman Gallery in Portland, OR. His residencies include NARS International , the Mattress Factory, the Facebook Artist-in-Residence Program, the Arctic Circle , Labverde, the International Sculpture Center at Grounds for Sculpture, Peyton Evans , Tough Art, and the Asia Institute–Crane House.
José Carlos Diaz joined the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) as Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs & Chief Curator in 2025. Prior to joining PAMM, Diaz was the Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art at Seattle Art Museum (SAM). During his tenure, he launched the multi-year Calder at SAM initiative, celebrating the work of Alexander Calder, and curated the critically-acclaimed inaugural exhibition Calder: In Motion. He organized Anila Quayyum Agha: Geometry of Light; FriendsWithYou: Little Cloud Sky, and served as the institutional curator on the traveling shows Suchitra Mattai: she walked in reverse and found their songs and Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence, and managed the museum’s artistic program across its three locations. Prior to this role, Diaz was the chief curator at The Andy Warhol Museum, orchestrating the exhibitions Andy Warhol: Revelation and Farhad Moshiri: Go West.
Nora N. Khan is an independent critic, essayist, curator, and educator. Her writing on philosophy of AI and emerging technologies is referenced widely across fields. Formally, this work attempts to theorize the limits of algorithmic knowledge and locate computation’s influence on critical language. She is a member of the Curatorial Ensemble of the 2026 edition of Counterpublic, one of the nation’s largest public civic exhibitions, titled Coyote Time. She was Co-Curator with Andrea Bellini of the Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement 2024, A Cosmic Movie Camera, hosted by Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève. The edition was the highest-attended in the biennale’s history. As curator of Manual Override at The Shed (2020), she worked with Sondra Perry, Morehshin Allahyari, and Lynn Hershman Leeson on new commissions, in an exhibition that featured major works by Simon Fujiwara and Martine Syms. She is currently Faculty in Creative Technologies at UCSC, and has served as Arts Council Professor at UCLA in Design Media Arts, History and Theory faculty at SCI-Arc, and professor in Digital + Media at Rhode Island School of Design, where she was nominated for the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her books are AI Art and the Stakes for Art Criticism (2026), Seeing, Naming, Knowing (2019) and Fear Indexing the X-Files (2017), with Steven Warwick.
Organizers
Leslie Millar is a Louisville native who taught English at the University of Louisville for over a decade. She earned a BA from Vanderbilt University, an MA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and an MA from the University of New Mexico. She did her PhD work at the University of Georgia. Leslie and her husband James operate the Quonset Hut, a fine art press, gallery, and event space. Millar has acted as a board member/trustee for organizations including: the ACLU of Kentucky, Cherokee Triangle Association, Highland Presbyterian Weekday School, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (KMAC), Masterson Equestrian Trust, and Sarabande Books. Millar is a founding board member of Squallis Puppeteers, ARTxFM WXOX 97.1 FM, and KudzuJelly. Millar has also been active with the Speed Art Museum, serving as Chair of the New Art Collectors from 2007-2019.
Vincent Tiley is an artist and educator based between New York and Louisville. He currently acts as the founding chair of the Experimental Fashion program at Kentucky College of Art and Design. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2024, he was an artist in residence at the LMCC studio program, In 2023, he participated in the Villa Lena Foundation residency in Tuscany and the Vermont Studio Center Program. In 2017, he participated in the Fire Island Artist Residency. He was a 2013 participant at the Artist Cooperative Residency and Exhibition program. His work has been featured and reviewed in Paper Magazine, Art in America, the Chicago Tribune, Performa, and The New York Times. Tiley has exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, AxeNeo7, CFHILL, and the International Museum of Surgical Science. His works have been collected by the Whitney Library, the Leather Archives and Museum, Yale University Library, and the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Alice Gray Stites is a curator who develops exhibitions that engage contemporary culture and public audiences. From 2012–2026, Stites served as Museum Director and Chief Curator of 21c Museum Hotels. Stites curated over fifty exhibitions, including Labor & Materials, The Future Is Female, The SuperNatural 2.0, Refuge: Needing, Seeking, Creating Shelter, Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent, Still, Life! Mourning, Meaning, Mending, and Revival: Digging Into Yesterday, Planting Tomorrow. She has overseen site-specific commissions by artists including Nick Cave & Bob Faust, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Daan Roosegaarde, SOFTlab, Grimanesa Amoros, Freeman & Lowe, Chris Doyle, and Fallen Fruit. Previously, Stites directed the nonprofit artwithoutwalls and served as adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum. She has lectured widely at Art Basel Conversations, EXPO Chicago, the Atlanta Art Fair, the New Museum, TEDx Stockholm, Americans for the Arts, and FotoFocus.
Joey Yates is the Curatorial Director at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum in Louisville, KY. He has curated multiple exhibitions,including Simone Leigh: Crop Rotation; William J. O’Brien: Oscillates Wildly; Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Portraits / Positions; Victory Over the Sun: The Poetics and Politics of Eclipse; and Sisters of the Moon: Art and the Feminine Dimension. In 2019, he established the KMAC Triennial, a program focusing on artists with connections to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. During his time at KMAC, Yates has expanded the craft identity of the institution–in order to examine the growing connections between craft activity, material culture and contemporary artistic production. Yates received his M.A. in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of Louisville. He has served as a panelist for Creative Capital and the National Endowment for the Arts.