TK Smith is a Philadelphia-based curator, writer, and cultural historian. He is Assistant Curator: Art of the African Diaspora at the Barnes Foundation. His writing has been published in Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, and ART PAPERS. Currently, Smith is a doctoral candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware. 

Simon Benjamin is a Jamaican artist and filmmaker, whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses multi-sensory installations, sculptures, video, photographs, and printmaking. His practice considers how current realities are shaped by both visible and invisible histories. Using the framework of the sea and coastal space, his current body of work investigates the Caribbean’s complex relationship to trade, ocean travel, import-dominant consumerism, tourism, and other neo-colonial relationships imposed by the United States and the West. Benjamin received his MFA from Hunter College in New York City. His work has been exhibited at documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany (2022); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Governors Island, New York (2022); Kingston Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2022); trinidad+tobago film festival, Trinidad and Tobago (2021); NYU Gallatin at Governors Island, New York (2021); The 92nd St. Y, New York (2020); Brooklyn Public Library, New York (2019); Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York (2019); the Ghetto Biennial, Port Au Prince, Haiti (2018); Jamaica Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2017); Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (2019); New Local Space, Kingston (2016); and Columbia University, New York (2016). Benjamin will be an Artist-in-Residence at Baxter St. CCNY in 2022, and has participated in residencies at Light Work, Syracuse, NY, Lighthouse Works, Fishers Island, NY, Shandaken Projects and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, both on Governors Island in New York.