DCA Cultural Trailblazers 2026

Bernard Brown is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, educator, curator and artist-citizen working at the crossroads of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging. As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, he choreographs for stage, specific sites, film, and opera which has been presented across Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe, including The Getty, On The Boards, REDCAT, Dance Camera West, Dance Camera Istanbul, American Dance Festival’s ADF Movies by Movers, Oscar-qualifying African Diaspora Cinema Festival, Seoul International Dance Festival, Royce Hall and US State sponsored tour to Centre de Developpment Choregraphique La Termitierre, Burkina Faso, West Africa. His concert dance performance credits include Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Jazz Antiqua Dance and Music Ensemble, and founding member of TU Dance. Other stage credits include “Letter to a Man” with Mikhail Baryshnikov, “Treemonisha” (choreographer and performer), Los Angeles Opera’s “Aida,” Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity,” Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” the titular role in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” and the Kennedy Center’s Masters of African American Choreography, as répétiteur and performer. Commissions and residencies include institutions such as The Music Center, Dance Italia, The Wende Museum, the City of Los Angeles, danceBox (Kobe, Japan), Santa Monica Symphony, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Dance Mission Theater, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, UCLA, PST.ART, a Getty Initiative, among others. A first-generation college graduate, he is an Assistant Professor of Dance at UC San Diego, a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor, Cultural Trailblazer for the City of Los Angeles, and a California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”

WEBSITE: bbmoves.org

INSTAGRAM: @bb.moves

Lorraine Bubar was born in Los Angeles, California and studied art and animation at UCLA and Yale. She worked for many years in the animation industry on animated television commercials and special effects for feature films. Her short-animated films showed at many animation festivals, including the Annecy International Film Festival and the World Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb. She taught animation at Santa Monica College for several years. At that time, Bubar was also exhibiting her watercolour paintings, was the featured artist for a calendar published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and illustrated a children's book, Lullaby, by Debbie Friedman. Her love for drawing and painting led her to get a Masters in Art Education and a Teaching Credential at CSULA. She spent many years teaching drawing, painting, and printmaking to middle and high school students and leading art projects for all age levels at places such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lorraine Bubar's current painterly papercuts, created from layers of handmade colored papers, reflect the heritage of papercutting found in numerous cultures around the world and capture the diverse ecosystems where she has traveled. Her love of hiking and nature has led her to explore the world and to Artist-in-Residencies at Denali, Zion, Petrified Forest, Lassen Volcanic, Capitol Reef, Big Bend, and Acadia National Parks. Bubar’s paper pieces have been exhibited in galleries locally and internationally, including Germany, Lithuania, Switzerland, Tasmania, Japan, and multiple years at the Shanghai International Paper Art Biennale.

WEBSITE: www.lorrainebubar.com

INSTAGRAM: @lorrainebubarartist

Marisa J. Futernick is an artist and writer who uses photography, text, video, installation, painting, artist’s books, and radio to examine the less visible social and political histories of the United States. Her recent solo exhibitions include presentations at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky; the University of Kentucky (two- person); Brandeis University, Boston; and Glendale Community College. Her work has been exhibited at numerous other institutions, including the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; The British Library, London; Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Harvard University; and Yale University. She has published many artist’s books and is a core member of the activist group Artists 4 Democracy. Futernick holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the Royal Academy Schools, London, with additional studies at Goldsmiths College, London. Born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Futernick spent more than 15 years living and working in London before making Los Angeles her home.

WEBSITE: www.marisafuternick.com
INSTAGRAM: @marisafuternick

Benin Lemus (she/her) is a Los Angeles-based poet and educator. Her debut poetry collection, Dreaming in Mourning, was published by World Stage Press in 2022. She was a 2022 Inaugural Workshop Fellow with Obsidian Magazine’s O|Sessions: Black Listening—A Performance Master Class, a Pushcart Prize nominee (TORCH Literary Arts), and received Honorable Mention in the 2022 Furious Flower Poetry Center’s annual competition (judged by Tim Seibles). Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Callaloo, Consequence, TORCH Literary Arts Magazine, and Maroko: Journal of African Poetry, among others. In 2024, Benin served as the poetry judge for AWP’s Intro Journals Project and currently teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

WEBSITE: beninlemus.com
INSTAGRAM: @beninlemus_poet

As an Angeleno, Kristi Lippire makes large-scale objects that reference the visual culture that surrounds her every day. Her work explores scale through materiality and play through color. Learning new materials and techniques, Lippire enjoys the delicate balance of matching concept, material and scale. Lippire received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University and BFA from California State University, Long Beach. Her work was included in the traveling exhibition, Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy that opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and travelled to Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Orange County Museum of Art, and Nasher Museum at Duke University. She has shown nationally and internationally with her last exhibition traveling to both Moscow, Russia and Orange, CA. Lippire will be traveling to Greece in 2026 for an artist residency and solo exhibition.

WEBSITE: www.kristilippire.com
INSTAGRAM: @kristi.lippire

Megan Mueller (b. 1982) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara (2015), a BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (2008) and a BA in Political Science from George Washington University (2004). Mueller’s work has been exhibited at various national and international venues including The Brand Library, Charlie James Gallery, Noysky Projects, Dalton Warehouse, Field Projects, New Wight Gallery at UCLA, High Desert Test Tests, GLAMFA, Transformer, TSV Berlin, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art.

WEBSITE: www.meganmueller.com
INSTAGRAM: @m.e.g.a.n_m.u.e.l.l.e.r

Julie Orser is a visual artist whose work merges art and cinema through video art and multimedia installation incorporating animation, sculpture, photography, and sound. She received an MFA in Studio Art from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in Photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Her works have exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Yuz Museum (Shanghai), Luckman Gallery (Los Angeles), Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Santa Monica), Il Magazzino d'Arte Moderna (Rome), Christopher Grimes Gallery (Santa Monica), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City), The Gallery Loop (Seoul), Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Orser is a recipient of the CCF Emerging Artist Fellowship (2010), the CCI Investing in Artists grants (2009, 2014), the Lucas Artist Fellowship for Visual Art (2023), and her work is currently on view in Metro Art’s public moving image art installation at Leimert Park Station through 2027. Julie is a professor and the area head of the Creative Photography & Experimental Media program at CSUF. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

WEBSITE: www.julieorser.com

INSTAGRAM: @julieorser

Tolliver is a Koreatown-based funk singer, journalist and DJ drawn to the humor in every story, the dance floor and the best BBQ spot in every city.

He's written for Reuters, produced video for LA Times, Glamour, Vogue, TOMS shoes and OutTV, interviewed some of the biggest celebrities of our time, and hosted a weekly radio show at KQBH in Boyle Heights dedicated to afrofuturism. 

Musically, he's appeared on the Late Late Show, gave a TED Talk and performance at the 2023 conference, has toured all over the US and Europe and is in constant rotation on KCRW. 

He's also the founder and executive producer of Exotic Fruits Fest, an annual music and film event that benefits local non-profits. 

He loves his cat (Jean-Michel Basquicat) more than anything and works only to buy him the finest pate.

INSTAGRAM: @tolliv3r

David Weldzius is an artist based in Los Angeles. He has exhibited at David Kordansky Gallery, the California Museum of Photography, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and MAK Center, among other venues. In 2012, Weldzius was an artist fellow with the Terra Foundation of American Art in Giverny, France. From 2013 to 2020, Weldzius was represented by Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, which hosted his first solo exhibition, News from Nowhere (2014). 

Weldzius has published two essays with X-TRA Contemporary Arts Quarterly. He is a Visiting Professor in Photography and Printmaking at Occidental College, where he has taught since 2012. Weldzius is a proud member of SEIU Local 721, which strives to improve the working conditions of contingent faculty. 

In 2023, Weldzius mounted Public Works, a solo exhibition at Art in the Park, a Los Angeles municipal art gallery. Public Works brought together three projects that meditate on free speech, the right to the city, and the historical role of social welfare in times of grave economic hardship.

In his most recent body of work (title TBD), Weldzius investigates agricultural labor in Central California, the “breadbasket” of the US. Weldzius’s project will synthesize the hardships of farmworkers during the Depression with the precarious living and work conditions that he has witnessed in Nipomo, California, where Dorothea Lange photographed Florence Owens Thompson (i.e., the “Migrant Mother”) in 1936.

Insert Press will soon publish History Painting, Weldzius’s first artist monograph. Weldzius’s work has received critical attention from the writer and critic Jan Tumlir (The Magic Circle) and art historian Eric Mazariegos, Jr. (“Paint, Proximity, and Palimpsests: Analyzing Abstraction in the Photography of David Weldzius”), among others.

Weldzius is a recent recipient of the Trailblazer Grant (Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Cultural) and Quick Grant (Center for Creative Innovation).

WEBSITE: davidweldzius.com
INSTAGRAM: @dweldzius

Elizabeth Withstandley is a research-driven multidisciplinary artist working in video installation, photography, and community-based projects. Her work explores identity, time, and collective experience through layered storytelling, sound, and archival experimentation. Originally from Cape Cod, she has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2003. Withstandley co-founded Locust Projects in Miami and Prospect Art in Los Angeles, both dedicated to supporting experimental and socially engaged practices. 

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in To Be Named, organized by the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Program and the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network at Bard College, and in solo presentations at the Brookline Arts Center, Antenna Gallery, and the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art. Recent projects include Searching for Happiness (City of West Hollywood, 2025–26) and The State of Being Indivisible (Brookline Arts Center, 2024–25). She has received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Puffin Foundation.

WEBSITE: www.withstandley.com

INSTAGRAM: @e_withstandley

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and editor. In her visual practice, Zappas's densely layered and textural weavings are sculptural, combining photography alongside many patterns, speeds, and processes. Throughout her energetic and vibrant work, the human body is photographed and then deconstructed through woven collage with objects, patterns, and props. Limbs and torsos are fractured and disembodied, concealed and revealed, while slow craft processes sit alongside quick digital ones. Zappas is also the Founder, Executive Director, and Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization and publishing platform that was founded in 2015 and that is dedicated to providing inclusive perspectives on contemporary art in Los Angeles. Zappas received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. She has recently exhibited at Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), Wilding Cran (Los Angeles, CA), Five Car Garage (Los Angeles, CA), La Loma Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), and Brea Gallery (Brea, CA). She has taught at California State University, Long Beach, Harvey Mudd College, Oregon College of Art & Craft, Fullerton College, and California State University, Northridge.

WEBSITE: cargocollective.com/linsdayprestonzappas

INSTAGRAM: @prestochango