Elena Soterakis

Co-Founder, Executive Director, Curator

Elena Soterakis is an artist exploring themes of environmental degradation and our relationship with technology and the natural world through painting, sculpture, and large-scale creative productions. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, The Matsudo Science and Art Festival in Japan, The Museum of the Art and Design Atlanta, The Torrence Museum of Art, The San Louise Obispo Museum of Art.

Soterakis is a founding member and Director of Creative Productions of Beyond Earth, a women-led international transdisciplinary artist collective exploring the frontiers of art, space, and biology through space-bound artworks. On June 18, 2021, Beyond Earth launched their large-scale art installation Living Light to the stratosphere and was retrieved from the ocean of Cape Canaveral, Fl. Living Light celebrates ocean life and AI technologies. This space flight was made possible with Space Perspective, a commercial space-flight company.

In March of 2020, Soterakis co-founded the Great Pause Project during the onset of the viral, global spread of COVID-19. Great Pause Project is a series of records documenting the COVID-19 pandemic via a browser-based platform that invites written and photo-based responses from participants all over the world.

Soterakis received her MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA in illustration from The School of Visual Arts.

Doug Chapman

Director of Communications

Doug Chapman is a multi-discipline artist, educator and communication specialist focused on creative projects that integrate social awareness and ecological themes. Trained in classical clarinet at Interlochen Arts Academy, Doug graduated Suma Cum Laude with a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College and holds an M.F.A in Acting from the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theatre Institute at Harvard University. Currently Doug is on faculty at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and Montclair State University, where he teaches courses in Creative Thinking. A company member with International WOW Company and Shakespeare on the Fly and a sought-after communication and public speaking coach, Doug’s teaching and performance work has taken him to Australia, Chile, South Africa, Mexico, U.K., Canada, Russia and the U.S.A.

Doug is a LEED-accredited professional with the US Green Building Council and, from 1999-2004 served as Director of Research with internationally renowned ecological architecture firm William McDonough + Partners. Following this, he worked with Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries to produce Massive Change, a multi-media installation exhibit focusing on the capacity of design to shape our world for the welfare of humanity. Massive Change was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and was published as a book by Phaidon. He is currently Head of Sustainability Programming with Turnstile Tours, where he develops and leads performance-driven public tours on ecological themes.

Alvaro Azcarraga

Director of Operations

Alvaro Azcarraga is a Mexican artist and researcher that works with plant-like organisms with a focus on the history of scientific colonialism. With a background in Molecular and Cellular Biology, he looks at how the micro relates to the human and beyond. His work also examines the post-natural, specifically looking at the artifice that is embedded within the term natural. He has been working with Maize for the last five years. Past projects include things like laser etching maps of Tenochtitlan onto tortillas, collecting maize seeds from all over the globe, to growing maize varieties to engage in a genetic-based conversation.

He holds an MFA from UCLA as well as a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and Art from the University of California, Berkeley.

Eve Barrow

Curatorial Assistant, Researcher

Eve Barro is a French-Burkinan researcher based in London. She assists the Gallery with different aspects of our exhibitions and development, including theoretical and curatorial research. She obtained a BS at Imperial College London in biotechnology focusing on synbio, ecology, and biomedicine and a master’s degree at UCL in the STS (Science, Technology and Society) department specializing in science-art, artistic and curatorial practices, pragmatic aesthetics, and more-than-human interactions. After graduating, she started working as the assistant project curator of Chelsea Physics Garden and uses this practical involvement with the vegetal world to further her independent research on emotional approaches to ecology. With experience in working at intersections and on transdisciplinary projects, her work interrogates institutional boundaries and explores disruptive approaches to our perception of reality and knowledge-producing practices. Through her research, she intends to motivate an emotional engagement with the life sciences and their objects and the introduction of care in science and technology practices.

Jeannine Bardo

Co-Founder

Jeannine Bardo is a Brooklyn born artist, curator and art educator. She received her BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts and completed both a Masters in Art Education and a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College. She is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on humanity’s connections to the natural world. Bardo is the founder and artistic director of Stand4 Community Arts Center and Gallery. Housed in a former medical office in the heart of Bay Ridge, Stand4 brings the visual arts and programming to the center of the community, opening up opportunities for social, political and cultural connections and creating a discourse that bridges culture and tradition and includes new voices towards a more sustainable future inspired by local interests.

Bardo has contributed writings to galleryELL, was a participating artist and juror for SAW before becoming a board member and is currently a mentor and contributing writer to ART21 Educators. She collaborated on a NYC public artwork titled Ark for the Arts with fellow artist Isabelle Garbani that focused on climate change and resiliency in the community of Red Hook, Brooklyn.