Meet the Futures Fund Cycle 8 Jurors

Meet the Futures Fund Cycle 8 Jurors

The Luminary is thrilled to introduce–Malik Fabian-Mahmud, Kathy Cho, and Thea Spittle–the jurors who will be reviewing applications for Futures Fund Cycle 8. Each artist, thinker, and cultural leader brings a unique perspective, expertise, and shared commitment to supporting bold and thoughtful work within the St. Louis arts landscape. Please find their bios below:

Malik Fabian-Mahmud (he/him) (b. Saint Louis, MO) is a photo-based artist whose practice centers on exploring his heritage & identity through digitization and documentation–transfiguring memory, and preserving histories across generations. Beyond his artistic practice, Fabian-Mahmud is the Co-Founder and Community Organizer of Five Dolla Cam, a collective that hosts artistic workshops, exhibitions, and social gatherings–creating accessible spaces for creative learning and community connection.

Kathy Cho (she/they) is a curator who supports the practices of living artists by producing exhibitions, events, images, and writing to collectively archive loose narratives of lived experiences. Ongoing research includes expanding the visual and dialogic lexicon of diaspora artists, and exploring the physical and digital architectures of affect. Her accumulation of experiences in artist-run spaces, event production, studio management, and archives continues to inform how she approaches working with artists and cultural producers with care. She received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London and was previously a Curatorial Fellow at The Kitchen, and Curator-in-Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. She is currently the Exhibitions Manager at Counterpublic, and has previously contributed to art ecosystems in New York, London, Philadelphia, Chicago, and online.

Thea Spittle (she/her) is an independent curator and writer based in Akron, Ohio. She collaborates alongside artists to produce exhibitions, publications and public programs for the greater Northeast Ohio community. Spittle holds a Master of Arts in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Spanish from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Her first curatorial project, the sunroom, was in a Cleveland Heights home, and showcased site-specific installations throughout the home and its yard. She served as co-curator for CAN Triennial 2022 producing exhibitions at Zygote Press, Morgan Paper Conservancy and ARTneo. She also co-directed Gallery 2602 with Deidre McPherson, a roaming exhibition and public programming platform situated within community spaces. Most recently, she curated exhibitions for the Museum of Creative Human Art, who are in residency with the Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Thank you to each of our jurors for contributing to this process.

Applications for Futures Fund Cycle 8 close Tuesday, May 5 at 11:59pm. To apply, click here.

Futures Fund is a regranting initiative organized by The Luminary and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in order to support innovative, experimental and forward-focused artistic projects throughout the St. Louis region. Futures Fund was founded in 2019 to provide essential support to creative projects that exemplify the unique possibilities of St. Louis, deeply engage its past, present and possible futures, and model new ways of working within our region. The fund exists as one of the few opportunities for direct project support for artists in St. Louis.