HanHan is a Filipina-Canadian artist and operating room nurse. Her songs grapple with social issues and her experiences as a woman and an immigrant. HanHan can broadly be described as an emcee, using rap and spoken word techniques to deliver her vocals. Her songs combine contemporary, 808-hip-hop beats with traditional Filipino rhythms and cadences, yielding fresh sounds that tend to spur dancing wherever they’re heard. In 2014, she self-released her debut album, Han Han, which was praised by NOW Magazine, the Huffington Post, and the CBC. Single ‘World Gong Crazy’ was nominated for “Best Song” in Berlin Music Video Awards  2017. The record also led to a publishing deal with EMI, high-quality film / television placements, and international radio play in Germany, France, and the Philippines. Currently, she is working on her sophomore album called URDUJA, inspired by the legend Princess Urduja.

Julay Nieto is a QPOC mama tattoo ritualist and bruhartist who weaves our cosmic web with spirit ink, jewelry, visual art, and poetic performance. She connects to our ancestors through ceremony to seek the tattoos waiting to surface beneath the skin as part of our collective healing.  Julay is also attuned to level 1 reiki & has a fascination with acupuncture meridians and its relation to tattoo. As an advocate for self care & healing trauma, you can often catch her (and her daughter), sharing energy with the water, mountains and trees, and taking time with breath in full mudra stance. She is always open to learning about our/other indigenous cultural stories, practices & rituals and finding parallels between them. Julay also finds joy in eating and sharing food with loved ones and new friends.

DJ Kuttin Kandi is a “People’s Hip Hop DJ Scholar” who was born and raised in Queens, NY and is widely regarded as one of the most legendary and accomplished womxn DJs in the world. Kandi is a disabled Filipinx-Pin[a/x]y-American Queer, Writer, Poet, Theater Performer, Educator, Hip Hop Feminist, and Community Organizer. She is a known Pop-Culture Political Essayist, written for several anthologies and blogs and has been a Guest Contributing Writer for Colorlines, Racialicious and etc. Kandi and co-Founder of Krip-Hop Nation Leroy Moore, co-developed the Hip Hop for Disability Justice Campaign and co-wrote “Hip Hop & Disability Liberation: Finding Resistance, Hope & Wholeness” for Disability Visibility Project’s anthology. Kandi is also the Co-Editor of the book “Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipino/a America” and is currently working on new writing projects such as the new anthology on Pin[a/x]y Activism. Kandi is an Organizer with Asian for Black Lives San Diego, Asian Solidarity Collective and the Intersectional Feminist Collective. She is proudly conscious-parenting her 2 children with disabilities with her partner Rob.

Kwentong Bayan Collective (KBC) is the artist duo, Althea Balmes and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo. They make komiks/comics, facilitate community arts activities, and have exhibited their multidisciplinary artwork across Canada, the US, and just returned from launching their first international group exhibition in Paris, France. KBC is published in the anthology, Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle, edited by the Graphic History Collective. It was awarded the 2017 Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize, and the 2017 Wilson Book Prize for making Canadian history accessible to transnational audiences. Their artistic mandate is to explore a critical and intersectional approach to community-based art, labour, and education. Kwentong Bayan’s work is part of Philippine Arts and Social Sciences, Ontario Curriculum for student in grades 6 to 8. The curriculum provides culturally-relevant materials to Filipino students, who so rarely see themselves in mainstream historical narratives and representations.

Ruby Ibarra is a Filipino American rapper, music producer, and spoken word artist from San Lorenzo, California. She raps in Tagalog and English. Her raps concern her cultural heritage and her experiences as an immigrant to the United States from the Philippines. Her first album from Beatrock Records, Circa 1991 dropped in 2017, to critical acclaim. It documents social justice issues like immigration and trauma and Filipina identity.

The Tita Collective is an all Filipina collective of multidisciplinary artists based in Toronto composed of award-winning playwrights, comedians, musicians, dancers, theatre makers and actors. They explore different mediums to tell the stories of the Filipinx diaspora. Individually they are: Ann Paula Bautista (Disenchanted US Tour), Belinda Corpuz (Prairie Nurse), Isabel Kanaan (CBC’s Air Farce), Alia Rasul (JFL Solo Sketch Showcase), and Maricris Rivera (A New World Being Born). They were recently awarded as the 2019 Steamwhistle Producer’s Pick at Toronto Sketch Fest and were named some of the “19 Asian Millennial Women You Should Know”. They collectively created/performed Kwento (an improvised filipino folktale), Tawa (the first ever filipino comedy festival), Island Womxn Rise (all-filipina comedy show), a sold-out run of Tita Jokes (filipino sketch comedy revue) which was funded by the Pat and Tony Freedom Fund for the Arts. Recent works also include a workshop of Tang Ina, a play written by Alia Rasul funded by the Toronto Arts Council.

Trinidad Escobar is an author, poet, and cartoonist active in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. Her work has been published in The Nib, The Brooklyn Review, Walang Hiya, Mythium, and other publications. Her graphic memoir Crushed was self-published in 2018. Her forthcoming graphic novel Of Sea and Venom will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.For her Graphic Novel/Comic Community Talk, Trinidad will discuss the genesis of Crushed and how it interweaves her personal story of transnational adoption, mental illness, recovery and decolonization. She will also speak about decolonizing comics and indigenous talk story.

Kimmortal is a queer, non-binary Pilipinx artist based on unceded, unsurrendered Coast Salish Territories also known as Vancouver, BC (Canada). Her work has evolved to incorporate song, poetry, rap, dance, and visuals. Some of the highlights of her work include: being featured on CBC Exhibitionists, having her music video animation screened at the Queer Women of Color festival in San Francisco, and performing at Kultura Filipino Arts Festival in Toronto, SXSW 2018, Rifflandia 2018, Junofest 2018. She has previously shared the stage with other artists including Ruby Ibarra, Saba, Shad K., and Saul Williams. 

Jana Lynne (JL) Umipig is a multidisciplinary artist, liberation educator, healer and activist who seeks to elevate understandings and remembering of self as a reflection of her own life’s journey toward decolonizing, re-indigenizing and humanizing self. JL has committed herself to bringing the presence of her ancestors from the Philippine diaspora into every space, with cultural teachings and practices being implemented in all of her work. She is the creator of The Journey of a Brown Girl and Raised Pinay reflective of her “Theatre as Ceremonial Liberation” and “For the Movement Theatre” pedagogies. She also is the creator of Kapwa Tarot, a diasporic Pilipinx divination tool that has been globally exchanged. Currently JL is a founding Theatre Teacher creating a 4 year Revolutionary Theatre Program at a high school in East Brooklyn where she works to “Rehearse Revolution” with her students and prepare them to enact change for liberation in their lives and the world.

Jen Maramba is a Tkaronto born Pilipinx with ancestral roots from Panay Island and Pangasinan, sacred places from the islands currently known as the Philippines. Jen comes from a lineage of abrularyos & traditional midwives who work with plant medicine, hilot, divination, and supporting parents and babies during the birth and post-partum care.  As an artist & healer, Jen has developed and facilitated arts healing for community groups centered in decolonization, ancestral re-membering and creative expression. Jen is a reiki practioner and guides ceremony for folx in Toronto through sacred circle, ancestral journeying, blessingways, grieving ceremonies, life celebrations and eco-art therapy. Jen Maramba is also a member of Kapwa Collective & the Center for Babaylan Studies and is currently working in co-creation for the 4th International Babaylan Conference in Watah Mohawk Territory (Muskoka, Ontario – Canada) in September 2019. 

Luyos MC (MaryCarl Guiao) is a daughter of Maharlikan lands, birthed from a Kapampangan lineage of dedicated carpenters, land-tenders, benevolent engineers, kitchen goddesses, cleaners, Sinawali purveyors, public-spirited politicians and so many more guides that she holds in her heart. For years, she engaged in bottom-up community care-work (including hosting Migrant Matters Radio for community radio and offering economically accessible yoga classes, prioritizing non-status people, migrant workers, and low-income racialized and Indigneous people). MaryCarl continues to communicate an appreciation for culture where building respectful, non-judgmental, present, consensual, mutually empathetic relationships with all life prevails amidst the pervasiveness of interlocking, colonial, imperialistic, capitalistic systems and dynamics such as racism, classism, and patriarchy. She has found place in tapping into her soft power to weave truth into her interarts practice, with emphasis on story-witnessing through cross-genre music composition and production (https://soundcloud.com/LuyosMaryCarl) and precolonial cultural regeneration (specially with Obo Manobo kulintang arts).

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