Tarik Talk

Deonté Griffin-Quick embodies the powerful intersection of faith, arts, and cultural leadership that defines DGQ Culture. As an actor, revivalist, and nationally recognized arts administrator, he brings a unique vision for how faith-rooted strategy can transform communities and organizations. Through DGQ Culture, Deonté unites his calling and artistic expertise to help faith-rooted creatives and organizations maximize their cultural impact and fulfill their divine purpose. His spiritual journey started early—delivering his first sermon at 12 entitled "G.O.D: God Opens Doors" (Revelation 3:8). This prophetic message foreshadowed his future work bridging spiritual wisdom with cultural innovation. Deonté accepted his call to ministry in 2017 and became a licensed minister. He currently serves at Destiny Living Ministries where he continues to develop his approach to faith-based community engagement and artistic transformation. In the arts and cultural sector, Deonté has established himself as a changemaker at both regional and national levels. As Managing Director of External Affairs at Artist Communities Alliance, he helped shape support systems for creative communities globally. Previously, as Director of Programs and Services at New Jersey Theatre Alliance, he built lasting partnerships, led statewide initiatives, and cultivated 42 professional theatre companies. His commitment to creating pathways for underrepresented voices led him to develop the New Jersey Arts and Culture Administrators of Color Network in 2019. This pioneering initiative demonstrates his ability to identify systemic gaps and create structures that empower others—a cornerstone of DGQ Culture's approach. His achievements have been recognized with the inaugural Individual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Union County Urban League of Young Professionals. Deonté holds a BA in Theatre with a Communications minor from Kean University and a Master's in Arts Administration from Drexel University.

Noah Xifr aka Bird has painted empowering art all his life. "I explore concepts like achieving psychological wellbeing, strength, love, community building, and striving for environmental justice."Born in Madrid, Spain and growing up in the Bronx, NY, this 3rd generation artist started drawing as a child inspired by the city, birds he raised, surreal painters, science fiction, graffiti and comic books. In 5th grade he won a NY Transit Museum poster design contest and went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from the Cooper Union School of Art, with a major in Painting and Printmaking. His creative journey has brought him to found the Symbolic Realism arts movement, a home for contemporary surreal conceptual artists.

Caroline Amond is an emerging visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University in 2019 and a MFA in Art from CUNY Brooklyn College in 2024. Caroline has exhibited in an assortment of exhibitions across New York (Powerhouse Arts, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery) and has received multiple awards (Morris Dorsky and Rose Goldstein Memorial Scholarship) for her artistic contributions. Her work was featured on Artnet’s “Best Work of 2024: 11 Standouts We Saw Globally.” Amond’s bold paintings challenge conventional beauty standards and provoke viewers to decode the layered symbolism and iconography imbues within each work. She focuses on allegorical themes and prioritizes the female gaze, while also reflecting on the post-internet culture in which she was raised.

About Stephanie Norberg INSTALLATION: I’m interested in creating environments that reference pop-culture, questions the notions of value of worth, talks about the DIY culture many young artists across the nation are embracing, the relevance of wonder and phenomena while we are existing in an ever increasing digitally-driven world, and the general notion of spirituality and self-identification within the framework of a contemporary culture. Within these environments I create fragments of subcultures spanning time from historical to contemporary movements. These subcultures date back to Native Americans; embracing spirituality, mysticism, and transcendentalism to current movements occurring in music culture such as; trance, electronic, and Witch House. These fragments of already existing subcultures work together to talk about the human condition for the need to identify within a group and are also self-reflexive of my own personal narrative and interests.

Kat Ryals (b. 1988 in Jonesboro, AR) is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, and photographer. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA & Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including in a solo booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2020 and 2022, a collaborative two person show at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2023, a two person show at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in 2022, and in recent group exhibitions with ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project. Ryals has also completed several artist residencies, including the Wassaic Project (2017, 2019, 2022), ChaNorth (2019), the Peter Bullough Foundation (2021), and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center (2018). Ryals will also be an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan in 2024. She is also the Co-founder of the online arts platform, PARADICE PALASE, based out of Brooklyn and was recently the Curator of Art for famed nightlife and culture venues House of X at PUBLIC and House of Yes. Ryals' practice is often influenced by her upbringing in Arkansas and the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where her days were spent rummaging through thrift and junk stores, daydreaming in ornate Catholic churches, and roaming unspoiled forests and swamps. Artist StatementRyals’ artist practice examines the internalized power objects and design hold over us, and how mythmaking, ornamentation, and special effects can serve as tools for manipulation. Utilizing the dichotomies of natural/artificial, trash/treasure, sacred/profane, and luxury/kitsch within her work, she emulates material culture artifacts to investigate how value is manufactured. By creating mixed media sculptures, lens-based work, wearable art, and site-specific or immersive installations, she seeks to understand how the cultural currencies of authenticity, taste, and illusion are used to generate an economy of perceived value and hierarchy within our world. Her recent work has been specifically concerned with the relationship between waste and desire. Employing speculative fiction to create specimens and artifacts, she turns our attention to the unbridled mass production and consumption that has led to a culture of casual anthropogenic waste accumulation.

About Jaiquan Fayson: Born, raised, and based in Brooklyn, NY, Jaiquan Fayson is a visual artist whose oil paintings and sketch portraits attempt to establish an empathetic connection to people in his environment. While incarcerated and in solitary confinement as a young adult, Jaiquan used his ability to draw as a means ofself-directed therapy and a tool for introspection. Seeking to break his cycle of recidivism, Jaiquan earned the Silas H Rhodes Scholarship for Artistic and Academic achievement before completing his BFA (2015) in Illustration at The School of Visual Arts. In 2020 Jaiquan participated in HBO’s O.G, an art show commemorating their revolutionary prison film. He was featured in Drawing Freedom, a short documentary released in 2021 about art as a means of therapy, produced by Motto Pictures for the Healthy US Collaborative. Additionally, in 2021 he wasfeatured as a subject in a chapter of Craig Taylor’s book, New Yorkers A City and Its People in Our time, winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. With a desire to be a conducive member of society and hoping to inspire the next generation of artists, Jaiquan is currently employed as a part-timeart educator in the NYC Public School system. In 2023 he completed his MAT at the School of Visual Arts. He also received the Art 4 Justice grant, and he is a 2023 Right of Return Fellow. Jaiquan continues to explore art as a means of learning, expression, and communication. https://www.jaiquanfayson.com

About Tanya Weddemire Gallery: The Tanya Weddemire Gallery is a Brooklyn-based art gallery that thrives from being a vital source and representation of the arts. It's a premier art destination dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging established artists. Its mission is to deepen the value and importance of art by enriching each person's perspective on life explorations through exhibits. The gallery applies thoughtful and intentional curation while integrating cultural and historical connections to all their shows that can include, but are not limited to, paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography, fashion, and furniture. https://tanyaweddemiregallery.org

About Atim Annette Oton: The Creative Side is an innovative art consultancy, and creative design business enterprise founded by Atim Annette Oton, a curator, designer, and enterpreneur, who lives in Jersey City, after moving from Brooklyn, and works in the New York City area. Leadership: Curator, Designer, Editor and Entrepreneur Atim Annette Oton is a Nigerian-born, American and British educated designer. She is the founder of The Creative Side, an innovative business, as well as the director and cuarator at Calabar Gallery since 2016 and was the co-owner of Calabar Imports, a 20 year old Brooklyn retail business. She was the African Art Curator for AMREF Health Africa ARTBALL, Curator and producer for 54 Artists for 54 African Journeys, Curator and producer of Destination Bed Stuy, Organizer of Bed Stuy Arts Stroll and Harlem Arts Stroll, Curator for Mind-Builders Creative Art Center and was the project outreach curator for Bronx:Africa exhibition at the Bronx Council on the Arts. She co-founded of Black Design News Network and was a Huffington Post Black Voices Blogger who created the series, The Pulse of Africa where she wrote about Global Africans working in Africa and across the Diaspora and has an inside view on Africa’s progress, issues on arts and culture, technology and opportunities. She spent her formative years in Calabar, Nigeria and studied architecture at the City College of New York and did graduate studies at the Architectural Association Graduate School in London, England. In New York, she worked in architecture and by 2000, was part of the design team that won the African Burial Ground Interpretive Center. She worked as an executive producer on the Underground Railroad Experience, a cultural education website on the Underground Railroad and won an Independent Grant from the NYSCA for her work, the Black Hair Salon. A founder of Blacklines Magazine, a quarterly magazine featuring black designers, she served as its executive vice president before joining Parsons School of Design as the Associate Chair of Product Design for 6 years. In 2006 she launched Calabar Magazine as a brand extension of her store Calabar Imports in Brooklyn. After creating Calabar Imports in 2004, she has expanded the store to 3 store neighborhood locations in Brooklyn (Crown Heights, Bed Stuy and Harlem). As founder of the Creative Side, she selects projects that are about art, community and artists.

Born, raised, and based in Brooklyn, NY, Jaiquan Fayson is a visual artist whose oil paintings and sketch portraits attempt to establish an empathetic connection to people in his environment. While incarcerated and in solitary confinement as a young adult, Jaiquan used his ability to draw as a means ofself-directed therapy and a tool for introspection. Seeking to break his cycle of recidivism, Jaiquan earned the Silas H Rhodes Scholarship for Artistic and Academic achievement before completing his BFA (2015) in Illustration at The School of Visual Arts. In 2020 Jaiquan participated in HBO’s O.G, an art show commemorating their revolutionary prison film. He was featured in Drawing Freedom, a short documentary released in 2021 about art as a means of therapy, produced by Motto Pictures for the Healthy US Collaborative. Additionally, in 2021 he wasfeatured as a subject in a chapter of Craig Taylor’s book, New Yorkers A City and Its People in Our time, winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. With a desire to be a conducive member of society and hoping to inspire the next generation of artists, Jaiquan is currently employed as a part-timeart educator in the NYC Public School system. In 2023 he completed his MAT at the School of Visual Arts. He also received the Art 4 Justice grant, and he is a 2023 Right of Return Fellow. Jaiquan continues to explore art as a means of learning, expression, and communication. https://www.jaiquanfayson.com

Born, raised, and based in Brooklyn, NY, Jaiquan Fayson is a visual artist whose oil paintings and sketch portraits attempt to establish an empathetic connection to people in his environment. While incarcerated and in solitary confinement as a young adult, Jaiquan used his ability to draw as a means ofself-directed therapy and a tool for introspection. Seeking to break his cycle of recidivism, Jaiquan earned the Silas H Rhodes Scholarship for Artistic and Academic achievement before completing his BFA (2015) in Illustration at The School of Visual Arts. In 2020 Jaiquan participated in HBO’s O.G, an art show commemorating their revolutionary prison film. He was featured in Drawing Freedom, a short documentary released in 2021 about art as a means of therapy, produced by Motto Pictures for the Healthy US Collaborative. Additionally, in 2021 he wasfeatured as a subject in a chapter of Craig Taylor’s book, New Yorkers A City and Its People in Our time, winner of the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. With a desire to be a conducive member of society and hoping to inspire the next generation of artists, Jaiquan is currently employed as a part-timeart educator in the NYC Public School system. In 2023 he completed his MAT at the School of Visual Arts. He also received the Art 4 Justice grant, and he is a 2023 Right of Return Fellow. Jaiquan continues to explore art as a means of learning, expression, and communication. https://www.jaiquanfayson.com

Kat Ryals (b. 1988 in Jonesboro, AR) is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, and photographer. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA & Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including in a solo booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2020 and 2022, a collaborative two person show at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2023, a two person show at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in 2022, and in recent group exhibitions with ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project. Ryals has also completed several artist residencies, including the Wassaic Project (2017, 2019, 2022), ChaNorth (2019), the Peter Bullough Foundation (2021), and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center (2018). Ryals will also be an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan in 2024. She is also the Co-founder of the online arts platform, PARADICE PALASE, based out of Brooklyn and was recently the Curator of Art for famed nightlife and culture venues House of X at PUBLIC and House of Yes. Ryals' practice is often influenced by her upbringing in Arkansas and the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where her days were spent rummaging through thrift and junk stores, daydreaming in ornate Catholic churches, and roaming unspoiled forests and swamps. Artist StatementRyals’ artist practice examines the internalized power objects and design hold over us, and how mythmaking, ornamentation, and special effects can serve as tools for manipulation. Utilizing the dichotomies of natural/artificial, trash/treasure, sacred/profane, and luxury/kitsch within her work, she emulates material culture artifacts to investigate how value is manufactured. By creating mixed media sculptures, lens-based work, wearable art, and site-specific or immersive installations, she seeks to understand how the cultural currencies of authenticity, taste, and illusion are used to generate an economy of perceived value and hierarchy within our world. Her recent work has been specifically concerned with the relationship between waste and desire. Employing speculative fiction to create specimens and artifacts, she turns our attention to the unbridled mass production and consumption that has led to a culture of casual anthropogenic waste accumulation. ________ Brazilian artist, Tarik Mendes hosts Tarik Talk, a podcast committed to the art world. Listen in to unique interviews with talented guests artists, dealers, curators and more. At times with other talented guests from the music, acting, journalism industries. Find out the magic of art and its way of connecting us all! Check out @tariktalk for images of the guests and their works from each episode. Also follow @tarikmendes for his latest adventures! @tariktalk @tarikmendes Podcast available on all streaming platforms! Download today! @tariktalk @tarikmendes

Caroline Amond is an emerging visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University in 2019 and a MFA in Art from CUNY Brooklyn College in 2024. Caroline has exhibited in an assortment of exhibitions across New York (Powerhouse Arts, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery) and has received multiple awards (Morris Dorsky and Rose Goldstein Memorial Scholarship) for her artistic contributions. Her work was featured on Artnet’s “Best Work of 2024: 11 Standouts We Saw Globally.” Amond’s bold paintings challenge conventional beauty standards and provoke viewers to decode the layered symbolism and iconography imbues within each work. She focuses on allegorical themes and prioritizes the female gaze, while also reflecting on the post-internet culture in which she was raised.StatementMy paintings reimagine the historical tradition of the Venus figure through a contemporary lens. I coin the figures in my work “Oppositional Venuses”, reclaiming agency in a visual lineage where they were often rendered passive and ornamental. My work explores how the female experience is shaped and distorted through post-internet culture. I’m particularly interested in how digital spaces, especially image-based platforms, affect how femininity is constructed, performed, and consumed. Through painting, I examine the tension between hyper-visibility and objectification, self-display and self-possession. Drawing from art history, online aesthetics, and symbolic language, my paintings collapse flattened space with dense visual references, creating a surface that mirrors the saturated, disorienting quality of digital life. These works serve as a site for questioning beauty, power, and agency in an image-obsessed culture.

About Stephanie Norberg INSTALLATION: I’m interested in creating environments that reference pop-culture, questions the notions of value of worth, talks about the DIY culture many young artists across the nation are embracing, the relevance of wonder and phenomena while we are existing in an ever increasing digitally-driven world, and the general notion of spirituality and self-identification within the framework of a contemporary culture. Within these environments I create fragments of subcultures spanning time from historical to contemporary movements. These subcultures date back to Native Americans; embracing spirituality, mysticism, and transcendentalism to current movements occurring in music culture such as; trance, electronic, and Witch House. These fragments of already existing subcultures work together to talk about the human condition for the need to identify within a group and are also self-reflexive of my own personal narrative and interests.

Spring Break Art Show NYC Bianca J Abdi-Boragi, Laurie Berg, Christl Stringer & Adam Hersko-RonatasSPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical, and historic New York City and Los Angeles exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week New York and Frieze Week LA. The 14th Edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York City and 6th Edition of SPRING/BREAK LA will both premiere in 2025.

Deonté Griffin-Quick embodies the powerful intersection of faith, arts, and cultural leadership that defines DGQ Culture. As an actor, revivalist, and nationally recognized arts administrator, he brings a unique vision for how faith-rooted strategy can transform communities and organizations. Through DGQ Culture, Deonté unites his calling and artistic expertise to help faith-rooted creatives and organizations maximize their cultural impact and fulfill their divine purpose.His spiritual journey started early—delivering his first sermon at 12 entitled "G.O.D: God Opens Doors" (Revelation 3:8). This prophetic message foreshadowed his future work bridging spiritual wisdom with cultural innovation. Deonté accepted his call to ministry in 2017 and became a licensed minister. He currently serves at Destiny Living Ministries where he continues to develop his approach to faith-based community engagement and artistic transformation.In the arts and cultural sector, Deonté has established himself as a changemaker at both regional and national levels. As Managing Director of External Affairs at Artist Communities Alliance, he helped shape support systems for creative communities globally. Previously, as Director of Programs and Services at New Jersey Theatre Alliance, he built lasting partnerships, led statewide initiatives, and cultivated 42 professional theatre companies.His commitment to creating pathways for underrepresented voices led him to develop the New Jersey Arts and Culture Administrators of Color Network in 2019. This pioneering initiative demonstrates his ability to identify systemic gaps and create structures that empower others—a cornerstone of DGQ Culture's approach.His achievements have been recognized with the inaugural Individual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Union County Urban League of Young Professionals. Deonté holds a BA in Theatre with a Communications minor from Kean University and a Master's in Arts Administration from Drexel University.

Noah Xifr aka Bird has painted empowering art all his life. "I explore concepts like achieving psychological wellbeing, strength, love, community building, and striving for environmental justice."Born in Madrid, Spain and growing up in the Bronx, NY, this 3rd generation artist started drawing as a child inspired by the city, birds he raised, surreal painters, science fiction, graffiti and comic books. In 5th grade he won a NY Transit Museum poster design contest and went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from the Cooper Union School of Art, with a major in Painting and Printmaking. His creative journey has brought him to found the Symbolic Realism arts movement, a home for contemporary surreal conceptual artists.

Supermrin is a sculptor and installation artist who combines foraged trees with a grass-derived bioplastic of her own invention. Grounded in biophilosophy, decolonial theory, architecture, material science, and speculative fiction, her research-driven practice interrogates capitalist and colonial logics inscribed in the global lawn. This long-term body of work, FIELD, was profiled in Towards Another Architecture: New Visions for the 21st Century (Lund Humphries, 2024), a critical reappraisal of Le Corbusier’s legacy in the Global South amid climate crises.Supermrin’s projects have been presented internationally at Art Commission Galleries, San Francisco; Untitled Art Fair (Special Projects), Miami; Studio 9D, New York; lower_cavity, Holyoke; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Italian Virtual Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale; Château de Vaudijon, Switzerland; and Tactile Bosch, Wales. Recent curated exhibitions include “Rodin Response: FIELD—Family Secrets” (Cincinnati Art Museum, curated by Dr. Peter Bell) and “Aliens: Colonial Narratives through Plant Migration and Bio-Art” (PS122 Gallery, New York, curated by Isabella Indolfi).Her honors include grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Franklin Furnace Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. She is Area Head of Interdisciplinary Practice at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Art, an artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects in the World Trade Center, and a research fellow at Genspace, Brooklyn.

Supermrin is a sculptor and installation artist who combines foraged trees with a grass-derived bioplastic of her own invention. Grounded in biophilosophy, decolonial theory, architecture, material science, and speculative fiction, her research-driven practice interrogates capitalist and colonial logics inscribed in the global lawn. This long-term body of work, FIELD, was profiled in Towards Another Architecture: New Visions for the 21st Century (Lund Humphries, 2024), a critical reappraisal of Le Corbusier’s legacy in the Global South amid climate crises.Supermrin’s projects have been presented internationally at Art Commission Galleries, San Francisco; Untitled Art Fair (Special Projects), Miami; Studio 9D, New York; lower_cavity, Holyoke; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Italian Virtual Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale; Château de Vaudijon, Switzerland; and Tactile Bosch, Wales. Recent curated exhibitions include “Rodin Response: FIELD—Family Secrets” (Cincinnati Art Museum, curated by Dr. Peter Bell) and “Aliens: Colonial Narratives through Plant Migration and Bio-Art” (PS122 Gallery, New York, curated by Isabella Indolfi).Her honors include grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Franklin Furnace Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council. She is Area Head of Interdisciplinary Practice at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Art, an artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects in the World Trade Center, and a research fellow at Genspace, Brooklyn.

Kat Ryals (b. 1988 in Jonesboro, AR) is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, and photographer. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA & Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including in a solo booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2020 and 2022, a collaborative two person show at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2023, a two person show at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in 2022, and in recent group exhibitions with ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project. Ryals has also completed several artist residencies, including the Wassaic Project (2017, 2019, 2022), ChaNorth (2019), the Peter Bullough Foundation (2021), and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center (2018). Ryals will also be an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan in 2024. She is also the Co-founder of the online arts platform, PARADICE PALASE, based out of Brooklyn and was recently the Curator of Art for famed nightlife and culture venues House of X at PUBLIC and House of Yes. Ryals' practice is often influenced by her upbringing in Arkansas and the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where her days were spent rummaging through thrift and junk stores, daydreaming in ornate Catholic churches, and roaming unspoiled forests and swamps.

Deonté Griffin-Quick embodies the powerful intersection of faith, arts, and cultural leadership that defines DGQ Culture. As an actor, revivalist, and nationally recognized arts administrator, he brings a unique vision for how faith-rooted strategy can transform communities and organizations. Through DGQ Culture, Deonté unites his calling and artistic expertise to help faith-rooted creatives and organizations maximize their cultural impact and fulfill their divine purpose.His spiritual journey started early—delivering his first sermon at 12 entitled "G.O.D: God Opens Doors" (Revelation 3:8). This prophetic message foreshadowed his future work bridging spiritual wisdom with cultural innovation. Deonté accepted his call to ministry in 2017 and became a licensed minister. He currently serves at Destiny Living Ministries where he continues to develop his approach to faith-based community engagement and artistic transformation.In the arts and cultural sector, Deonté has established himself as a changemaker at both regional and national levels. As Managing Director of External Affairs at Artist Communities Alliance, he helped shape support systems for creative communities globally. Previously, as Director of Programs and Services at New Jersey Theatre Alliance, he built lasting partnerships, led statewide initiatives, and cultivated 42 professional theatre companies.His commitment to creating pathways for underrepresented voices led him to develop the New Jersey Arts and Culture Administrators of Color Network in 2019. This pioneering initiative demonstrates his ability to identify systemic gaps and create structures that empower others—a cornerstone of DGQ Culture's approach.His achievements have been recognized with the inaugural Individual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Union County Urban League of Young Professionals. Deonté holds a BA in Theatre with a Communications minor from Kean University and a Master's in Arts Administration from Drexel University.