Fabric Arts Festival - Fall River

Alicia "TruthSeeker" Mitchell

Alicia "TruthSeeker" Mitchell (Wanaumwnun) is a member of the Watuppa (Troy) Pocasset Indians of the Wampanoag Nation and Stewardess of the Perry Homestead in the Watuppa Reservation. Her work centers on Indigenous knowledge, land stewardship, traditional healing practices, and the preservation of ancestral memory. Through community-based initiatives, sustainable agriculture, and herbal medicine, she works to reconnect people with the land while supporting the revitalization of Indigenous cultural practices.

Claudia de Sousa-baptista

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Claudia de Sousa-baptista is a first generation Azorean American fashion designer, tailor, and DJ with an interest in the role artists play as creative catalysts for community building. She is the founder of slow fashion tailor shop Bushwood Tailors Opportunity Shop in New Bedford, MA and is co-founder of NYC tailoring agency Bushwood Tailors and New Bedford slow fashion org FashionRev_NB. As a DJ, “Claudia DeeBee” has recently been exploring past and present sounds of Portugal and its diaspora, first through curated playlists for the Portuguese language cafe, Não Me Digas and now through a project that seeks to reawaken dormant Portuguese LP’s borrowed from her local Portuguese communities by playing them in unexpected public spaces.

Diogo Lima

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Diogo Lima is a Portuguese Azorean director and editor whose work spans fiction, documentary, and advertising. Often rooted in humor, his projects frequently explore the specificities of being Azorean. His credits include the documentary AZ-RAP: Sons of the Wind, the web series Sou Menino Para Ir (FOX Comedy, RTP1), and the short fiction film The Last Days of Emanuel Raposo.

Evelyn Rydz

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Evelyn Rydz works across drawing, site-responsive installations, and community projects to reimagine our relationships with the natural world and with each other. Her practice explores connections between bodies of water, personal histories, consumer cycles, and threats to natural and cultural ecosystems. Rydz has collaborated on community projects with the University of Massachusetts, ICA Watershed, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, and MIT List Visual Arts Center. Rydz is a Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Filipa da Rocha Nunes

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Filipa da Rocha Nunes is a writer and curator from Portugal. She collaborates with national and international artists and institutions, and has presented work at venues such as Sies + Höke (Düsseldorf), Sophiensæle (Berlin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), CAM – Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), Terrada Art (Tokyo), and Camões Angola (Luanda). Between 2019 and 2025, she coordinated Arts and Culture at the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), where she developed programs such as the FLAD Drawing Award and Flechada program. She holds a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and a Master's degree in Cultural Management from the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. She lives and works in Lisbon.

Filipe Furtado

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Filipe Furtado Trio is a group that uses song as a starting point to explore the realms of improvisation, jazz influences, and contemporary sounds. With roots in Coimbra, the trio establishes itself as a space for collective creation, where compositions take shape through the dialogue between piano, saxophone, and drums. In live performances, the group incorporates electronics and vocals. The project is based on the original repertoire of Filipe Furtado — an Azorean musician and composer who has lived in Coimbra since 2010 — and his collaboration with Paulo Silva (drums) and Filipe Fidalgo. In 2025, they released the album “Como Se Matam Primaveras"

Henrique Furtado Ferreira

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Henrique Furtado Ferreira, born in 1981 in Ponta Delgada, Azores, and known as DJ Milhafre, balances his day job with his passion as a DJ, collector, and researcher. He released Calafonas: Music from the Azorean and Portuguese Diaspora (1970s–1980s), a compilation featuring musical gems rediscovered from the Luso-American past. His multiple facets are part of the same universe, where culture, music, and identity intertwine.