Alexandro Segade is an artist based in Los Angeles who, apart from his work with My Barbarian, has presented his own performances and videos at LAXART, REDCAT and Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles; Migrating Forms at Anthology Film Archive in New York; Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco; and Vox Populi in Philadelphia. His project, Replicant vs. Separatist, is a science fiction genre discussion of gay marriage, which received a grant from the Durfee Foundation in 2010. He received an Art Matters Grant in 2011 for a collaboration with artist Wu Tsang. Segade earned a BA in English from UCLA (1996) and an MFA in interdisciplinary studio art from UCLA (2009). He currently teaches performance, video, sculpture and public art at the University of Southern California and serves as performance faculty at Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts.

My Barbarian is a collective consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade, founded in 2000 in Los Angeles. My Barbarian has had solo exhibitions at Participant Inc., Museo El Eco in Mexico City and the Hammer Museum. The group has presented performance works internationally and been included in the 2005 and 2007 Performa Biennials, the 2006 and 2008 California Biennials, the 2007 Montreal Biennial and the 2009 Baltic Triennial. In 2008, My Barbarian developed the,Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (PoLAAT), a performance methodology and set of collaborative workshop exercises that facilitates group-building, cultural exchange and political critique through imaginative reenactments.

Jade Gordon is a faculty member at the Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles and an adjunct faculty member in the School of Theater at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA. She holds a BA in theater and an MA in applied theater arts from the University of Southern California. In addition to her work in My Barbarian, Gordon has studied at Augusto Boal’s Center for the Theater of the Oppressed in Rio De Janeiro and leads Theater of the Oppressed workshops in low-income housing facilities, high schools, community counseling centers and art spaces. Some of her professional acting credits include TV’s That 70s Show; artist Vaginal Davis’ film, The White to be Angry; and director Allison Anders’ films Grace of My Heart, Things Behind Sun and Sugar Town, for which she was nominated for an IFC Independent Spirit Award in 1999. In 2010, she collaborated with Berlin- and Seoul-based artist Haegue Yang on a solo performance at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN. Jade is also co-owner of Wombleton Records, a collectible vinyl record shop in Highland Park, California.

Malik Gaines is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at New York University. Apart from My Barbarian, Gaines has written articles for arts publications and exhibition catalogues, and monograph texts for artists including Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon and Wangechi Mutu. He has organized exhibitions and programs independently, including Fade: African American Artists in LA for the City of Los Angeles, Read Me! at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, and Quadruple-Consciousness at Vox Populi, Philadelphia. Gaines serves as Curator-at-Large for the non-profit gallery LAXART, Los Angeles, where since 2005 he has organized performances, programs and exhibitions. Gaines holds a PhD in Performance Studies from UCLA. Other performance projects include a voice-and-piano solo act and a family music combo called The Gaines.