FOUNDER LIA CHAVEZ
Lia Chavez is an American artist working across performance, installation, immersive environments, sculpture, sonic and literary composition, and opera. Her practice investigates perception, duration, light, consciousness, and revelation through sustained attention and contemplative encounter.
Trained in art, ethnography, and phenomenology of perception at Oxford and Goldsmiths, her work engages aesthetic experience beyond instrumental cognition. ARALUX extends this inquiry into institutional form.
Her practice draws from contemplative traditions, sacred art, ritual structures, phenomenology, theological aesthetics, and science, oriented toward the conditions under which theophanic appearance becomes perceptible.
BOARD
ARALUX Board of Directors and Executive Leadership
ARALUX is guided by a transdisciplinary Board of Directors spanning neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, contemplative studies, artistic research, and cultural inquiry.
Dr. Caroline Di Bernardi Luft
Director, Neuroscience of Creativity & Consciousness
Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Brunel University London
Dr. Di Bernardi Luft is a cognitive neuroscientist at Goldsmiths and Brunel University London whose research investigates the neural basis of creativity and learning in both individual and collective contexts. Her work combines EEG neuroimaging with non-invasive brain stimulation (tDCS, tACS) and computational signal analysis to examine the dynamics of neural activity associated with cognition and adaptive behavior.
Her research on attention, perceptual organization, and creative emergence contributes to ARALUX’s inquiry into the conditions under which consciousness becomes structured toward heightened receptivity and aesthetic transformation.
Professor Maria Jaschok
Director, Feminist Ethnography & Sacred Knowledge Systems
Senior Research Associate, University of Oxford
Professor Maria Jaschok is a scholar of feminist ethnography, oral history, and embodied knowledge systems. Her work investigates epistemic injustice, cultural transmission, and the interruption and reconstitution of knowledge across historical and cross-cultural contexts, with particular attention to women’s roles within social and cultural lineages.
She served as Director of the International Gender Studies Centre at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, and held senior positions within Oxford’s Contemporary China Studies programme.
Her research examines how embodied practices carry continuity and rupture across generations, and how structures of authority regulate the transmission, preservation, and interruption of knowledge.
At ARALUX, she contributes to ethical cultural inquiry, interdisciplinary rigor, and the stewardship of embodied knowledge traditions, with attention to historical precision and cultural accountability.
