Meet The Team

Lily Johnson White is an Art collector, philanthropist, producer, entrepreneur, and Mother of 3 based between NYC and LA. With a degree in Art History and Photography, she started out at the groundbreaking art and technology think tank Eyebeam in NYC in 2001. While documenting the new wave of Artists using technology as their medium, Lily fell in love with the way Art can be used as a tool for social and environmental practice. With a long career in community service and public art she had been looking for a place to invite artists to come make work. A place where they could work freely outside of the commercial art world. After one visit to Bombay Beach with Tao Ruspoli in 2014 she knew she had found it. The Bombay Beach Biennale has been an incredible outlet for her work supporting artists realize their dreams. Currently, Lily serves as an Executive Board Member at Creative Time (NYC, since 2012), Board Member of Habits of Waste (LA, since 2020), and Co-Founder of a media platform launching in Geneva Switzerland in the fall of 2024. 

     Tao Ruspoli is an Italian-American filmmaker, photographer, and musician. Born in Bangkok and raised between Rome and Los Angeles, Tao graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998 with a degree in Philosophy. Moviemaker magazine singled out Ruspoli as one of the 10 Young Filmmakers To Watch. His feature narrative debut, “FIX,” screened in competition at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival and then at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival where Ruspoli was awarded the Heineken Red Star Award for "most innovative and progressive filmmaker." His most well-known documentary is “Being in the World,” which explores the real world implications of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. 

     In 2000, Tao founded LAFCO (The Los Angeles Filmmakers Cooperative,) a bohemian collective of filmmakers and musicians who worked out of a converted school bus. His latest documentary, “Monogamish,” starring Dan Savage, Christopher Ryan and Esther Perel, premiered at The Rome Film Festival in 2015. Since 2016, Tao has been primarily focused on his work in Bombay Beach. 

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Photo by Scott Pasfield

     Stefan Ashkenazy is a native Los Angeleno who, at the age of 17, escaped from a disciplinary academy to China. There, he received his BA from Fudan University in Shanghai. In 2004, when the clown-song called, he shifted his focus to Hospitality and Experiential Art, moving back to Los Angeles and buying an 80-room, rundown hotel in the middle of West Hollywood. The Petit Ermitage Hotel has since become a refuge for bon-vivantes, bohemians, and the occasional intergalactic space villain.

     In 2009, Stefan founded the Cirque Gitane Member’s club, a private community of dreamers from all over the globe who create for a living and who support the creative arts. In 2014, Stefan developed a nomadic traveling circus for Cirque's Gypsy Royalty which premiered and flourished at Burning Man for several years before nesting in the otherworldly boulders of The Valley of the Moon, in Pioneertown, CA.
      In 2019, he opened Elsewhere, a hideaway/retreat/event space at a working farm in Topanga, CA. Stefan is currently collaborating with veteran Biennale artists to break ground on The Last Resort, a “worst hotel in the world” concept, which is underway in Bombay Beach, CA.

     Dulcinée DeGuere is a Filmmaker, Conceptual Artist, and Systems Architect who lives between the Mojave Desert and Los Angeles. She joined the Biennale Org Team in 2021 to revive the event post-COVID. She worked as the Lead Producer in 2021, and in the fall of 2022 transitioned into the position of Systems Architect. As a lover of critical and political theory, Dulcinée’s work as a Systems Architect is rooted in postcolonial, postmodern, and posthuman philosophies. She’s committed to facilitating in symbiosis with both the Biennale community and the residents of Bombay Beach to develop ecosystems of care, respect, accessibility, and creativity. 

     As a filmmaker, Dulcinée is an editor turned writer/director committed to warping and bending the rules of narrative cinema to create films that are queer not only in plot and character, but also in form and structure. Her film work has screened at festivals across the world, most notably Sundance, OUTFEST, Fantasia, Newfest, and Palm Springs. In 2021, she was chosen as one of Blackmagic Collective’s Directing Fellows for the “First Frame Initiative.” In 2019, she was a resident at SFSIA’s “States of Consciousness in Cognitive Capitalism” program. In 2018, she co-founded Voyeur Productions, a multi-platform storytelling hub that creates immersive experiences, narrative film, and TV.

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Photo by Scott Pasfield