Past Resident
2024: Toby Devan Lewis

Artist

Laura Bernstein

Laura Bernstein creates layered worlds that explore human and animal behavior, as well as mythologies of metamorphose. Her work reflects on the climate through video, performance, installation, and painting, drawing inspiration from medieval illuminated manuscripts and theatrical spectacle traditions.

Laura Bernstein has exhibited at Essex Flowers Gallery; BRIC; and Children’s Museum of the Arts, all in New York, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2024 Spring Open Studios

April 12–April 13, 2024

2023 Fall Open Studios

November 10–November 11, 2023

Opening wide, a threshold exposing a procession of hybrid creatures, Hell Mouth explores mythologies of metamorphoses and origin stories of beasts in relation to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, The Book of Miracles and contemporary stories of species displacement.

Laura Bernstein, Hell Mouth, 2022, installation with three-channel stop-motion video, 3:00 min loop (color, sound), hand-stitched appliqué textiles, 18 puppets made from aluminum armature wire and repurposed fabrics, hoops, plaster, dowels, wood, papier-mâché and imitation gold leaf, 36 × 42 × 36 in. (91.44 × 106.68 × 91.44 cm).

Documentation from public processional where community members helped activate the tapestry. Stitched in isolation, the 100 foot long story-scroll records the cascade of extreme weather and news events that occurred each month of 2020. In collaboration with other Rebecca Pristoop and The Moving Company and Friends, the project is an evolving invitation for public procession and collective meaning exploring the malleability of memory and symbols, seeking to stimulate curiosity and wonder toward the natural world through movement, color and form.

Laura Bernstein, Miracle Tapestries Processional, January I--December XII, 2020, 2021, assortment of recycled organic and synthetic fabrics, hand stitched, thread and 10 PVC pipes, 100 × 12 in. (254 × 30.48 cm).

Vignettes of scientists at work studying worldly species– murder hornets invading the Pacific Northwest, the spotted lantern flies swarming the Northeast —and mythological beasts, act as a blueprint for stop-motion animations.

Laura Bernstein, Murder Hornets Sun Spike, 2022, watercolor and ink on watercolor paper, 60 × 42 in. (152.4 × 106.68 cm).

Illuminator centers itself around a sexless wing finned figure, embedded with candles and barnacles--a humanoid candelabra--dripping, melting and congealing fleshy, gilded wax, presiding over a floor painting depicting the Fall of Babylon as an upside down city from Bamberg Apocalypse 1000 A.D. Working within the liminal space of pictures and words, Illuminator draws on imagery produced by anonymous authors of medieval manuscripts.

Laura Bernstein, Illuminator, 2019, plaster, burlap, steel plumbing pipes, wax, candles, glass, sand, imitation gold leaf, matchbox, brass, candle snuff, and acrylic on canvas and watercolor and ink on paper, dimensions variable.

Directed and produced by Laura Bernstein, the performance event showcased the work of six multidisciplinary artists: Nikki Calonge as P.T. Trainer: Choreography and movement Simone Kearny as MC16c: Poetry Hanna Novak as Hybrid S.P: Love letter to Pliny presented as video text (featured within the image) Emily Reilly ER87: Dramaturge, a pseudoscientific lecture Paola Di Tolla as Pliny: Author of Encyclopedic Sound Score: Audible Tracings from Pliny The Elder's Natural History, 78 AD (2019), 5:00, mp3 Emily Taibleson as ET87: Field researcher and illustrator

Laura Bernstein, A Speculative Performance Presented by The Institute of Super-Species Research and Experimentation, (ISSRE), 2019, performance, 60 min..

Residents from United States

Aryel René Jackson

United States

Vision Fund

Studio #305

Hanae Utamura

Japan, United States

Every Page Foundation

Studio #201

Akeema-Zane

United States, Trinidad and Tobago

Vision Fund

Studio #203

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Poland

Past Resident
2023: International Visegrad Fund

Artist

Nadia Markiewicz

Nadia Markiewicz uses language borrowed from the entertainment industry to produce installations, performances, and video art that deal with issues of identity, chance, and disability. She draws inspiration from both her own life experiences and representations of disability. Markiewicz is currently a PhD fellow at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland.

Nadia Markiewicz has exhibited work at Galeria Miejska Arsenał, Poland; Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia; and Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Poland, among others.

The image presents an interior with white walls and a gray terrazzo floor. On the wall on the right there are two white, closed doors. on the left hand side is a window. Towards the middle of the image, and room, are four objects. Starting from the left, on the wall next to the set of doors, in the distance, is a small box covered in a dark red, metallic festive garland. Right about above it, and crossing the room in half, facing the camera, is a white rippled curtain. A arch-like shape has been cut out in the curtain, making it possible to pass through. The arch is not in the middle of the square-shaped curtain, but a bit to the left of it, asymmetrically. In front of the curtain, diagonally cutting through the space and resting with its red, boxy arrowhead on the floor is a giant, wooden cupid's arrow. It has a light colored wood shaft and the feathers are a white wooden cut-out. Above the arrow, a bit to the right and overlapping the window, is a stained glass in the shape and colors of a dart board - beige, black, red and green.

Nadia Markiewicz, DRIVE-THRU, 2022, installation, dimensions variable.

This image is a video still. It presents the front half of a toy pink convertible Cadillac, shot a bit from above, diagonally cutting through the frame, from the bottom right corner, heading towards the top left one, but not reaching it. The car is placed on a background made from fake green grass. In the car, at the steering wheel is a white woman with brown long hair flowing in the wind, wearing a black tank top. She is presented from the back, and is resting her left elbow on the door of the convertible. Her left arm ends right under her elbow.

Nadia Markiewicz, DRIVE-THRU (The Runaway), 2022, video, dimensions variable.

This image is a video still. The background of the image is filled with a gold festive curtain, made from individual strands of metallic ribbon. The middle of the frame is lit with round spotlight lighting. In the spotlight is a white woman laying down horizontally across the frame. She has white tights, red sequin shoes and red lips, her brown hair is in a bun. Her body is hidden in two separate black boxes that seem to have come from one longer box previously cut in half. As a result, her body appears to have been cut in half, most probably with the gray plastic-toy like saw hovering above her.

Nadia Markiewicz, Mysterioso, 2021, video, dimensions variable.

In the image in an interior. It was white walls and no windows. The floor is filled with green carpeting and the light is dimmed, coming only from a video projected onto the wall in the back of the room. The video presents the top half of a wheel of fortune, with pie-chart-like pieces of orange, green, sky blue, navy and magenta colors. In front of the video, obstructing its view is a figure of a woman, with her face in the shade. She is wearing black tights and appears to be mid-walk, her hair is in a bun. She is wearing a hard, plastic costume of the black pool ball with the number 8 on a white circle on her front. The pool ball costume covers her body from the place the neck hits the shoulders to the top of her thighs.

Nadia Markiewicz, Jackpot, 2020, performative installation.

In the image there is an interior in a basement with no windows. Scattered through the middle of the space are three sets of oversized red cherries, much like the ones in slot machines. Behind them, towards the back of the room is a dark green curtain. At the top left corner of the curtain is a TV, presenting a video containing a sunset. Yet the TV is far away from the camera and small. On the right side of the curtain, against a white wall is a slot machine. On the wall next to the machine, the one that in perspective is coming closer to the camera, somewhere mid-way across the space is a photo of a white woman dressed in a black hat, holding a revolver, with a red bandana on the end of her arm - around the elbow. She is portrayed on a dark green background. Across the room, on the wall on the other side of the cherries, there is a small black and white image of a couple. The room has additional visible elements typical for basement spaces such as pipes crossing the room near the ceiling.

Nadia Markiewicz, one armed bandit, 2019, installation, dimensions variable.

Residents from Poland

Magdalena Ciemierkiewicz

Poland

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Maess Anand

Poland, Germany

Polish Cultural Institute New York, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Krupa Gallery

2023

Marta Krześlak

Poland

International Visegrad Fund

2022

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Austria

Past Resident
2023: Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport of Austria

Artist

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński is a writer, artist, and scholar. Her research-based and process-oriented practice rooted in Black feminist theory revolves around archives, specifically the gaps and blanks in public archives and collections. Her works, which intertwine documentary and fiction and are presented in a wide range of mediums, examine the present of an everlasting colonial past. Kazeem-Kamiński’s first artistic monograph a past without closure will be published by Sternberg Press in 2023.

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński has exhibited work at 2023 Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom; Camera Austria, Austria; and Kunsthalle Wien, Viena, among others.