Open Studios
April 21–April 22, 2023

2023 Spring Open Studios

Opening Reception: Friday, April 21, 6–9pm
Open Hours: Saturday, April 22, 1–7pm

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) Spring Open Studios is a presentation of international contemporary art organized by the 35 artists and curators from 28 countries currently in residence. Guest speaker, Jennifer Gutiérrez, City Council Member for New York City’s 34th District, will make remarks during the opening reception.

This event is free and open to the public.

Twice a year, ISCP offers the public access to private artists’ and curators’ studios to view artwork and share one-on-one conversations. This spring, ISCP invites the public to engage in dialogue around contemporary art with arts professionals from across the globe. Concentrated in a three-story postindustrial loft building on the edge of Bushwick, ISCP supports the creative advancement of residents, with a robust program of individual workspaces and professional benefits.

Clae Lu: Playroom, a solo exhibition of work by Clae Lu, recipient of The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund residency at ISCP, will be on view in the first floor project space. Curated by Kathy Cho, the exhibition presents a variety of experimental works that range from painting, to a meditative installation, to sonic compositions on the 古筝 (gu zheng), also known as the Chinese zither. All of these creative practices are meant to create space for and support the artist’s chosen families, their closely connected community. Throughout the exhibition, Lu asks, “What does it mean to celebrate the mundane?” and “How does my community come together to create new traditions?

In addition, Vibe Overgaard: Spindle City, a solo show curated by Media Farzin, will be on view in the second floor gallery. The show takes the textile industry as a context from which to examine the workings and impact of growth economies. It is based on artist Vibe Overgaard’s research in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and Lowell, Massachusetts, major hubs of industrial cotton production in the United States, and draws on the artist’s background growing up in a Danish town founded as a manufacturing center for textiles. The exhibition features a video essay, Spindle City, and a series of sculptures made of ceramic, wood, metal, and thread. The circuit is a recurring motif: from the fiber that winds through sculptures that evoke industrial looms, to the animated lines of the video, which symbolically trace a critical path through legacies of capitalism, colonialism, slavery, and the welfare state.

Open Studios participating artists and curators:

Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao) (China/United States), Hellen Ascoli (Guatemala/United States), Felipe de Ávila Franco (Brazil/Finland), James Beckett (South Africa/The Netherlands/United States), Pascale Birchler (Switzerland), Hung-Yen Chang (Taiwan), Nathaniel Donnett (United States), Veronika Eberhart (Austria), Kyoung eun Kang (South Korea/United States), Mandy Espezel (Canada), Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia (Togo/France), Eda Gecikmez (Turkey), Anawana Haloba (Norway/Zambia), Janet Jones (Canada), Levon Kafafian (United States), Hanni Kamaly (Sweden), Kahori Kamiya (United States/Japan), Tali Keren (United States, Israel/Palestine), Felix Kindermann (Belgium/Germany), Yen-Yi Lee (Taiwan), Shanekia McIntosh (United States), Joiri Minaya (United States/Dominican Republic), Azita Moradkhani (Iran/United States), Ruth Owens (United States), Evelyn Plaschg (Austria), Dana Robinson (United States), Akshay Sethi (India), Anna Schimkat (Germany), Oriane Stender (United States), Charlotte Sprogøe (Denmark), Mikhail Tolmachev (Russia/Germany), Sarah Tortora (United States), Coralie Vogelaar (The Netherlands), and wdha (Qatar).

ISCP thanks the following residency sponsors:

AES+F; Alberta Foundation for the Arts; Alice and Lawrence Weiner; Artist Relief; Atelier Flex – Kanton Zug; Canada Council for the Arts; Danish Arts Foundation; Danna and Ed Ruscha; Dimitri Offengenden; Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of Austria; Fire Station – Qatar Museums; Hartfield Foundation; Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists; Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation; Jerome Foundation; KdFS Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen; La Fondation pour l’Art Contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon; Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community Visual Arts Department; Ministry of Culture, Taiwan; Mondriaan Fund; National Endowment for the Arts; New York City Council Member for the 34th District; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; Pro Helvetia; SAHA Association; Sherrill Collection of American Art Foundation; South Arts; The Puffin Foundation; The Joseph Robert Foundation; The Kettering Family Foundation; Toby Devan Lewis; Tony & Sissi Moens; Uniarts Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in partnership with Saastamoinen Foundation; Vision Fund; and Wilhelm Family Foundation.

This program is also generously supported, in part, by:

Austrian Cultural Forum New York; Consulate General of Denmark in New York; Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York; Consulate General of Sweden in New York; Council for Canadian American Relations; Danish Arts Foundation; Evelyn Toll Family Foundation; Golden Artist Colors, Inc.; Google; Grimm Artisanal Ales; Hartfield Foundation; Materials for the Arts; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Council Member for the 34th District; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York; The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

In addition to the many individuals who support ISCP, the members of Director’s Circle are also thanked for their largesse: Anne Altchek, Barbara van Beuren, Samar Maziad, and Laurie Sprayregen.

Please note that the entrance to ISCP has seven steps and a ramp, which is ADA compliant. There are seven artist studios and one exhibition space which can be accessed on the first floor of ISCP. There is an accessible bathroom on the first floor at the end of the hallway, up one step, where the artist studios are located. To access the second floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 22 steps. The second floor has 22 artist and curator studios, one exhibition space, and a lounge where remarks by our guest speaker will take place. To access the third floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 24 steps. The third floor has five artist and curator studios. ISCP can access a freight elevator to bring visitors between the first and second floors on request.

ISCP can offer two reserved parking spaces on request for people with disabilities. Please email dvillalona@iscp-nyc.org to request a parking space and/or freight elevator usage.

Opening Reception: Apr 21, 2023, 6–9pm

Open Hours: 1–7pm

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Felipe de Ávila Franco, Favela Offshore #2, 2021, video. Courtesy of the artist

Felix Kindermann, studio installation view from Spring Open Studios 2023. Photo by Martin Parsekian

Kyoung eun Kang, studio installation view from Spring Open Studios 2023. Photo by Martin Parsekian

Janet Jones, studio installation view from Spring Open Studios 2023. Photo by Martin Parsekian

wdha, studio installation view from Spring Open Studios 2023. Photo by Martin Parsekian

Current and Upcoming Events & Exhibitions

Somewhere Inside: ISCP and the Studio

Through January 20

Exhibition

Sujin Lim: The Land, Dark and Muddy

Through February 7

Exhibition

ISCP Talk
April 12, 2023, 6–7pm

Vibe Overgaard, Mary. N Taylor, and Rakhee Kewada discuss ‘Spindle City’

In conjunction with the exhibition Spindle City, on view at ISCP through July 21, 2023, artist Vibe Overgaard, anthropologist and urban theorist Mary N. Taylor, and geographer Rakhee Kewada will discuss the history of capitalist industrialization, the legacy of its visual and architectural forms, and its role in shaping urban space, social practices, and popular movements.

Their conversation will explore the value of artistic practice as a means for considering the contradictions of capitalism, and trace the critical path that is illuminated in the artist’s video work, Spindle City, which was produced for the exhibition.

Vibe Overgaard is a Danish visual artist working with installation, sculpture, performance, video, archive material and critical writing. Her research-based practice focuses on economies seen from a historical perspective. Often researching industry and production relations of a specific location, her work links local circumstances to greater global-political questions and critiques. She has exhibited work at Kunsthal NORD, Denmark; Goethe-Institut, Palestine; and Floating Projects, Hong Kong, among others. She was an ISCP artist-in-residence in 2022 and 2023 supported by the Danish Arts Foundation.

Mary N. Taylor is the Assistant Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Working at the intersection of anthropology, urbanism, and dialogical art, her praxis investigates sites, techniques, and politics of civic cultivation and the production of political personhood, the ethics and aesthetics of nationalism/cultural differentiation, and the history of communist experiments. She is the co-editor of Co-revolutionary Praxis: Accompaniment as a Strategy for Working Together and author of Movement of the People: Folk Dance, Populism, and Citizenship in Hungary, a historical ethnography. Most recently, she co-authored The Commonist Horizon: Futures Beyond Capitalist Urbanization. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals. Taylor has taught at Hunter College, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and the Parsons School of Design. She is a founding member of the LeftEast collective.

Rakhee Kewada is a Zimbabwean geographer whose research interests include agrarian studies, development of the global south, and decolonization. Kewada is a PhD candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences (Geography) at the Graduate Center, CUNY where her dissertation research on cotton and textile production in postcolonial Tanzania examines changing geographies of underdevelopment in the 21st century. Kewada has taught Urban Studies at Hunter College and Queens College.

This program is supported, in part, by Consulate General of Denmark in New York; Danish Arts Foundation; Hartfield Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

6–7pm

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Participating Residents

Vibe Overgaard

Vibe Overgaard, Spindle City, 2023, video. Courtesy of the artist

Current and Upcoming Events & Exhibitions

Somewhere Inside: ISCP and the Studio

Through January 20

Exhibition

Sujin Lim: The Land, Dark and Muddy

Through February 7

Exhibition

ISCP Talk
March 28, 2023, 6–7:30pm

Artists at Work: Maess Anand and Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir

For this Artists at Work, current ISCP residents Maess Anand and Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir will give presentations on their respective artistic practices and engage the audience in conversation. Anand will present her drawings, which examine organisms attacked by cancer. She transforms scientific material from cancer-related databases, histopathology images, Kaplan-Meier curves, and 2D and 3D modeling, into expressive images. In her hands, data and emotional insights into the experience of living with cancer become a chimerical force for new understanding.

Gudnadóttir will give an exclusive sneak-peek into her current artistic project, working title S-I-L-I-C-A, wherein she traces the process of manufacturing semiconductors used in solar cells. Her project uncovers global supply chains used in the creation of so-called “green energy” in a manner that is at once rigorous, playful, and provocative.

Maess Anand is a Polish drawing artist based in Warsaw and Hamburg. After graduating from Warsaw Elsner School of Music, she graduated with an MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and was recipient of a scholarship at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design in Porto, Portugal. The artist has exhibited at The Drawing Center, New York; CCA U-jazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Warsaw; Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; Equity Gallery, New York; IK Projects, Lima, Peru; and at Biennale de la Biche on a deserted island near Guadeloupe; among others. Anand’s fellowships include Leipzig International Art Programme; Virginia Center for Creative Arts; Residency Unlimited, New York; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs.

Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir’s projects involve long-term processes based on immersive research, interdisciplinary collaborations and social engagement. She follows the interconnectedness of current philosophical ideas, social systems and human perception of the environment through installations, paintings, sculptures, objects, photographs, film, and performances. Gudnadóttir’s multidisciplinary practice connects the artist’s personal perspective to global histories. Hulda Rós Gudnadóttir has exhibited work at Berlinische Galerie, Germany; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Germany; and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, among others.

This program is supported, in part, by Polish Cultural Institute New York; Adam Mickiewicz Institute; Krupa Gallery; The Icelandic Visual Artists Copyright Association; Gallery Gudmundsdottir; Icelandic Art Fund; Hartfield Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

6–7:30pm

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