Past Residents

List Grid

Past Resident
2024: Vision Fund

Artist

Yoshie Sakai

Yoshie Sakai is a multimedia artist working with video, installation, sculpture and performance. Her videos and over-the-top immersive installations are centered on accessibility and nurturing human connection while critiquing capitalist productions of space and ways of being. As a subtly transgressive undercover cultural agent, she exposes the absurdities of manipulative social structures while humorously struggling and reveling in them as a participant. She draws on popular forms of entertainment and media to engage diverse audiences, especially those historically devalued, ignored, and seen as burdens.

Yoshie Sakai has exhibited work at Vincent Price Art Museum, California; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin; and Antenna, Louisiana, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Yoshie Sakai in conversation with Lauren Wolchik

May 21, 2024, 6:30–7:30pm

2024 Spring Open Studios

April 12–April 13, 2024

The "KOKO's Love" series is a hybrid East Asian/Asian American parodic soap opera self-written, performed, and directed to be presented within a real or created home environment. It is about a Japanese American family, whose patriarch, Hiroshi, is a liquor store owner in South Los Angeles that annoyingly insists on the importance of having a male inherit the family business and not a female, his only child, a daughter named Yuki. With humor and exaggerated characters, I attempt to expose the absurdity of the male authority figure in the contemporary Asian American family. Here we see the three imagined characters or "spiritual guides" (Alligator The Great, Mx. Friendly Beignet, Tombstone Tammy) from Episode 2 in the video installation at Antenna in New Orleans. “KOKO's Love” has various manifestations as a video installation and changes form dependent on the related videos and the space. This first room especially is inspired by the surreal & odd nature of wax museums, so Antenna gallery, which is the top floor of a two-story house really does become a psychological playhouse for the everyday doubts, anxieties, hopes, & daydreams that come from living as the Sakimoto family.

Yoshie Sakai, KOKO's Love: A Soap Opera Tale of One Family, 2016, seven-channel mixed media video installation, dimensions variable.

As part of “The Autotopographers” group exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, we see split between a pet store and the family living room, "Daydream Reality" employing humor to tell the story of Yuki (daughter of the patriarch in the “KOKO’s Love” saga) and her quest for familial approval. The plot revolves around a dog that Yuki wants her father to buy for her. The pet store is Yuki’s dreamscape where her hoped-for dog lives. In contrast, handwritten notes, photographic murals, and mannequins hanging from the ceiling situate Yuki’s narrative in her reality: the family home. Together, the pet store and the family home in "Daydream Reality" reflect my life as a “1.5 generation Japanese Asian/Asian American” growing up in Los Angeles.

Yoshie Sakai, KOKO's Love: About Yuki Daydream Reality, 2019, six-channel mixed media video installation, dimensions variable.

Grandma Entertainment Franchise (GEF)” brings together three immersive installations produced over the last three years: Grandma Day Spa, Grandma Nightclub, and Grandma Amusement Park. These three distinct but interconnected installations, composed of my video and sculptural work, satirically reproduce public sites of leisure, re-imagined with grandmothers as their target demographic. “Grandma Entertainment Franchise” stems from my reflections on my own grandmother, or obaa-chan (“grandmother” in Japanese), who came to live with my family when the I was nine years old. My memories of my obaa-chan open a searing, tragicomic inquiry into society’s obsession with youth and innovation, as evident in the outsourcing of elderly care, urban redevelopment and disinvestment, marketing demographics, and our notions of desirability, success, and the good life. This was at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) in Monterey Park, California.

Yoshie Sakai, Grandma Entertainment Franchise (GEF), 2023, 10-channel mixed media video installation.

The “Bathroom Stall Tears” video series, meant to be viewed in the in the bathroom stalls of the “Grandma Entertainment Franchise (GEF)” installation, opens the door to a more intimate space for expression & reflections by capturing my personal childhood memories my grandmother’s selfless acts/small sacrifices & critique the power of gender stereotypes in shaping intergenerational expectations.

Yoshie Sakai, Bathroom Stall Tears: Part II, video still, 2022, single-channel digital video, 4:01 min.

The “Grandma Nightclub” and “Grandma Nightclub Music Video” (projected on the wall) celebrates and honors the senior populations & the activities not typically associated with them. I assume the role of five dancing grandmas with the up-tempo and sexual nature of the songs to bring attention to the vitality of the elderly, speaking of ageism embedded in systems of capitalism and entertainment.

Yoshie Sakai, Bathroom Stall Tears: Part II, 2023, three-channel mixed media video installation (Nightclub only), dimensions variable.

Residents from United States

Laura Lappi

Finland, United States

Alfred Kordelin Foundation

Studio #201

Ailyn Lee

United States, South Korea

Anonymous

Studio #210

Angel Lartigue

United States

Vision Fund

Studio #217

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Greece, The Netherlands

Past Resident
2025: Mondriaan Fund

Artist

Antonis Pittas

Antonis Pittas’ work revolves around current social and political issues, marked by a profound connection to history. He creates spatial installations that respond to specific contexts, drawing inspiration from architecture, design, art history, the performative aspects of installation art, and its social dynamics. At the core of Pittas’ practice is the question about the relationship between the past and present. His practice delves into significant historical moments of destruction, decay, and resistance, playing a pivotal role in shaping his artistic narrative.

Antonis Pittas has exhibited work at Museum for Contemporary Art – Eindhoven – Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands; Centraal Museum, The Netherlands; and National Museum of Contemporary Art Αthens (ΕΜΣΤ), Greece, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Antonis Pittas in conversation with Gabriela López Dena

January 21, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm

2024 Spring Open Studios

April 12–April 13, 2024

Antonis Pittas, Paraesthesia, 2023, installation, stones, graphite, memory foam and protective foam, dimensions variable.

Antonis Pittas, ACT (with flash), 2022, installation, reflective foil, aluminium, various works by Theo van Doesburg, dimensions variable.

Antonis Pittas, ACT, 2022, installation, reflective foil, aluminium, various works by Theo van Doesburg, dimensions variable.

Antonis Pittas, ICITIAE, 2020, installation, 18th century sandstone and graphite, dimensions variable.

Antonis Pittas, throw hands, 2017, installation, artificial leather and furniture stuffing, dimensions variable.

Residents from The Netherlands

Inge Meijer

The Netherlands

Mondriaan Fund

Studio #219

Ginta Tinte Vasermane

Latvia, The Netherlands

Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Stichting Stokroos

2022

Nika Schmitt

Luxembourg, The Netherlands

Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg

2023

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Denmark

Past Resident
2024: Danish Arts Foundation
2024: Danish Arts Foundation

Curator

Jeppe Ugelvig

Jeppe Ugelvig is a curator, historian, and cultural critic based in California. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz, his research focuses on artistic responses to consumerism and product culture in the global 20th century. Additionally, he is the founding editor-in-chief at Viscose, a journal dedicated to fashion criticism and analysis.

Jeppe Ugelvig has curated exhibitions at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark; Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, among others.