Past Residents

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Year
Residency Program
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Zimbabwe

Past Resident
2021: Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy

Artist

Micha Serraf

Micha Serraf is a photographer who explores the construction and deconstruction of identity, belonging, Blackness and masculinity through photography. The artist was born in Zimbabwe and fled to South Africa at a young age. This mobility prompted Serraf to observe his behaviour and that of other foreign nationals regarding the safest shape to inhabit in new environments. This fluid presentation of self, and the ability to be malleable, are used to access forms of acceptance and camouflage. Through his practice, Serraf is interested in demonstrating the evolutionary, fluid and emotional entanglements related to the purpose, interpretations and performance of race and origin.

Micha Serraf has exhibited work at Foam, Amsterdam; Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam; C/O Berlin, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Micha Serraf: Hope Is a Dry Colour
May 19–May 22, 2022
2021 Fall Open Studios
November 13, 2021
I was born in Zimbabwe where my mother and her mother's mother’s mothers were born. My family and I left for the border of South Africa at 4 o'clock in the morning when I was almost 10 years old. These alien landscapes are still foreign to me. Yet I am the alien here. I struggle to feel safe or impart meaning on them. Chipoko is the Shona word for the soul, breath or ghost of a person or a spirit. These photographs are the visual navigation of an unknown and unplaced feeling of a deep nostalgia. An attempt to reach out to my ancestry for guidance and belonging. Each sculpture, a totem. Each landscape, different. Strong, tall, dark. A visit from my mothers.
Micha Serraf, Midzi Yedu, 2021, photograph, 291/2 × 393/8 in. (74.93 × 100.08 cm).
I was born in Zimbabwe where my mother and her mother's mother’s mothers were born. My family and I left for the border of South Africa at 4 o'clock in the morning when I was almost 10 years old. These alien landscapes are still foreign to me. Yet I am the alien here. I struggle to feel safe or impart meaning on them. Chipoko is the Shona word for the soul, breath or ghost of a person or a spirit. These photographs are the visual navigation of an unknown and unplaced feeling of a deep nostalgia. An attempt to reach out to my ancestry for guidance and belonging. Each sculpture, a totem. Each landscape, different. Strong, tall, dark. A visit from my mothers.
Micha Serraf, Rangarirai, 2021, photograph, 883/16 × 551/8 in. (224.03 × 139.95 cm).
I imagine that when we landed here our parachutes were made of silk. I imagine that when we landed here our parachutes were made of satin and embedded with diamonds. I imagine that because we look like them - we would be treated as one. I imagine that once we learned their language and adopted their ways we would be seen. I imagine that once my mother built her home they would allow us to live among them. I imagine that once we brought laughter and rain that our relationships would blossom. I imagine that here was not our first choice. I imagine that leaving home wasn’t either. Yet, we are here now. Standing among the flowers and the stones my feet can feel the soil. Rooted loosely in the ground, when I close my eyes - I imagine home.
Micha Serraf, When we landed, 2020, photograph, 2413/16 × 331/2 in. (62.99 × 85.09 cm).
We must remain vigilant and active in protecting the revolutionary disposition of transforming masculinity, advancing queer activism and disrupting gender more broadly. This project also aims to inspire critical reflections on the quality and purpose of gender in our society. To encourage people to see themselves anew through these images and begin being more introspective with their own gender fluidity, discourse and practice. With gender existing on a vast spectrum of personal freedom, this series seeks to celebrate and make visible queer identities that exist outside the dominant and popular gender imagination.
Micha Serraf, Chizvaro, 2018, photograph, 195/8 × 227/8 in. (49.78 × 58.17 cm).
Our ancestors have roamed these plains since the cradle of humankind. Cave to reed to mud to stone to brick to concrete to steel. Bearing witness to the floods, droughts, famines, seasons and the very rebuilding and restructuring of life itself. They exist among us as giants with a knowledge shaped and formed by the rivers of time and the mistakes that come with it. The forgotten royalty of our people wrapped in modernity.
Micha Serraf, Kukura, 2017, photograph, 157/8 × 235/8 in. (40.39 × 59.94 cm).

Residents from Zimbabwe

Felix Shumba

Zimbabwe
Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy, Dennis Elliott Founder's Fund
Studio #304
Turkey, United States

Past Resident
2021: SAHA Association

Artist

Baris Gokturk

Baris Gokturk reconstructs two-dimensional historical documents, photographs, and archival imagery about events or individuals overlooked by the mainstream history. Through three-dimensional layers, hybrid fragments, and installations that oscillate between drawing, painting and sculpture, Gokturk rebuilds photographic images as physical surfaces, which he then peels off and reapplies to other found or sculpted objects to draw attention to specific historic moments echoed in current events.

Baris Gokturk has exhibited work at ELM Foundation, Brooklyn; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem; Pera Museum, Istanbul, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2021 Fall Open Studios
November 13, 2021
Monument III is based on a photograph I saw on the wall of a working-class restaurant in Ankara, Turkey. The photograph shows an equestrian statue of Ataturk, the founder of republic, right before it left the foundry.
Baris Gokturk, Monument III, 2018, polyurethane, metal, acrylic, and Xerox transfer, 48 × 84 × 15 in. (121.92 × 213.36 × 38.1 cm).
The photograph shows a group of high-ranked military officers in full uniform looking grimly down on a stretcher, at what is left of Komarov: a charred, disfigured mass that somewhat looks like a body. The image is painful. The men in charge in the photo however display an odd detachment on their faces. They seem neutral, even cold, perhaps disappointed. They are simultaneously looking at a failed ideological as well as technological project-the space mission- and the remains of a human being.
Baris Gokturk, The Kozmonaut, 2018, polyurethane, Papier-mâché, Xerox paper, and metal, 40 × 30 × 15 in. (101.6 × 76.2 × 38.1 cm).
Uniform is a live performance with supplemental website content (pictured in the slide) . Commissioned by Jewish Museum in New York, the performance is a mediation on two photographs, one in the picture frame, the other absent, about two events and two individuals who made different choices under parallel circumstances.
Baris Gokturk, Uniform, 2021, video, photographs, website.
Baris Gokturk, Untitled (Fires_Riot_008), 2020, Image transfer, ink, acrylic, and oil on linen, 80 × 68 in. (203.2 × 172.72 cm).
Baris Gokturk, All Saints, 2021, image transfer, polymer, ink, acrylic, and netting, 192 × 288 in. (487.68 × 731.52 cm).

Residents from Turkey

Alper Aydin

Turkey
SAHA Association
2024

Eda Gecikmez

Turkey
SAHA Association
2023

Civan Özkanoğlu

United States, Turkey
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Alice and Lawrence Weiner, New York City Council District 34, 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, Hartfield Foundation, Danna and Ed Ruscha
2020
Canada

Past Resident
2021: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec

Artist

Chris Andrews

Chris Andrews is an art writer, curator, and visual artist. His practice examines bio-politics, materials, stability, and their intersection with animacy.

Chris Andrews has curated work at Centre CLARK, Critical Distance Centre for Curators, and Tilling, all Montréal, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2021 Fall Open Studios
November 13, 2021
A gallery with concrete floors and white walls. A metal handrail sculpture is in the foreground. A monitor on the wall behind it shows a video work and a fountain sculpture in the far corner.
Tanya Lukin Linklater, Laurie Kang, Lila De Magalhaes, Nona Inescu, and Jenine Marsh, You sit in a garden, 2021.
A gallery with concrete floors and high ceilings. Alt view of previous image, but we can now see a plinth with a projected video work featuring two hands in a blue light.
Tanya Lukin Linklater, Laurie Kang, Lila De Magalhaes, Nona Inescu, and Jenine Marsh, You sit in a garden, 2021.
White gallery wall with two works hung side by side. The left work is a cool toned photographic diptych. The right work is rounded and mossy at the bottom with a silver plated sheet at the top, reading the word "Always."
Coffin Factory, Slipping Between the Gap of Touch, Two Hands Vibrating, 2017.
Rusty brown dyed linen stretched on canvas-stretcher with globs of silver metal adorned on top.
Chris Andrews, Nerve Net, 2021, Silver and copper wire on dyed linen, 8 × 10 in. (20.32 × 25.4 cm).
A gallery with stone floors and white walls. On the floor are various works: at the back and left foreground are salmon coloured pouches made of a cloudy plastic. In the right foreground is a cream-coloured t-shirt, cut at the side seams and laid flat.
Chris Andrews, A Lack, 2017, Vacuum-sealed plastic, photographic emulsion, embroidered garment. (Continually light-sensitive), dimensions variable.

Residents from Canada

Jude Griebel

Canada, United States
Canada Council for the Arts
Studio #301

Alice Wang

United States, Canada
Canada Council for the Arts, Capsule Shanghai
Studio #213

Stanley Wany

Canada
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
2024