Past Residents

Country
Year
Residency Program
Resident Type
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Residents Map
United States, Trinidad and Tobago

Past Resident
2025: Vision Fund

Artist

Akeema-Zane

Akeema-Zane (she/her) is an artist and researcher working in the mediums of literature, film, performance and sound. a²z is the arm which houses some of the artists’ music/sound practice which includes deejaying, composition and scoring/sound design.

Akeema-Zane has exhibited work at Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia; Recess Art, New York; and Weeksville Heritage Center, New York, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Akeema-Zane in conversation with Ladi’Sasha Jones
May 28, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm
Spring Open Studios 2025
April 25–April 26, 2025
In centering the historical contexts of The Great (Black) migration, The Harlem Renaissance and the collaborative spirits of James Weldon Johnson and Aaron Douglas, artists Akeema-Zane and Rena Anakwe immerse themselves in the Southern landscapes of Savannah, Georgia and Wilmington, North Carolina to invoke the text “Go Down, Death.” What emerges is a survey of the synergy between land and it’s cycles of death, as well as the rest that is needed for regeneration.
Akeema-Zane, Our Mourning Due, 2022-23, moving Image, 9:25 min.
Void Spa is an immersive installation replicating a contemplative cave experience with darkness, harsh ambient sound, geomancy, and tactile stimulation. This project examines how rites develop within post-industrial subcultures, especially through sensory design. It also rejects the extractive and appropriative use of Black and Brown spirituality within luxury wellness by reflecting instead on protected or disrupted traditions from their syncretic adaptations and media representations.
Akeema-Zane, Void Spa, 2023, installation.
From the Bronx to Trinidad, Maryland to New York, Tehran to Chicago, 9 entities emerges to illuminate three artists’ documented pasts and interpretations of discovering their private as a public history. Through mining what emerges as a map of publics, the artists discover a question of conception and draw on a shared obsession- mothers. How do we imagine the arrangement of things coming together to give notion to our sense of selves and our current realities?
Akeema-Zane, 9 Entities, 2022, video, 19:39 min.
Sonic Escape Routes seeks to explore the following: what is the spiritual core and where is the liminal space for a people whose freedom to thrive remains in question? and what are the varying routes that anchor us toward flight or resistance? Through a collaborative sound and visual performance, the artists aim to assert and embed their own personal narratives and histories to traverse the archives of Weeksville in order to answer these questions.”
Akeema-Zane, Sonic Escape Routes: Shall We Fly? or Shall We Resist?, 2020, video, 49:39 min.

Residents from Trinidad and Tobago

Kearra Amaya Gopee

United States, Trinidad and Tobago
Vision Fund
2024
Turkey

Past Resident
2025: SAHA Association

Artist

Cem Örgen

Cem Örgen draws on his industrial design background to explore the histories, functions, and processes of materials through a lens of subjective and contextual movements. By uncovering collective memory from hidden, rushed, and isolated settings, he examines the moral dilemmas and unease triggered by everyday stimuli. Through a diverse range of media, Örgen reflects his hyper-situational values, creating works that embody affective states and processes with meticulous material control. His pieces, spanning sculpture, drawing, assemblage, text, and sound, appear simultaneously organic and artificial.

Cem Örgen has exhibited work at The Pill, Turkey; Les Urbaines, Switzerland; and IMALAT-HANE, Turkey, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Spring Open Studios 2025
April 25–April 26, 2025
CNC cut, power carved, paint-washed, and varnished plywood, epoxy fillings, blow-molded acrylic water lens, silicon sealant, and fine art print on aluminum.
Cem Örgen, Breakfast with Family, 2024, sculpture, 71 × 87 × 69 in. (180.34 × 220.98 × 175.26 cm).
Backpack straps, webbings, zippers, buckles stitched on polyethylene foam. Tools, products, mock-ups, test parts, and defective parts used in making the Risk of Rain exhibition.
Cem Örgen, Bag 3, 2024, sculpture, 4 × 18 × 10 in. (10.16 × 45.72 × 25.4 cm).
Laser welded, sandblasted aluminum, mirror, metal plate, pipes and spring, XPE foam.
Cem Örgen, Pop, 2023, sculpture and music video.
Fiber-optic, MRI, and X-ray films of the artist, his friends, family, and loved ones, plywood, screw eyes, aluminum.
Cem Örgen, Race Major, 2024, sculpture, 34 × 38 × 50 in. (86.36 × 96.52 × 127 cm).
Cem Örgen, Content, 2022, sculpture and video work, 55 × 67 × 102 in. (139.7 × 170.18 × 259.08 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
United States

Past Resident
2025: Vision Fund

Artist

Aryel René Jackson

Aryel René Jackson is a Black Afro-Creole film-based artist exploring land as a site of internal representation. Their visual essays blend film, soil, performance, and installation to examine critical race theories and memory. Raised in post-Katrina New Orleans, their work reflects ancestral wisdom and land’s role in knowledge transmission.

Aryel René Jackson has exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; and Big Medium, Texas, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Artists at Work: Aryel René Jackson in Conversation with Zalika Azim
May 13, 2025, 6:30–7:30pm
Spring Open Studios 2025
April 25–April 26, 2025
A textured diorama of a winding river cutting through rocky terrain, with mossy green patches suggesting vegetation. A circular inset in the lower left corner features a vintage scene of two Black filmmakers operating a camera, evoking themes of archival memory and historical storytelling.
Aryel René Jackson, A Welcoming Place, 2020-22, film, 29:14 min.
A textured mixed-media artwork featuring a silhouette of a musician playing the violin, draped in bold blue and yellow hues. The background is an abstract, fragmented landscape with geometric lines, earthy textures, and patches of moss. A partially broken circular form resembling a moon or planet hovers above, with bright red and pink elements suggesting energy or disruption.
Aryel René Jackson, Temporal Glimpse, 2024, acrylic, Texas topsoil, sand, creole accordionist alphonse "Bois Sec" ardoin, Marjis Allen (Grandma), flock, archival print, cyanotype, screenprint, acrylic-based cement patch, and varnish on panel, 18 × 18 × 11/2 in. (45.72 × 45.72 × 3.81 cm).
A layered composition blending photography and painting, depicting a group of figures engaged in an intense scene. A central figure, darkened and silhouetted, interacts with a mechanical structure resembling an engine or turbine. The surrounding figures, outlined in vibrant colors, appear to be observing or reacting. The piece has a rough, earthy texture with abstract, stormy black-and-white elements framing the background.
Aryel René Jackson, Learning to Soar, 2024, acrylic, pumice, sand, potting soil, Texas topsoil, cadets in ground school studying a radial aircraft engine (Air Force Historical Support Division, 1942), 7 × 5 × 15/8 in. (17.78 × 12.7 × 4.06 cm).
a shed-like barn coated in soil. The house like structure appears to sink into its base, suggesting stability and change.
Aryel René Jackson, Buried Signals, 2024, wooden beams, Texas topsoil (chocolate loam), 84 × 84 × 84 in. (213.36 × 213.36 × 213.36 cm).
A dimly lit, vibrant interior bathed in deep blue and red hues. A person in a white tank top and purple pants energetically removes a faux fur jacket, while another, dressed in suspenders and a bow tie, focuses intently on a DJ setup. The retro-styled room is adorned with vintage portraits, lush plants, and eclectic furniture, suggesting a theatrical performance or cinematic reenactment.
Aryel René Jackson, We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we, 2021, partition walls, botanical print, red paint, laminated wood flooring, pink armchair, white table, wooden side table, gold plated metal disk, planters, keyboard, speakers, television monitors, framed images of Juanita Brunson Jackson's mother and grandmother, as a child, as a student in secondary school, and during nursing school in Brooklyn covering between approximately 1890s until 1940s), circular rug, track lighting, floor lamp, foam, topsoil, tap floor, small suitcase, pillows, microphones, 9 min.

Residents from United States

Hanae Utamura

Japan, United States
Every Page Foundation
Studio #201

Akeema-Zane

United States, Trinidad and Tobago
Vision Fund
2025

Laura Lappi

Finland, United States
Alfred Kordelin Foundation
2025