Meet this month’s artists-in-residence!
Residency session: August 9th - 22nd, 2023
Rowan Renee
Brooklyn, NY
Rowan Renee (b. 1985, West Palm Beach, Florida) is a genderqueer artist currently working in Brooklyn, NY. Their work addresses intergenerational trauma, gender-based violence and the impact of the criminal legal system through image, text and installation. They have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon (2021), Five Myles (2021), Aperture Foundation (2017), and Pioneer Works (2015), with reviews in publications including VICE, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times. They have received awards from the Aaron Siskind Foundation, the Harpo Foundation and the Jerome Hill Foundation, and have been an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Book Arts, NARS Foundation, Red Bull Arts and the Textile Arts Center. In 2022, they will be the second Artist-in-Residence at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. Currently, their project Between the Lines, supported by We, Women Photo, runs art workshops by correspondence with LGBTQ+ people currently incarcerated in Florida. Their installation, No Spirit For Me (2019), was included in the critically acclaimed exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, curated by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood at MoMA PS1.
Rashin Fahandej
Framingham, Massachusetts
Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American immersive storyteller, futurist, and cultural activist. Fahandej's projects center on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating social change. A proponent of “Art as Ecosystem,” she defines her projects as a “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual spaces. Fahandej is an assistant professor of emerging and interactive media at Emerson College and a Senior Co-Creation Research-Practitioner at MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Fahandej is the founder of “A Father’s Lullaby, “ a multi-platform, co-creative project that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system. This work was incubated as part of the Boston Mayor’s Office Artist-In-Residence (2017) and a multi-year research fellowship with the MIT Open Documentary Lab. It won the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica Festival Award of Distinction in Digital Musics & Sound Ars and the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ James and Audrey Foster Prize (2019), Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship (2019), and was further supported by residencies and fellowships with ThoughtWorks Arts and Scatter VR Volumetric Filmmaking (2019), Framingham Cultural Council (2019), and Boston Center for the Arts Public Art Residency (2018).
Beth Livensperger
Ridgewood, New York
Originally from the Midwest, Beth Livensperger holds a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union, and an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. She has exhibited at venues in NYC, widely throughout the U.S., and in Seoul, Korea. Her solo projects have been hosted by The Abrons Arts Center and Chashama, and she has participated in group exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, RISD Memorial Hall Gallery, The Painting Center, and Essex Flowers, among many others. Her work has been reviewed in Politico, Two Coats of Paint blog, and WNYC’s Culture Datebook. Residency and grant support has been received by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Lower East Side Printshop, Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The Abrons Arts Center, and the Saltonstall Foundation, among others.
“My practice responds to forces shaping our collective experience, like social hierarchies, class, and technology. Installations I’ve made over the last several years meditate on everything from women navigating the contemporary workplace, to the omnipresence of surveillance technology and the warping effect of the digital on our perceptions and relationships. Public architecture, be it corporate office or government building, serves as a lynchpin in my work: public space sits at the convergence of public control and individual agency. My ink on paper pieces are cut and collaged into room-sized installations which respond to the particulars of a given space.:”
Kate Conlon
medford, massachusetts
Kate Conlon is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work draws inspiration from the history of scientific thought. Conlon’s sculpture, print, and book works have been exhibited at venues including 68 Projects Berlin; OC OSAKA; Julius Caesar, Chicago; Goldfinch, Chicago; MANA Contemporary; and The Grand Rapids Art Museum. She has received grants and residencies from MASS MoCA, Kala Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, and the Chicago Artists Coalition. She was named the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s Artist in Residence for the 2020-2021 year.
Conlon is co-director of Limited Time Engagement Press and served as a founding director of Fernwey Gallery and Editions from 2014 to 2018. Conlon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Smith College. She is currently a Professor of the Practice in Print at SMFA @ Tufts University.
Taipei, Taiwan
Rexy Tseng (b. 1986) is a visual artist who works primarily in painting and installation. His art practice derives from the dark humor and unrequited desires found within contemporary living conditions. Blurring bodily forms and objects, Tseng’s works press sensations against logic. By expanding on intimate observations, Tseng stages the unresolved past with possible futures, where he addresses personal politics, technological flaws, and hurt moments. Born and raised in Taipei until the age of thirteen, Tseng relocated to upstate New York to further his education. He received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009, he withdrew from MFA at UCLA in 2012, and he withdrew from MFA at University of Oxford in 2017. Between degrees, Tseng worked as a software engineer in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.
Tseng has exhibited in Armenia, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S.. He has received awards and recognition from Allegro Prize, Charlottenborg Foundation, Li Chun-Shan Foundation Visual Art Awards, Taipei Art Awards, Tomorrow Sculpture Awards, and others. Tseng has participated in artist residencies internationally, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Cite internationale des arts, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea), Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and more.
Christine Brown
Worcester, Massachusetts
“I am a quilter. With fabric, I connect the little pieces in all of us that are better together. Quilts hold our intimate secrets and silent expectations. They keep us warm and comfort us. Utilitarian and functional, they are often overlooked as objects with little value. Yet, throughout time, they are ever present, ever faithful. I am inspired by the connection, and importance of textiles commonly referred to as “woman’s work. Often considered the hobbies of idle hands, these pieces are historical documents as important and valid as treaties, statues, and maps. They hold our collective values as silent observers, and they are representational of the time period they were constructed in. By refocusing quilts as art, I hope to illuminate, and elevate them to the visual technically intricate and important masterpieces that they are.”
Ara Koh
Washington, DC
Ara Koh was born in Seoul, South Korea from a fashion designer mother, and an industrial designer father. She received her BFA in Ceramics and Glass from Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea in 2018, and was an exchange student at California State University, Long Beach in 2016. Ara graduated with an MFA in Ceramic Art at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2020. Her works are installations claiming space. The intensity of the labor, repetitiveness, and palliative obsessiveness manifested in her sculpture brings a fresh reveal to the ageless themes of body, architecture-shelter and landscape.
Her works have been exhibited in South Korea and in the United States. Ara has received numerous awards including the Minister of Foreign Affairs Honor by the Korean government. Her works are collected by Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Daekyo Culture Foundation, Winell Corporation in Korea, and many personal collectors. Ara Koh currently lives and works in Washington DC.
Meghan O’Hara
Santa Cruz, California
Meghan O’Hara is a documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor of Documentary Film at California State University Monterey Bay. Her short film “The Field Trip”, co-directed with Mike Attie and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, was featured in the New York Times ‘Op-Docs’ series and selected as a Vimeo ‘Staff Pick.’ She co-directed the feature documentary, “In Country” with Mike Attie in 2014, which screened at Full Frame, Hot Docs, and CPH:DOX, among others. She was a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellow in 2014 and received an award for Excellence in Cinematography from Eastman/Kodak. O’Hara’s work has received support from The NEH, The Sundance Institute, HotDocs Forum, Gotham, and DOK.Incubator. O'Hara is currently in production on a feature documentary about the long-forgotten Tektite Program with art historian/curator/musician James Merle Thomas. O’Hara holds an MFA in Documentary from Stanford University and a BA in nonfiction from Hampshire College. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her partner Mikko and her son, Oskar.
James Merle Thomas
Philadelphia, pennsylvania
James Merle Thomas is a writer, curator, and creative arts executive based in New York. For two decades, Thomas has worked at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, higher education, and arts administration in various museums, universities, and nonprofit arts institutions. His editorial and curatorial work has largely focused on modern and global contemporary art and visual culture; major projects include leadership roles in organizing the 2nd Seville Biennial, the 7th Gwangju Biennale, and the Third Paris Triennale with artistic director Okwui Enwezor. He is currently Deputy Director at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, where he shapes strategic partnerships with various museums and universities, including the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative. Thomas holds a doctorate in art history from Stanford University, and has held faculty positions at Temple University, the University of Delaware, and the University of Southern California.