Meet this month’s artists-in-residence!
This month we welcome not one but two cohorts of residents to the Studios at MASS MoCA!
Residency sessions run:
February 28th - March 11, 2024 (meet the cohort)
March 13 - April 8, 2024 (meet the cohort)
Mark your calendars for a free Open Studio event with the second cohort of artists on Thursday April 4, 5-7pm.
J.Cottle B.A, M.Ed, (He, Him, His) is an Educator, Arts Administrator, Musician, Writer, and Host. He is the Founder/Executive Director of Dunamis, The Chief Alchemist of Akeem’s Alchemy, the Creative Director of Petrichor, and a Co-Host of the podcasts Playblack, and Heart Behind the Hustle. J has supported and advanced the work of MassVOTE, Boston Arts Academy, Berklee College of Music and the Community Music Center of Boston. He serves on the boards of Hooplah and The Flavor Continues, is a 2019 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow, a member of the Martin Richard Institute for Social Justice Advisory Board, and the Tisch College Community Partnerships Committee. J's work centers people of color and explores the intersections of art, equity, civic engagement, transformative growth, healing and joy.
Dream The Combine: Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers
Ithaca, new york
Dream The Combine is the collaborative practice of Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers. They produce site-specific installations that explore metaphor, imaginary environments, and perceptual uncertainties at the boundary between real and illusory space. Their critiques often respond to the literal and socio-political dimensions of sites in order to destabilize our known understanding of the world. Dream The Combine were named a 2023 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League, 2022-2023 Rome Prize Fellows in Architecture by the American Academy in Rome, 2022 Fellows in Architecture and Design by United States Artists, 2021 Visual Artist Fellows by the McKnight Foundation, 2020-2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize winners by Landmark Columbus, 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program winners by The Museum of Modern Art, 2018 Architecture Residents at Art Omi, and 2017 Jerome Foundation/Franconia Sculpture Park Artists-in-Residence.
Their work has been exhibited at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura curated by Lesley Lokko, the Graham Foundation for the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial curated by The Floating Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, MadArt Studio in Seattle WA, and sites in Rome, Lisbon, Vancouver BC, Minneapolis MN, St. Paul MN, and Columbus IN. Their writing and interviews have appeared in Wallpaper, Metropolis, MasContext, Log, Architectural Design, the Journal of Architectural Education, Architectural Design, and Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. Upcoming exhibitions include work in the Metropolitan Museum exhibition Flight Into Egypt: African-American Artists and Egypt from 1867 to Now opening November 2024.
Jennifer and Tom are both faculty at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and graduates of the Yale School of Architecture.
Mara Duvra
St Paul, Minnesota
Mara Duvra is a visual artist and writer. Her research-based practice combines photography, poetry, and video to create installations that explore stillness and interiority as critical modes of self-study. Duvra’s most recent body of work Tending: meditations on interiority and blackness, uses poetic and ephemeral imagery to understand Blackness beyond resistance or public identity. Photographing landscapes, interiors, and the body, Duvra's visual practice explores shifts in proximity through moments laid bare / unfolding the vulnerability of being present / uncovering a shared intimacy.
This work is about the quiet and quotidian, the still and meditative, and considers possibilities for Black subjectivity that center tenderness.
Duvra is originally from Maryland and received a BA in Studio Art and Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Duvra is currently a visiting assistant professor in Photography and Design at Macalester College.
Linda Ganjian
Jackson Heights, New York
Linda Ganjian is a NY-based artist who works in a variety of materials, from clay to cement to paper. She grew up in the Boston area and is a second generation Armenian-American.
Her main pursuit has involved making large “table-top” sculptures comprised of hundreds of miniature forms, that are a reinterpretation of Middle Eastern and American craft traditions (carpets, quilts, calligraphy). Much of her work presents memories and impressions of the urban landscape, the specific history of a site, or more personal narratives.
Her work has been exhibited in New York and abroad. Some exhibition highlights include: Future of Things Passed with Atamian Hovsepian (pop-up @ 138 W 25th) 2022; Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows, JCAL, Jamaica, Queens (2021); Art in Buildings 125 Maiden Lane, NYC (2017-2018); Islip Art Museum, NY (2016); Grandchildren at Depo, Istanbul (2015); Auxiliary Projects (2013); Artspace, New Haven, CT (un(spoken) 2009); National Academy of Design (Invitational 2008); Socrates Sculpture Park (EAF 2007); Queens Museum (Queens International2006); Storefront for Art and Architecture (Portable 3-person show 2006); eyewash@Boreas Gallery (Urban Designs solo show 2006); the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Open House: Working in Brooklyn 2004); and Stedelijk museum de Lakenhal in Leiden, Holland (2001).
She has received grants from: the Queens Council on the Arts (2023, 2021, 2017, 2011); Pollack-Krasner Foundation (2005); Artslink (2001); and fellowships to: MacDowell Colony (2006); and Millay Colony (2004), among others.
Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times and Art in America, among other publications.
She completed a public art commission for the NYC School Construction Authority in 2014 through the NYC Percent for Art program and the NYC MTA in 2016. In 2019, she was a QCA ArtPort resident at LaGuardia Airport. Her illustrations of Queens landscapes were translated into ceramic tiles for the restrooms of JFK Terminal 8.
She received her B.A. from Bard College and her MFA from Hunter College CUNY.
Ellen Lake
Oakland, California
Ellen Lake is a a multi-media artist, based out of Oakland, California and the co-director of Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California, where she began to experiment with printmaking. Recent work explores repeat patterns, print, textiles, patches, repair, camouflage, ceramics, block prints, and iterations. Her practice over time includes a love of cameras, experimenting with technology, archives, and collections. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from Mills College where she focused on film/video, sculpture and installation creating work generating conversations about the rapid evolution of technology, the nostalgia generated by our material world, and it’s inevitable obsolescence. Her work has been supported my awards and grants and time at Vermont Studio Center, Rauschenberg Residency, and Stanford University Experimental Media Arts Lab.
Julia Oldham
Eugene, Oregon
Julia Oldham (b. 1979, Frederick, MD) is an artist living and working in Eugene, OR. Using a range of media, from animation to graphic storytelling, she creates narrative works that explore scientific history and speculative futures.
Oldham's work has been shown widely, including exhibits and screenings at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY; the Northwest Film Center at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; the San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR; and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.
Shailja Patel
Amherst, MAssachusetts
Shailja Patel (she/her) is the author of Migritude, which was a #1 Amazon poetry bestseller, Seattle Times bestseller, and shortlisted for Italy's Camaiore Prize. Taught in over 150 colleges and universities worldwide, Migritude is based on Patel's highly-acclaimed one-woman theatre show, which generated standing ovations on four continents.
Patel's poems have been translated into 17 languages. Her essays and commentaries appear in the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Internazionale, among others. She has appeared on BBC, Al-Jazeera, and NPR. Honors include a Global Feminist Spotlight from the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, the Nordic Africa Institute African Writer Fellowship, the Jozi Book Fair Guest Writer Award, the Voices of Our Nations poetry award, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award, and the BrittlePaper Anniversary Award.
Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for equitable democracy in Kenya. The African Women's Development Fund named her one of Fifty Inspirational African Feminists, ELLE India Magazine selected her as one of its 25 New Guard Influencers, and Poetry Africa honored her as Letters To Dennis Poet, continuing the legacy of renowned anti-apartheid activist poet Dennis Brutus. She represented Kenya at the London Cultural Olympiad's Poetry Parnassus. Her work features in the Smithsonian Museum's groundbreaking Beyond Bollywood exhibition.
Patel is the Public Affairs Editor for the Massachusetts Review. From 2019-2022, she was a Research Associate at Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, in Western Massachusetts.
Photo courtesy of © Marco Giugliarelli for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2023
Zella Vanié
NEw york, New york
Zella Vanié is a multidisciplinary artist who splits their time between New York City and Côte d’Ivoire. They paint large-scale ‘scenes of protest’ that center Black Queer identity and a reverence for nature and the immaterial. They draw inspiration from their Kentucky military town upbringing, automatic drawings, and dialogue with friends and contemporaries. Their works are bright with color and transparencies to bring the viewer into dualities of light and dark, nihilism and beauty, captivity and freedom.
Vanié has shown work in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam, where their work was in a group show that marked 150 years since slavery was abolished in Dutch colonies. They have received grants and residencies from Flux Factory, Carrie Able gallery, and The Other Art Fair; and have been mentioned in Untitled Magazine and Hyperallergic Magazine.
Vanié served four years in the US Army as a satellite technician with deployments to Iraq and Haiti; and they are a founding board member of the Black Veterans Project. They hold an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts; and have taught courses at New York University and California College of the Arts.
“My work centers the idea that personal and collective imagination are a powerful tool for liberation here and now. I believe that, in order to feel joy, to love, to forgive, to conceptualize how to be free, I must first imagine that these acts and ways of existing are attainable. My imagination exists beyond the binary. It exists beyond sadness and suffering. Beyond imperial power. Above all, my work aims to ask new questions about what it means to be free, while being a mirror for Black Queer people, visualizing our beauty, divinity, and boundless new worlds that have always been ours to take up spiritual residence in.”
Photo by Khalil Bowens
Jane Wong
Seattle, washington
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). She is also the author of two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, UCross, Loghaven, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and others. An interdisciplinary artist as well, she has exhibited her poetry installations and performances at the Frye Art Museum, Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum. She grew up in a take-out restaurant on the Jersey shore and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Asian American Literature at Western Washington University.
Headshot by Gritchelle Fallesgon.
Khaila Batts artistic practice is deeply rooted in the fluidity of memories and the exploration of perception through the combination of digital collage, acetate, and painted surfaces. By manipulating color and emotion, her work delves into the relational nature of color, creating surreal and chaotic scenes that challenge traditional representations. Through tiny organic brushstrokes and cool shades of blue, she transforms violent imagery into calming depictions reminiscent of ocean waves, inviting viewers to contemplate the complex interplay between violence and tranquility.
Epiphany Couch
Portland, oregon
Epiphany Couch is a multidisciplinary artist exploring generational knowledge, storytelling, and our connection to the metaphysical. By re-contextualizing classic mediums such as bookmaking, photography, and sculpture, she looks to present new ways through which we can examine our pasts, the natural world, and our ancestors. Couch’s work is unapologetically personal, drawing from family stories, her childhood experience, archival research, and her own dreams. She utilizes the book not only as a format through which to share these stories but as a precious object — intimate and heirloom-like.
Couch is spuyaləpabš (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian and grew up in caləłali (Tacoma, Washington). She earned her BFA in Sculpture with a minor in Asian Studies from The University of Puget Sound in 2010. Her work has been shown at Carnation Contemporary in Portland OR, Gallery Ost in New York City, and Studio Editions Gallery in Seattle WA. In 2022 and 2023 she received the Jurors Choice Award for her work included in the Around Oregon Biennial at The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Sève Favre
LA CONVERSION, SWITZERLAND
Sève Favres is an interdisciplinary Swiss and Belgian artist working in painting, drawing, installation and digital. Using mixed media technics, she creates interactive artworks on canvas with digital extension, interactive site-specific installations, user engaged and sensitive experiences through colour, materials and focused on landscapes, colour compositions, climate and social change. Passionate about the concept of integration, she concentrates on transcending the classical boundary between the artwork and the viewer. The main feature of her art is interactivity. The key words that support her concept is being in interaction (be together), variation (be different), activity (be active). Since 2017, she has developed her personal practice and has exhibited in Switzerland and abroad in museums, biennials as Bienalsur 2021, galleries, art fairs and during residencies. Her specific artistic research has led her to be a finalist for 14th the Arte Laguna Prize (sculpture/installation section) and longlisted for Aesthetica Art Prize 2024.
Andrea Ferrero
Lima, Peru
Andrea Ferrero (b.Lima 1991) is a visual artist from Peru currently based in Mexico City. Her work critically considers iconographies of power and our relationship with them, playfully encouraging new ways in which symbols of domination inserted into built space and embedded into collective consciousness can be reappropriated and resignified. Recently focused on researching food as spectacle, eating rituals as stagings of power and their relation to architecture and ceremonial aesthetics, it seeks to challenge colonial legacies through strategies of humor and fiction. Using archival material, photogrammetry and 3d prints as raw material, her recent work unfolds in edible pieces that focus on the process of eating, digesting, metabolizing and excreting, often involving the audience in ephemeral sweet bacchanalia.
Andrea was part of the SOMA Academic Program in Mexico City 2019-2021 and has been part of artist residencies at Pivô arte e pesquisa, Sao Paulo; HANGAR, Lisbon and FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá, among others. She is currently participating in the the Malta Biennale “Decolonizing Malta” and her work has been shown in spaces such as Museo Jumex (Mexico City), TMOFA (Taoyuan), Swivell Gallery (New York) and Gallery Shilla (Seoul).
Amanda Machado
Oakland, California
Amanda E. Machado (she/they) is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work has been published in The Atlantic, Guernica, The Washington Post, Adroit Journal, Slate, The Guardian, and many others. In addition to their essay writing, Amanda also is a public speaker and workshop facilitator on issues of justice and anti-oppression for organizations including Patagonia, The Aspen Institute, HipCamp, and many others. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that centers the experiences of people of color in how we tell stories about the outdoors.
Amanda has a degree in English Literature and Nonfiction Writing from Brown University, and currently lives on unceded Ohlone land in Oakland.
Murjoni Merriweather
Baltimore, Maryland
Sculptor, Murjoni Merriweather grew up in Temple Hills, Maryland. During her time there, she fell in love with art at the age of 8 learning how to draw from trial and error and art kits her parents would give her. After dabbling in photography, drawing, painting and graphic design, Murjoni tried out ceramics by the time she was in 8th grade where her heart grew whole. While feeling so connected to clay, she started making work that reflected the black experience. In 2018 Murjoni graduated from The Maryland Institute College of Art with her BFA in Ceramics and concentration in Film/video. During this time, she explored celebrating blackness through figurative forms. Murjoni has been able to expand her knowledge and experiment at places like Creative Alliance (Baltimore, 2019-2022), Fountainhead Residency (Miami, 2021) and The Alma | Lewis Residency (PA, 2022) in ways that talk about emotion through the clay itself.
Murjoni currently resides in Baltimore Maryland with her cat, Kiva, where she continues to aim towards inspiring and celebrating black culture in ways that make us feel seen.
Ruth Owens
Metairie, Louisiana
Ruth Owens graduated in 2018 with an MFA from the University of New Orleans after leaving her medical practice of 25 years. She is represented by the Ferrara Showman Gallery, and belongs to the artist collective, “The Front,” both in New Orleans. Owens’ work is concerned with contributing to and preserving the Black archive, and she uses personal super-8 film references in her painting and video art. Artist residencies include the Joan Mitchell Center, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Vermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in NY. Her work is in the permanent collections of the 21c Museums, Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Fidelity Investments Corporate Collection, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
Headshot by Colin Roberson
Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas
Toronto, Canada
Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas (she/they) is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. Their artistic practice is based on developing performative actions that include elements of touch and queer gestures. They primarily work in lens-based media, textiles and performance. They are interested in communal interaction, materiality, and the potential for objects to function as both symbols of self and surrogates for intimacy.
Müller St. Thomas completed their MFA at York University (2017). They were a beneficiary of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Graduate Master’s Scholarship (2016). They participated in the 2018 Hamilton Supercrawl Arts Festival and the 2020 Venice International Performance Art Week. In 2021, they attended the Cleaning the House Workshop by the Marina Abramović Institute in Greece. In 2022, they participated in the NARS Artist Residency in Brooklyn, New York, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. They completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, supported by the Liz Crockford Artists Fund Award (2023). In 2024, they will be an artist in residence at Mass MoCA, and in 2025, they have a solo show at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, New York.
Mike Vos
Portland, Oregon
Mike Vos (b. 1986) is a photographer, visual artist and musician from Portland, OR.
Drawing inspiration from various literary movements and themes, Vos uses traditional and experimental 4x5 film techniques, field recordings and instrumentation to craft complex narratives that advocate for the preservation of wild spaces. Constantly pushing the capabilities of film photography and sound, Vos creates immersive experiences to draw viewers into surreal representations of physical places.
Traditional landscape photography lacks the ability to fully translate the complex emotions that come when viewing places firsthand that are ancient, beautiful, and strange. Much like variant adaptations of the same subject matter, Vos interprets landscapes into ethereal and otherworldly dreamscapes to capture the awe and wonder that exists in nature.