UArts Announces Inaugural Slate of Inspiration Lab Artists in Residence

 

 

On Aug. 26, University of the Arts will welcome the inaugural cohort of Inspiration Lab (iLAB) artists in residence. This new program, which will occupy the renovated third floor of Anderson Hall on South Broad Street, gathers emerging and midcareer interdisciplinary artists and provides the critical support needed to accelerate their contributions to contemporary art. The residencies range from three months to one year, with additional artists set to join the university in January.

In addition to dedicated studio and communal spaces, the cohort has the potential to access the university’s advanced workshops and labs, including fabrication studios, the cutting-edge Albert M. Greenfield Makerspace and Laurie Wagman Recording Studios, and the Center for Immersive Media, which houses one of the largest motion-capture stages on the East Coast. Additionally, as a means to elevate and sustain relationships with the UArts and the greater Philadelphia community, all artists in residence will explore connections with ongoing UArts courses and provide public presentations of their work.

This program has been supported by UArts donors and an active committee that helped UArts envision and shape the concept of these residencies while supporting the artists’ selection. The committee members for this first cycle of residencies are Nicole Pollard, curator of lived culture at Philadelphia Contemporary; Phong Bui, artist, writer, curator, and publisher and artistic director of Brooklyn Rail; and Jenn Joy, scholar, performance artist and author of The Choreographic.

About the artists:
Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Diné artist known for his chamber music compositions and noise music performances. Chacon’s residency is supported by a partnership with the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
In residency through July 31

Cultural organizer and music director Sweet Corey-Bey is recognized for creating works that shift cultural narratives through immersive storytelling and uplift identity formation.
In residency through Dec. 2

Philadelphia-based artist Lucia Garzón works in a range of media including, but not limited to, wood, textiles, print and video. The main themes in Garzón’s work focus on the intersection between the immigrant values and histories passed on through her family.
In residency through Dec. 2

Naomieh Jovin is a Philadelphia-based artist. Her work utilizes appropriated photos from old family albums and incorporates her own photographs to illustrate resistance and intergenerational trauma, and how we carry the experiences of our past and our family’s past in our bodies.
In residency through July 31

Mia Kang is an art historian, poet, performance artist and interim director of the Museo del Westside, a new community participatory museum focused on the history and culture of San Antonio’s Westside barrio. Her dissertation, Art, Race, Representation: The Rise of Multiculturalism in the Visual Arts, examines the contested rise of U.S. multiculturalism and its unresolved legacies.
In residency through July 31

UArts alum Breyanna Maples BFA ’18 (Dance) is a Philadelphia-based artist who recently collaborated with Tommie-Waheed Evans on softly, as I leave you. In addition, Maples has worked with Solange, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born, Gerard and Kelly, and numerous other interdisciplinary artists.
In residency through July 31

The work of Philadelphia-based artist Ana Mosquera revolves around digital data collection and creating methods of analysis that interrogate our daily use of technology. A combination of multidisciplinary processes allows her to organize and make sense of digital experiences, while exploring the relationship between physical and digital places.
In residency through Dec. 2

Through means of mimesis, Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Santoro utilizes fractured narratives borrowed from mass culture, existential theater and pop psychology to create paradoxical images, where nothing is what it initially appears to be.
In residency through July 31

Orlando Thompson is a St. Louis-based artist and movie maker. Regarding his work, Thompson says, “I am black… I am American. This is how America defines me. What I make explores being black, American and the space in-between.”
In residency through Dec. 2

Based in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, Wilmer Wilson IV investigates the marginalization and care of Black bodies in contemporary life through his work. Wilson is concerned with “the way that blackness is shaped in and by city space” and interested in “producing possibilities for representation that exist apart from global advertising strategies.”
In residency through May 31

 

Bookmark the iLAB site and check back soon for more information about the artists.