Shandaken Projects Names Artists for Inaugural Residency Program on New York’s Governors Island
Nov 19, 2018 10:03 pm
Five NYC-based cultural practitioners will create site-responsive work over the next year
Shandaken Projects and The Trust for Governors Island are pleased to announce its first residents in the inaugural session of Shandaken: Governors Island. Five NYC-based artists producing work in the fields of poetry, video, critical theory, sculpture, performance and more have been awarded free studio space on Governors Island. As part of their residency, the cultural practitioners will have the opportunity to explore and learn about Governors Island and create work responding to its rich history, unique ecological framework and unparalleled vistas.
Residents announced include Candystore, a poet, artist and performer who has recently presented work at LaMama, Dixon Place, and in Paper magazine; Alicia Grullón, whose performance, video, and photography work is inspired by citizen action movements, and has been shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Performa 11, BRIC, and the Creative Time Summit; Kavita Kulkarni, a writer, researcher, and educator who is completing a PhD at NYU on race, affect, culture, and space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and was a recent Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program; Marie Lorenz, whose project Tide and Current Taxi takes participants through New York City using only the tide, in boats that she designs and builds, and whose work has been shown at MoMA PS1 and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Tourmaline (FKA Reina Gossett), an artist and filmmaker whose work highlights the capacity of black queer/trans social life to impact the world and has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Whitney Museum, MOCA LA, Brooklyn Museum, BAM Cinematek, and the New Museum.
The five residents were selected from an open call. Beginning this fall, residents will work on Governors Island throughout the winter and spring, deepening their practices and developing new work to be presented during Governors Island’s 2019 public season. These, projects, a new addition to Governors Island’s growing art and culture program, will be offered to the island’s hundreds of thousands of visitors for free. The works presented will respond to the context of the island, as experienced by the residents during the course of the program.
“We’re very proud to have created crucially-needed free studio space for New York City – based cultural practitioners in partnership with the Trust,” said Shandaken Projects director Nicholas Weist. “New Yorkers come to Governors Island from every zip code of the city, and we’re excited to bring our residents’ reflections on a local site with a such a unique and important history to these neighbors as well as guests from farther afield.”
“Over the last decade, Governors Island has been a hub for artistic research and experimentation. We are excited to have this amazing group of artists and scholars join our community, expanding the Island’s role as a site for artistic production and further rooting our commitment to providing the time and space that is so pivotal for artists in furthering their practice,” said Meredith Johnson, The Trust for Governors Island’s VP of Arts & Culture.
A full schedule of resident-led public programming, as well as a full calendar of arts and cultural programming on Governors Island for next summer, will be released in spring 2019.
About the residents:
Candystore is a non-binary, multidisciplinary artist, poet, and performer from San Jose, CA. Shimher latest writing project, titled CRAY OO LA, is a series of poems each named after a color from a popular North American crayon manufacturer. Candystore’s writing and art have been published in Paper Magazine, Riot of Perfume, Precog, Phile Magazine, RFD, Mesmer, Hand Job Zine, and others. She-he has performed around New York City at Club Cumming, The AC Institute, LaMama Galleria, Dixon Place, Picasso Machinery, POWRPLNT and every time she-he uses a public restroom. She-he is also a 2018 – 2019 Queer | Art fellow. Candystore lives in Brooklyn, NY in a pink room.
Alicia Grullón’s works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions including The 8th Floor, Columbia University, Center for Book Arts, Franklin Furnace, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC, School of Visual Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Smack Mellon, Art in Odd Places, Jamaica Flux, and Performa 11. She has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York, and Franklin Furnace Archis and commissioned for the Old Storm Hose and Bronx River Art Center’s Immigrant Culture Initiative. Grullón has participated in artists residencies for El Museo del Barrio, Bronx Museum’s AIM program, and Korea Arts Council. She has presented at the Creative Time Summit 2015, The Royal College of Art, United States Association for Art Educators, and the Whitney Biennial for Occupy Museum’s Debt Fair exhibit. Grullón’s project PERCENT FOR GREEN, a functioning green bill created as art with Bronx residents, contributed to her acting as co-lead organizer in the Bronx for the People’s Climate March. She is currently an artist in residency at The Center for Book Arts in New York and fellow with the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Creative Time Reports, Blown Art Blog, Art F City, and Art News. She is a contributing author for the forthcoming publication from Palgrave Macmillian “Rhetoric, Social Value and the Arts: But How Does it Work?” and co-author of City Limits article The Intrinstic Value in Neighborhoods Targeted for Gentrification” with Housing Activist and ED of Mothers on the Move Wanda Salaman. She holds a BFA from New York University and an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Kavita Kulkarni is a writer, researcher, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a PhD candidate and adjunct professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on race, affect, culture, and the production of space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn from 1945 to 2010. Kavita is also a recent alumnus of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art as a 2017 – 2018 Critical Studies participant. Kulkarni holds a BA in Sociology from Emory University and an MA in Individualized Study from New York University. Prior to pursuing her graduate studies, Kulkarni was a community organizer working on various economic and housing justice issues in Atlanta, Georgia and Brooklyn, New York.
New York-based artist Marie Lorenz has been exploring and documenting urban waterfronts for many years. In 2005 she started her Tide and Current Taxi, taking participants through New York City using only the tide, in boats that she designs and builds. Her artwork has been shown nationally and internationally, from Red Cat Gallery in Los Angeles, California, to MoMA PS1, in New York City. She has completed solo projects at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, Jack Hanley Gallery, in New York City, and the Albright Knox in Buffalo, New York, among others. In 2008 she was awarded the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize for the American Academy in Rome.
Tourmaline (FKA Reina Gossett) is an artist and filmmaker whose work includes Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, The Personal Things, Lost in the Music, and Happy Birthday, Marsha! She is also an editor of TRAP DOOR, an anthology on trans cultural production published by the New Museum & MIT Press. Tourmaline makes film and installed video that highlights the capacity of black queer/trans social life to impact the world while living what is simultaneously an invisible — and hypervisible — existence. The throughline of her filmmaking focuses on everyday people and their mundane creative acts that blur the lines and liens of what constitutes public. She received a BA from Columbia University and is the recipient of the 2018 Publishing Triangle Award, Special Mention at 2018 Outfest Film Festival, 2017 HBO & Queer/Art Prize and 2016 Art Matters Foundation Grant. She is a 2016 – 2017 participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace program, and a 2012 – 2013 Queer/Art/Mentorship fellow. From 2014 – 2018 she was an activist in residence at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Her work has been presented across the world including at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Whitney Museum, MOCA LA, Brooklyn Museum, BAM Cinematek and the New Museum.
Shandaken Projects supports cultural advancement through public programs and artist services. These opportunities are focused on process, experimentation, and dialogue, and are aimed particularly at important but under-served individuals. Through our free residency programs Shandaken: Governors Island and Shandaken: Storm King, our free educational initiative Paint School, and our commissions, public programs, and exhibitions, we create possibilities for cultural practitioners to forge new pathways in their work and in the world. We believe that research, experimentation, and the pursuit of new ideas are vital steps in the progress of culture, and that the creative community must safeguard space for them. We provide an alternative organizational model and significant opportunities for this community in an independent environment. Shandaken Projects is intentionally small-scale.