MOCA Tucson Artist-in-Residence Program
2019-2020 Artists-in-Residence
SANTINA AMATO
Santina Amato is a multimedia artist whose work addresses the notion of the intimate body, especially the female body. Her practice incorporates video, sculpture, installation, performance, painting, and photography and is deeply rooted in psychoanalytic thinking and feminist theory, attempting to translate the complexities of her own female sexuality, desire and erotica within the visceral relationship between the physical, the psychological, and the social of the functioning body. As a material focus, her interest in using bread dough within an interdisciplinary artistic dialogue, is its life cycle. Once activated by warm water and sugar, yeast cells split and divide in a process reminiscent of when an egg is fertilized by sperm. There is a peak moment when dough is voluptuous, full, and ripe just before it begins to ‘die’.
TAMAR ETTUN
Brooklyn-based, Jerusalem-born, Ettun uses sculpture, video, and performance art to invert the semiotics of our existing cultural, social, religious, and personal rituals. A conceptual heiress of Baldessari, Levinas [“Lautre c’est moi”], and Boetti [‘everything contains its opposite’], Ettun creates movement-study sculptures rigged to shatter our well-defined physical and psychological territories. Amorphous devices such as parachute habitats and concrete-cast shoes conflate our accepted binaries of permanence/impermanence, static/kinetic, participant/spectator, and military/civilian, to name a few.
YERIN KIM
YeRin Kim-Roznowski is a Korean born interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. YeRin’s work explores solitude, empathy, hierarchy, and interdependency through painting, sculpture, performance, video, and interactive installations. Deeply influenced by fields of contemporary anthropological art and social psychology, she uses various techniques and mediums to illustrate and investigate relationships between individuals, individuals and groups, and the society formed from these relationships. The artist emphasizes the contrast between the innate human experience of being bounded by our own perspective and our need for connection and interdependency on those around us. YeRin’s work depicts abstracted and simplified human relationships that beckon the viewer to recognize themselves within these grand but ubiquitous architectures of life.
MATTHEW COLE
Cole is a painter who employs traditional painting and preliminary printmaking methods to interpret memories of actual and subconscious events – amalgamations of real life and fantasy, often stemming from profound personal experiences. The processes of layering and distorting are instrumental in conveying emotion in his work.The artist uses composite imagery to represent the fragmented nature of memory, narrated through personal as well as familiar references from art history.
2018-2019 Artists-in-Residence
GAL AMIRAM
Gal Amiram is an Israeli-born artist based in Los Angeles. She works in large-scale, digital photographic installations and montages, employing a wry sense of humor to expose the controlling of the Gaze and western perspective over history, colonialism, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Amiram holds a BFA from Shenkar College and her MFA from Art Center College of Design. She is the recipient of numerous awards including: Artis Residency Grant, Vermont Studio Center Merit Grant; Shapiro Fellowship Award; and the Yehoshua Rabinovich Tel Aviv Foundation for the Arts Project Grant. Amiram’s work has been exhibited around the world at such venues as the American Jewish University, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Angels Gate Cultural Center, and Cal State Long Beach to name just a few.
SARA BAHERMEZ
Sara Bahermez is a Yemeni-Emirati experimental and multidisciplinary designer, director, performer and educator from Abu Dhabi, UAE. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from NYU Abu Dhabi, and an MFA in Theatre from Towson University as a Fulbright Scholar. Bahermez is deeply dedicated to creating performance and constructing live images that work towards a queer Islamo-futuristic movement. Her recent works include Masjid Al-Munfaletat (The Mosque of Loose Women), an immersive theatre experience that follows the re-imaged lives of three ‘martyr’ women: Loujain Hathloul, Dina Ali Lasloom and Qandeel Baloch.
TRA BOUSCAREN
Tra Bouscaren is a post-disciplinary installation artist whose work engages American spectacle at the intersection of waste culture and the surveillance state. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Yale University, an Interdisciplinary MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and is finishing a PhD in Media Study at SUNY Buffalo. Bouscaren’s work has been featured at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Seoul, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, National Museum of Art in Addis Ababa, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, The Wrong Biennale, and Lincoln Center in New York.
DAVID FENSTER
David Fenster is a filmmaker based in Marfa, Texas. His work has screened at film festivals, art museums, and media outlets around the world including: The Sundance Film Festival; the Museum of Modern Art; the New York Times; HBO; the Viennale; the International Film Festival Rotterdam; REDCAT; the Hammer Museum; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; PBS; and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. David received an MFA from the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts. He was the artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and has taught at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California San Diego.
JULIE HENSON
Julie Henson was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work explores gender, power, and performance through American icons. Often focusing on female athletes, politicians, televangelists, and pop-stars, Henson explores how women, and their bodies, are portrayed in the media, bridging the gap between public image, myth, and reality. Henson has had solo exhibitions at Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles), the Columbia Museum of Art (South Carolina) and Yes Ma’am Projects (Denver). She has participated in numerous group shows at: the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art; the Torrance Art Museum; and the Visual Art Center at the University of Texas, Austin to name just a few. Henson’s work has been covered in Elephant Magazine, Artforum, and Hyperallergic, and she was a 2017 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award.
LESLIE MARTINEZ
Leslie Martinez is a multidisciplinary artist from La Grulla and La Victoria, Texas – small time-warped ghost towns in The Rio Grande Valley of the Texas-Mexican border. They were raised in Dallas, Texas, and travel regularly to and from these towns through one of the country’s deadliest U.S. CBP checkpoints. Through this experience, Leslie formed a critical understanding of xenophobic othering that would later develop into a curiosity in the structural backbone of the border’s poverty, segregation, militarized surveillance, and dehumanizing brutality. Their work currently explores these historical and embodied interests in abstracted notions of belonging and dis-belonging as they relate to shame and silence regarding sexual and gender queerness. Nuanced conceptual and sensorial parallels between these unsettled transitory spaces materialize through viscerally complex relationships to materials and their ability to defy expectations of gravity and tension. In 2018 they received an MFA from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut and in 2008, a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. Recent group shows include Heads/Tails at Next to Nothing Gallery in New York City, Way Out Now at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, California, Kaleidoscope at Kravetz | Wehby Gallery in New York City, and Life and Living presented by Deli Gallery at Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center in Kingston, NY.
ANDREW MOUNT
Andrew Mount uses painting, installation, digital imagery, software and sculpture to examine the symbols, forms and activity of finance and debt. He holds a BA in Painting from the University of Reading (UK), an MFA from Hunter College, and an EdD in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He has exhibited his work extensively across the United States, including his solo exhibition “Epigraphs and Graphemes” at Abrons Art Center, NYC.
PABLO RASGADO
Pablo Rasgado’s interventions in urban spaces question the relationship between function and design, and the potential of inactive spaces within cities. Rasgado has exhibited at the 11ª Bienal do Mercosul (2018); Steve Turner LA (2017); XIII Bienal de Cuenca (2016); MOCAD (2015); Museo de arte Carrillo Gil (2014); LACMA (2013); the 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia’s Collateral Events (2013); Herzlya Museum of Contemporary Art (2013); Casa del Lago (2012); Museo Experimental el Eco (2011); La Chambre Blanche (2011); and Museo de Arte Moderno (2010), among many others. He is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Programa Bancomer-MACG Grant, FONCA-CONACULTA Grant (2006, 2010, 2011 and 2017), the Mex Am Fellowship (2007), and has been an artist in residence at The MacDowell Colony (2015, 2018); Yaddo (2017); Art Omi (2016); The Skowhegan School of painting and Sculpture (2015); Cité Internationale des Arts (2014); École Superier d’ Art et Design (2013); La Chambre Blanche in Quebec (2011); the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2009), and the Vermont Studio Center (2007). His work is included in various public collections, such as the Wattis Foundation in San Francisco; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The artist lives and works in Mexico City.
SARAH G. SHARP
Sarah G. Sharp is an artist and curator whose interests include alternative social histories, language, place, technology and craft. She is the recipient of a Getty Library Research Grant, and residency awards at SoHo20 Gallery Residency Lab, Joya at Cortijada Los Gázquez and The Vermont Studio Center. Her artwork and curatorial projects have been shown at The Aldrich Museum, Real Art Ways, Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Spring/Break Art Show, and Field Projects Gallery. She is the founder of The Tool Book Project, a multi-modal art project that provides a direct action platform for artists to share their work and raise funds for non-profit groups. Sarah holds a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and an MFA in studio art and MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory from Purchase College, SUNY. She is Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and teaches in the MFA in Art Practice program at School of Visual Arts in New York. Sarah lives and works in Brooklyn and Baltimore.
2017/18 Artists-in-Residence
RACHEL FRANK
Born and raised in Kentucky, Rachel Frank received her BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from The University of Pennsylvania. Her work uses sculpture, theater, and performance to explore the tensions between the natural world and the manmade, the animal and the political, and the past and the present. Frank is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and The Franklin Furnace Archive. She has attended residencies at Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, Sculpture Space, The Women’s Studio Workshop, Skowhegan and The Museum of Arts and Design. Her performance pieces have been shown at HERE, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Select Fair, and The Bushwick Starr in New York City, The Marran Theater at Lesley University, and most recently at The Watermill Center in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Currently, she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
KRIS GREY
Kris Grey is a New York City based gender-queer artist whose cultural work includes curatorial projects, performance, writing, and studio production. Grey earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Ohio University. Grey was a Fire Island Artist Residency recipient, a resident artist for the ANTI Festival for Contemporary Art in Kupoio, Finland, and a teaching artist at The International Centre for Training in the Performing Arts in Brussels, Belgium. In addition to their individual practice, Grey collaborates with Maya Ciarrocchi under the moniker Gender/Power. Gender/Power has been awarded a Baryshnikov Art Center residency, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency, a Franklin Furnace grant, and a MAP Fund Grant. Recent curatorial projects include Queer Objectivity at the University of Maryland, MIX NYC Experimental Film and Performance Festival, and the Queer Culture Performance and Lecture Series at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Grey’s writing has been published in print and on the web for Huffington Post and Original Plumbing; their latest writing, Trans*feminism: fragmenting and re-reading the history of art through a trans* perspective, written in collaboration with Jennie Klein, was published in Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories.
GELARE KHOSHGOZARAN
Gelare Khoshgozaran گلاره خوشگذران is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working across the mediums of video, performance, installation and writing. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at the Queens Museum, Museo Ex-Teresa Arte Actual, Malmö Konsthall, Human Resources, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, The LA Municipal Art Gallery, Southern Exposure, Interstate Projects and Thomas Erben Gallery, among others. Gelare was the recipient of the 2015 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, the 2015 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and the 2016 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award for Emerging Artists. Born and raised in Tehran, she lives and works in Los Angeles. Gelare is the co-founder and editor of contemptorary.org.
SCOTTY WAGNER AND BAILEY HIKAWA
Scotty Wagner and Bailey Hikawa are a performative duo who focus on experimental forms of storytelling in theatrical, physical installation and moving image forms. Their projects address social, cultural and animal/physical norms that are illuminated and challenged by new technologies. They explore ways in which pleasure indulgence and self-control are confronted by technologies that target core human senses and how shifts in family politics are brought about by new parent/child potentialities through the evolving human cyborg identity.
LILLY MCELROY
Lilly McEloy grew up in Southern Arizona amongst cowboys riding bulls, coyotes howling on moonlit nights, beautiful sunsets, and vicious brawls. McElroy’s artistic practice translates those experiences and clichés into epic photographs and playfully antagonistic videos. The projects McElroy pursues are a reflection of her complex relationship with the American landscape and explore what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. McElroy received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the University of Arizona. She was in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in venues including Modern Art Oxford, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Southern Exposure, and Rick Wester Fine Art.
ROBERT MELEE
Robert Melee is a multimedia artist working at the intersection of photography, sculpture, painting, video, and installation. His recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Columbus College of Art & Design, Andrew Kreps Gallery, David Castillo Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and David Kordansky. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including “Greater New York” at PS1, “Adaptive Behavior” at the New Museum, and group shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, New Jersey MOCA, Portugal Biennial in Lisbon, Marlborough Gallery, Louis B. James Gallery, and Litvak Contemporary in Tel Aviv. Melee lives and works in New York City and is represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery.
BRYAN ZANISNIK
Bryan Zanisnik was born in Union, New Jersey and currently lives between Stockholm, Sweden and New York City. He received an MFA from Hunter College and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has recently exhibited and performed in New York at MoMA PS1, Sculpture Center, and the Brooklyn Museum; in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Fabric Workshop and Museum; in Miami at the De La Cruz Collection; in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; in Los Angeles at LAXART; and internationally at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, the Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna and the Futura Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. Zanisnik’s work has been widely featured in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Art in America, Artforum, ARTnews, Modern Painters, Time Out New York, and the Village Voice. He has completed residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, the Macdowell Colony, the Art Omi International Artists Residency, and the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou, China. Zanisnik is included in Art21’s award-winning documentary series New York Close Up, has been a featured guest on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC and is a contributing writer at Triple Canopy.