The Studio Museum Announces: Artists in Residence 2019–20

New York, NY, July 11, 2019 —The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the 2019–20 participants in its renowned Artist-in-Residence program, known for its catalytic role in advancing the work and launching the careers of more than two generations of outstanding Black and Latinx artists. From October 2019 through September 2020, E. Jane, Naudline Pierre, and Elliot Reed will receive institutional and material support from the Studio Museum—including studio space at Studio Museum 127, a temporary programming space located at 429 West 127th Street.

The work they make during their residencies will be shown in an exhibition at MoMA PS1 in summer 2020, part of a multi-year partnership between The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1. Building on the institutions’ existing affiliations and shared values, this wide-ranging collaboration encompasses exhibitions and programming at both The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, and takes place during the Studio Museum’s construction of a new facility, designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson, on the site of its longtime home on West 125th Street.

Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum, said, “We’re thrilled to welcome E. Jane, Naudline Pierre, and Elliot Reed to the Studio Museum, where they take their place in the lineage of Artist-in-Residence program alumni, who now comprise a group of more than 100 of the most amazing and innovative artists working today.”

Legacy Russell, Associate Curator, Exhibitions, at the Studio Museum, said, “Part of the magic of the Artist-in-Residence program is the way it changes with the times and keeps the Studio Museum as a key innovator across creative practice. In form, subject matter, and concept, the diverse practices of our three artists in residence for 2019–20 are all on the cutting edge, expanding the canon and showing us what’s possible in art today and even giving us a glimpse of what art might be tomorrow.”

The artists in residence have been selected from more than 300 applicants to the program. They were chosen by a panel comprising Museum staff; consulting curators Lumi Tan, Curator, The Kitchen; and Jasmine Wahi, Founder and Co-Director, Project For Empty Space; and 2018–19 artist in residence Sable Elyse Smith

E. Jane (b. 1990 in Bethesda, MD; currently lives and works in Philadelphia) is a conceptual artist and musician. Inspired by Black liberation and womanism, their work incorporates text, video, performance, sound, sculpture, and installation. Their performance persona, MHYSA, an underground pop star for the cyber resistance, has appeared in E. Jane’s Lavendra/Recovery (2015–), an iterative multimedia installation, and out in the world. MHYSA’s Hivemind EP was released on NON and listed in Artforum’s “Best of 2016: Music." MHYSA’s debut album fantasii was released on Halcyon Veil in 2017. In 2018, a live audio-visual MHYSA experience toured Europe and North America. “I am not grappling with notions of identity and representation in my art,” E. Jane has written. “I’m grappling with safety and futurity….The Black diva is an archetypal figure Black women dream through; she is a source of light, beauty, and healing through song.”

E. Jane received their MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and a BA in Art History with minors in English and Philosophy from Marymount Manhattan College in 2012. They have performed at The Kitchen, MoCADA ,and MoMA PS1 as one-half of the sound duo SCRAAATCH. They have participated in group and solo exhibitions at spaces including American Medium, Brooklyn; CP Projects Space, New York; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Glasgow International 2018; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon; and UT Visual Arts Center, Austin. In 2015 they wrote the widely-circulated NOPE manifesto, which was published by Codette. They were a 2016 recipient of the Wynn Newhouse Award and are a current participant in Radical Reading Room at Studio Museum 127.

Naudline Pierre (b. 1989 in Leominster, MA; currently lives and works in Brooklyn) creates a mysterious alternate world in her paintings and drawings, in which recurring characters from a personal mythology touch, hold, caress, carry, watch, or hover over a protagonist who is the artist’s shadowy alter ego. Influenced by an upbringing that the artist describes as “puritanical Protestant,” her work is preoccupied with “apocalyptic messages, messages of sin and damnation, of purity and goodness, of blessings and humility, of shame and of guilt, interwoven with my own experiences.” Drawing on the precedent of a dominant Western art historical canon, Pierre’s works use the rich legacy of oil painting combined with a highly chromatic palette to “insert myself into this long-standing visual language…that historically wasn’t created for me or those like me.”

Naudline Pierre holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from Andrews University. Her work has been included in exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Seoul, and Bucharest. Pierre’s works are in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the CC Foundation in Shanghai.

Elliot Reed (b. 1992, Milwaukee; currently lives and works in Los Angeles) is a performance artist who has committed himself to working with his own name, without make-up or costume, in an anti-theatrical practice in which “time is my material, and my embodied self is the medium.” Coming from what he describes as “a family of mathematicians,” he plans his performances by devising games and challenges for himself, then devises improvisatory methods to work through the “beats” for the duration of the work. Recent methods have included teaching gesture and vocal commands to audience members, hiring co-performers from Craigslist, hiding props, and borrowing the voices of others to read pre-written texts. Inhabiting a role that straddles the line between director and co-conspirator, he aims to transform a room of individuals into a unit that dissolves as soon as the work is over.

Recent projects include CURB ALERT! (2019), an improvised performance in Austin, Texas; America's Procession (2018), a sequential dance co-choreographed with the artist’s deceased great-grandmother; and performances in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Berlin, Paris, and Mexico City. His work has been shown at The Getty Museum, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Residency Inglewood, The Broad, Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, OUE Skyspace, The Hammer, University of Chicago, University of Southern California, and UCLA. He has lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, California Institute of the Arts, University of Minnesota, and Macalester College and taught a performance studies and sound course at California Institute of The Arts. In 2019, he received the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant (Los Angeles) and a danceWEB at ImPulsTanz Scholarship (Vienna).

About the Artist-in-Residence Program

The Studio Museum’s iconic Artist-in-Residence program gives emerging artists of African and/or Latin American descent an unparalleled opportunity to develop their practice in an eleven-month residency, and offers audiences the chance to view this work in annual exhibitions. Alumni of the program, who now number nearly 150, include some of today’s most significant and innovative artists, such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby, David Hammons, Titus Kaphar, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.

As part of a multi-year partnership between The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1, the Studio Museum’s annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition, MOOD, featuring the work of 2018-19 residents Allison Janae Hamilton, Tschabalala Self, and Sable Elyse Smith, is on view at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City through September 8, 2019.

Upcoming Artist-in-Residence Events

Studio Squared: Experimental Printmaking with Tschabalala Self

Saturday, July 13, 2:30–4:30 pm

St. Nicholas Park, 135th Street

Experiment with light-sensitive canvas, organic materials, and the sun to create cyanotype prints in a workshop led by 2018–19 artist in residence Tschabalala Self. Participants will meet at the 135th St. Plaza at St. Nicholas Ave and 135th St. Supplies will be provided. RSVP required.

In Conversation: Allison Janae Hamilton, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Dr. Matthew Morrison

Sunday, July 14, 2-4 pm

MoMA PS1

Join us for a rich dialogue addressing the myriad of social, historical, and geographical references informing 2018–2019 artist in residence Allison Janae Hamilton's latest body of work. Hamilton joins filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary for a conversation moderated by musicologist Dr. Matthew Morrison.

A Listening Party with Sable Elyse Smith

Thursday, August 8, 8 pm—late

NO BAR, Cooper Square

2018-2019 artist in residence Sable Elyse Smith invites visitors to a sonic exploration of the themes in her latest body of work, currently on view in MOOD. Readings and DJ sets pay homage to alternate economies, everyday violence, and mundane poetics to activate NO BAR for a night of listening, dancing, and convening from 8pm until late.

About The Studio Museum in Harlem

Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, The Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, the Studio Museum is preparing to construct a new home at its longtime location on Manhattan’s West 125th Street, designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Cooper Robertson. The first building created expressly for the institution’s program, it will enable the Studio Museum to better serve a growing and diverse audience, provide additional educational opportunities for people of all ages, expand its program of world-renowned exhibitions, effectively display its singular collection, and strengthen its trailblazing Artist-in-Residence program.

While the Studio Museum is currently closed for construction, the Museum has opened Studio Museum 127, a temporary programming space located at 429 West 127th Street, and is working to deepen its roots in its neighborhood through inHarlem, a dynamic set of collaborative initiatives. The Museum’s groundbreaking exhibitions, thought-provoking conversations, and engaging art-making workshops continue at a variety of partner and satellite locations in Harlem and beyond.

Current inHarlem exhibitions include Future Continuous: Kambui Olujimi and Andre D. Wagner at NYPL George Bruce Library and Radical Reading Room at Studio Museum 127. The major traveling exhibition Black Refractions presents highlights from the Studio Museum’s collection at six locations throughout the United States in 2019 and 2020. For more information, please visit studiomuseum.org.

The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Robert Lehman Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; and by endowments established by the Andrea Frank Foundation; the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Trust and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support is generously provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.