The Studio Museum in Harlem Announces: Artists in Residence 2020–21

NEW YORK, NY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020— The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the 2020–21 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 artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent. From October 2020 through September 2021, Widline Cadet, Genesis Jerez, Texas Isaiah, and Jacolby Satterwhite will receive institutional and material support from the Studio Museum.

A departure from the standard form of the program, this year a mid-career artist, Jacolby Satterwhite, will participate in the residency, which, for the last decade, has focused on artists in the early stage of their professional lives. This new pilot—a mid-career mentorship component of the residency—is intended to support and recognize an artist with greater experience whose work demonstrates exceptional promise and merit.

Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum, said, “We’re thrilled that Texas Isaiah, Genesis Jerez, Widline Cadet, and Jacolby Satterwhite are now joining the distinguished roster of our Artists in Residence. This is a defining program for us—the one that put ‘Studio ’in our institution’s name—and its remarkable impact has long been a source of deep pride for us. We welcome our new cohort at this critical moment for the program, the Museum, and the art world in general, as we expand our definition of studio work, rethink the ways in which we can support artists, and in these challenging times advance our mission as the nexus for artists of African descent.”

Legacy Russell, Associate Curator, Exhibitions, at the Studio Museum, said, “In the face of a challenging, historical, and most seismic period of global transition, Texas Isaiah, Genesis Jerez, Widline Cadet, and Jacolby Satterwhite set forward new and radical propositions of Afrodiasporic futures and world-building, advancing urgent explorations of visibility, figural representation, and refusal in new directions and to monumental heights in a moment that demands it."

This cycle of the program will be the first in which the Artists in Residence will participate digitally, ensuring the health and safety of all artists and staff. As in past years, the 2020–21 cycle of the Artist-in-Residence program will provide institutional guidance and professional development; facilitate studio visits with the Museum's curatorial team; and provide research support for the artists even as they work at a distance from one another.

Widline Cadet (b. 1992 in Pétion-Ville, Haiti; currently lives and works in New York) is a Haitian-born artist. Her practice draws from personal history and examines race, memory, erasure, migration, and Haitian cultural identity from a viewpoint within the United States. She uses photography, video, and installations to construct a visual language that explores notions of visibility and hypervisibility, black feminine interiority, and selfhood. Cadet is a recipient of a 2013 Mortimer-Hays Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, a 2018 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture artist in resident, a 2019 Lighthouse Works fellow, a 2019 Syracuse University VPA Turner artist in resident, a 2020 Lit List finalist, the 2020 Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize winner, and a recipient of a 2020 NYFA / JGS Fellowship in photography. Cadet earned a BA in studio art from The City College of New York and an MFA from Syracuse University.

Genesis Jerez (b. 1993 in Bronx, NY; currently lives and works in New York) uses her practice to examine her early childhood growing up in a traditional Dominican household within New York's public housing projects. Drawing from family photos, she reconstructs the spaces and figures of family scenarios to reveal their underlying cultural and personal meanings. Utilizing methods such as drawing and collage along with materials such as Xerox paper and oil on linen, she recontextualizes these figures, mimicking her environment to create a new counterarchive and narrative of her upbringing. Her work also reimagines her relationships with her family, drawing away from negative memories. Jerez received her BFA from Fashion Institute of Technology in 2016 and was a 2019 Resident at the BronxArtSpace.

Texas Isaiah (born in Brooklyn, NY; currently lives and works in Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York) is a visual narrator. The intimate works he creates center the possibilities that can emerge by inviting individuals to participate in the photographic process. He is attempting to shift the power dynamics rooted in photography to display different ways of accessing support in one’s own body. Texas Isaiah’s work has been exhibited in spaces including Fotografiska, New York; Aperture Foundation Gallery, New York; Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles; Residency, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Kitchen, New York; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Selected interviews, articles, and commissions include British Vogue, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Adweek, Artforum, Them, The FADER, VSCO, Vice, LALA Magazine, and Cultured magazine. Texas Isaiah is one of the 2018 grant recipients of Art Matters and the 2019 recipient of the Getty Images: Where We Stand Creative Bursary grant.

Jacolby Satterwhite (b.1986 in Columbia, South Carolina; currently lives and works in New York) is known for a conceptual practice addressing crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality, and fantasy through immersive installations, virtual reality, and digital media. He uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live action films of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as stages on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice. Satterwhite draws from an extensive set of references, guided by queer theory, modernism, and video game language to challenge conventions of Western art through a personal and political lens. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts, Baltimore, and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Satterwhite’s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions both in the United States and in Europe, including most recently at Fabric Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia (2019); Pioneer Works, New York (2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2019); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018); New Museum, New York (2017); Public Art Fund, New York (2017); San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco (2017); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017); and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2013). He was awarded the United States Artist Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellowship in 2016. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. In 2019, Satterwhite collaborated with Solange Knowles on her visual album, “When I Get Home."

FALL EXHIBITION FOR 2019–20 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

This Longing Vessel: Studio Museum Artist in Residence 2019–20

Opening December 10, 2020

MoMA PS1

In the second year of a multi-part collaboration, The Studio Museum in Harlem will present its annual Artist in Residence exhibition at MoMA PS1. This Longing Vessel will feature new work by the 2019–20 cohort of the Studio Museum’s foundational residency program, artists E. Jane (b. 1990, Bethesda, MD), Naudline Pierre (b. 1989, Leominster, MA), and Elliot Reed (b. 1992, Milwaukee, WI). With practices spanning new media, performance, and painting, this collaborative exhibition enacts a radical intimacy: a “vessel” to hold and be held as we stand within the museum space. In “longing,” the works shown here find the intersection between queerness and blackness as a waypoint: one to yearn from, to reach toward, to leap beyond. This Longing Vessel troubles and excites ways of seeing, seeking new language for the building of extraordinary futures.

The exhibition is organized by Legacy Russell, Associate Curator, Exhibitions, Studio Museum, with Yelena Keller, Curatorial Assistant, Exhibitions, Studio Museum and Josephine Graf, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1. Exhibition research is provided by Makayla Bailey, Studio Museum and MoMA Curatorial Fellow.

The exhibition at MoMA PS1 is made possible by generous support from the Tom Slaughter Exhibition Fund and the MoMA PS1 Annual Exhibition Fund.



The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Jacques and Natasha Gelman 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; Kiki Smith; the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; Howardena D. Pindell; 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.

ABOUT THE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

The Studio Museum’s iconic Artist-in-Residence program gives emerging (and now mid-career) 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, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, David Hammons, Titus Kaphar, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.

CURRENT AND UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Projects: Garrett Bradley

Opening November 21, 2020

The Museum of Modern Art

As part of the exciting multiyear partnership with The Museum of Modern Art, Projects: Garrett Bradley will open on November 21st , as the second installation of Studio Museum at MoMA, The Elaine Dannheisser Project Series. Organized by Thelma Golden with Legacy Russell and organized in collaboration with MoMA, Projects 111 presents America (2019), by artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley. This film imagines black figures from the early decades of the 20th century whose lives have been lost to history. A multichannel video installation, it is organized around twelve short black-and-white films shot by Bradley and set to a score by artist Trevor Mathison and composer Udit Duseja. Bradley intersperses her films with footage from Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1914), an unreleased film believed to be the oldest surviving feature-length film with an all-black cast.

Bradley’s evocative vignettes cite historical events, ranging from African American composer and singer Harry T. Burleigh’s publication of the spiritual “Deep River” in 1917, to the murder of popular jazz bandleader James Reese Europe in 1919, to the founding of baseball’s Negro National League in 1920. By including borrowed footage from Lime Kiln Club Field Day, she also shines a light on a film that was radically progressive for its time in its celebration of black intimacy, vernacular movement, and expression. “I see America as a model for how...the assembly of images can serve as an archive of the past as well as a document of the present,” Bradley has said.

Chloë Bass: Wayfinding

On view through September 27, 2020

St. Nicholas Park, Harlem

Chloë Bass: Wayfinding is the conceptual artist’s first institutional solo exhibition. The monumental commission, which opened in September 2019, is situated in Harlem’s St. Nicholas Park and features twenty-four site-specific sculptures that echo the structural and visual language of public wayfinding signage. The artist poses three central questions: How much of care is patience? How much of life is coping? How much of love is attention?



These questions, along with images and other texts by the artist, are positioned as wayfinding signage along various pathways throughout St. Nicholas Park. The artist seeks to encourage moments of private reflection in public space, and invites visitors to explore the park spurred by these gentle sculptural interventions. In posing these questions, the artist seeks to build a bridge between internal thought and external social and political dialogue. Sited throughout the park at varying scales, Bass’s statements and images consider familial intimacy, desire, anxiety, and loss. This questioning is amplified by the artist’s audio guide, which carries listeners through sharply composed vignettes that grapple with notions of site, memory, belonging, joy, and risk.



The billboards that anchor Wayfinding mirror Harlem as it transforms over time, reflecting what Bass observes as “gentrification and the quiet force it enacts” on a city in constant flux. Across the landscape of St. Nicholas Park, the artist carries the viewer on a journey through the self and toward a collective consciousness. Wayfinding makes space to be lost and found, in a vulnerable interrogation of the known and unknown. In the artist’s words, “You’ll have to trust me when I say that many of the things I appear to know most deeply, I feel I know by accident.”



Chloë Bass: Wayfinding is organized by Legacy Russell, Associate Curator, Exhibitions, and is an inHarlem project, presented by The Studio Museum in Harlem in partnership with St. Nicholas Park and NYC Parks.

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. 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 82,000-square foot facility will be the first created expressly for the Museum’s program. The new building 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.

For more information on the Studio Museum, its collection, and a wide range of online resources for audiences of all ages, visit studiomuseum.org or follow us @studiomuseum on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

The Studio Museum in Harlem’s top priority is guaranteeing the safety of each member of our community, our audiences, our committed team, and their families. As a proud citizen of Harlem and a public institution, we also are mindful of our responsibilities as a leader in the promotion of best public health practices. For these reasons, as we continue to monitor the challenges posed by the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), we have closed our programming space, Studio Museum 127. We do so out of an abundance of caution and in the best interest of our staff and our community.

PRESS CONTACT

Amanda Thomas, The Studio Museum in Harlem

[email protected] 214.517.1677

Meagan Jones, Polskin Arts & Communications Counselors

[email protected] 212.593.6485