The Studio Museum in Harlem Announces: Artists in Residence 2021–22
NEW YORK, NY October 18, 2021 — The Studio Museum in Harlem today announced the 2021–22 participants in its renowned Artist-in-Residence program, recognized for its catalytic role in advancing the work and launching the careers of generations of outstanding artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent. Cameron Granger, Jacob Mason-Macklin, and Qualeasha Wood have been chosen as the newest members of the Studio Museum's celebrated artist-in-residence community. They will receive institutional and material support from the Museum from October 2021 through September 2022.
This next cycle of the program will be the second in which the artists in residence will begin remotely, ensuring the health and safety of themselves and Studio Museum staff. Despite this necessary precaution, the program will continue to offer the artists in residence institutional guidance and professional development, facilitate studio visits with the Museum’s curatorial team and relevant art professionals to support the artists as they work during the continuing pandemic, and provide research backing, all leading up to a culminating exhibition.
Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum, says, “We’re excited to welcome Cameron Granger, Jacob Mason-Macklin, and Qualeasha Wood to the distinguished roster of the Studio Museum’s artists in residence. The Artist-in-Residence program is foundational to the institution and has a deep impact on the careers of emerging artists. After five decades of providing institutional support for working artists, developing leading scholarship around their practices, and presenting their work to new audiences, we are able to reflect on and take great pride in how the program has consistently upheld the careers of so many artists of African descent."
For the fourth year in a row, the annual culminating exhibition will take place at MoMA PS1. Presented in fall 2022, the exhibition will be part of the multi-year partnership between The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1.
Cameron A. Granger (b. 1993, Cleveland, OH; currently based in Columbus, OH) came up in Cleveland, Ohio, alongside his mother, Sandra, inheriting her love of soul music and habit of apologizing too much. A video artist, Granger uses his work both as a site for memory-making and a means to strategize new ways of remembrance in this age of mass media. His recent projects include “Everybody's got a little light under the sun,” a free food and short film program made in collaboration with Willowbeez Soul Veg and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and “The Get Free Telethon” a twenty-four-hour livestream community fundraiser for Columbus groups Black Queer Intersectional Collective, Healing Broken Circles, and Columbus Freedom Coalition, sponsored by Red Bull Arts. A 2017 alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Granger has exhibited his work at The Bemis Center, Omaha, NE (2021); Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York (2019); and Platform Rf, Vaasa, Finland (2019).
Jacob Mason-Macklin’s (b. 1995, Columbus, OH; lives and works in Queens, NY) work explores the collision between the image and material. Utilizing archival images and personal forms, Mason-Macklin investigates new modes and subjects in an attempt to channel a current that is raw, murky, and desirous. His practice has been driven by a fascination with media from the Soul Power era in the United States. Distorting screenshots of Soul Train set designs, stills from Blaxploitation films, and cover art for mid-twentieth century R&B and funk albums such as James Brown’s Hell (1974) and Marvin Gaye's I Want You (1976), Mason-Macklin uses slashing, cutting, and undulating brushstrokes to create a standoff between the corporeal and the imaged in order to simultaneously embrace and unsettle motifs of libido and violence typified in counterculture iconography. Mason-Macklin is a 2016 alumnus of the Yale-Norfolk Summer School of Art and a 2019 alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited at Page (with Ryan Huggins), New York (2021); Interstate Projects, New York (2020); No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH (2020); and Jeffrey Stark Gallery (with Cudelice Brazelton), New York (2017).
Qualeasha Wood (b.1996, Long Branch, NJ; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) combines traditional craft and contemporary digital materials inspired by a familial relationship to textiles, queer craft, Microsoft Paint, and internet avatars. Their work engages questions of the place, purpose, and hope for the nonontological Black queer female body. Wood holds a BFA in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In 2021, they were invited to create a trunk for Louis Vuitton’s two hundredth birthday. Wood has exhibited at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2021); CANADA, New York (2021); Kendra Jayne Patrick for Metro Pictures, New York (2021); the Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, WI (2020); NADA Miami Beach at Kendra Jayne Patrick, Miami (2020); New Image Art, Los Angeles (2020); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2019); and Gluon Gallery, Milwaukee, WI (2019).
About the Artist-in-Residence Program
The Studio Museum’s foundational Artist-in-Residence program gives emerging artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent an unparalleled opportunity to develop their practice in an eleven-month residency and offers audiences the chance to view this work in an annual culminating exhibition. Alumni of the program, who now number nearly 150, include some of today’s most significant and innovative artists, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Jordan Casteel, Lauren Halsey, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Titus Kaphar, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.
The Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; Jerome Foundation; 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.
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 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.
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