2023-25 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
Project for Empty Space is pleased to announce the 2023-2025 Artists In Residence: Azikiwe Mohammed, Daphne Arthur, Helina Metaferia, and Layqa Nuna Yawar. The PES AIR Program is an annual initiative that welcomes four visual artists interested in intersectionality and social activism, discourse, and engagement, to participate in a two-year residence in their studios at 800 Broad Street, Newark, New Jersey. During the upcoming residence cycle, Mohammed, Arthur, Metaferia, and Yawar, will have time, space, and support to develop their work; cultivating professional development opportunities such as studio visits and critical feedback meetings; facilitating community programs that engage their practice; and culminating their experience with a solo exhibition of work created during their time at PES.
This year, PES was awarded several grants and dedicated funding that will provide their team with enduring means to invest in the expansion of the Artist In Residence program including a Mellon Foundation Grant in Arts and Culture, multi-year funding from the Ford Foundation, and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. From the Mellon Foundation, PES received $1,500,000 in support, giving them the opportunity to servicing twice as many AIR artists for an ambitious two-year studio term. Funds from the grant will also allow them to renovate and expand the art facilities at 800 Broad Street—the site of their Artist In Residence studios—and open a new public gallery at Ironside Newark, increasing opportunities for exhibitions and outdoor installations. Cumulatively, the awards will sustain their mission to accelerate their residency program, facilities, gallery space, and team, creating safe and equitable spaces for artistic innovation and complex public engagement.
Over the past eight cycles of the AIR program, PES has fostered a unique space where individual artists are supported and conversations around social equity are cultivated, forging bridges from artist to community, from community to community, and collectively pushing important dialogues forward. Past PES Artists in Residents include Adama Delphine Fawundu, Amy Khoshbin, Andrea Chung, Damien Davis, David Antonio Cruz, Derrick Adams, Delano Dunn, Jaret Vadera, JC Lenochan, Kambui Olujimi, Nadia Estela, Nina Chanel Abney, Renluka Maharaj, Richard Hart, Ron Norsworthy, Shoshanna Weinberger, Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, and Wardell Milan.
AZIKIWE MOHAMMED
Azikiwe Mohammed (b. 1983, New York, NY) is a 2005 graduate of Bard College, where he studied Photography and Fine Arts. Mohammed received the Art Matters Grant in 2015, the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in 2016, a Rauschenberg Artists Fund Grant in 2021, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2023. He is an alumnus of Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York and Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey. His work has been reviewed in magazines and publications including Artforum, VICE, I-D, Forbes, BOMB, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Hyperallergic. Mohammed's work has been presented in a number of solo exhibitions including the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, and the Knockdown Center, Maspeth, New York, as well as group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, MoAD, San Francisco, California, Frac Normandie Caen, Caen, France, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among others. Mohammed lives and works in New York City.
DAPHNE ARTHUR
Daphne Arthur (b. 1984, Caracas, Venezuela) centers her practice on the experimentation and transformation of conventional materials and forms. Drawing from her background, the Afro-Venezuelan artist explores the roles history, memory, and mythology play in the transformation or deterioration of the collective imaginary of the Black diaspora. Arthur received her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. In 2020, she presented a solo exhibition titled In The Eye of The World, curated by Julia Marsh at Cedar Crest College, Philadelphia. She is the recipient of the Anne Critz Fellowship, the Ald Held Fellowship at the American Academy of Rome, the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the NYFA Queens Art Fund: New Work Grant.
HELINA METAFERIA
Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Her work integrates archives, somatic studies, and dialogical practices, creating overlooked narratives that amplify BIPOC/femme bodies. Metaferia's work was included in the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2023) and the Tennessee Triennial in Nashville, TN, (2023). Recent solo exhibitions include Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2022); RISD Art Museum, Providence, RI (2022); New York University's The Gallatin Galleries, New York, NY (2021); and Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2017). Her work is in the permanent collection of institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY.
Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been supported by several residencies including MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, and Silver Art Residency at the World Trade Center. Her work has been written about in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Artnet News, The Art Newspaper, and Hyperallergic. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Visual Art department, and lives and works in New York City.
LAYQA NUNA YAWAR
Layqa Nuna Yawar (b. 1984, Cuenca, Ecuador) is a public artist and multidisciplinary storyteller based in the ancestral lands of the Lenni-Lenape: current day Newark, NJ. His work is best known for large-scale community-based murals, intricate portrait paintings, and multimedia projects that center the complex narratives of immigrant, black, indigenous, and subaltern populations. His artwork aims to disrupt established semiotic systems and reimagine them in service of shared liberation and a better future.
His work has been recently commissioned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Munich Airport, NJ, in partnership with Public Art Fund and can be permanently found at the new Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport. His collaborative work is also now on view at MoMA PS1 in New York City. Other recent awards include an Artist Impact Award from the Newark Museum of Art, Monument Lab Research Residency, a Creative Catalyst Fund Fellowship from the City of Newark, an Art Changemaker Award from the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and a Moving Walls Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations, among others. Layqa has held multiple teaching residencies, including projects with the United Nations World Food Programme, Casita Maria, and currently teaches at Rutgers University. His murals can be found in cities and communities around the world.