Cycle 10
Artists in Residence
Project for Empty Space is proud to announce the Cycle 10 Artists in Residence: Aimee Koran, Amy Ritter, CAZORLA + SALEME, Danielle De Jesus, and Zalika Azim.
The PES Artist In Residence Program is an annual initiative that invites visual artists working in socially engaged practices to develop their work in Newark, New Jersey. Over the course of the two-year residency, artists receive studio space at 800 Broad Street, funding, and professional development opportunities—including studio visits and critical feedback sessions—along with the chance to lead community programs inspired by their practice. The residency culminates in a solo exhibition showcasing the new work created during their time at PES.
Now in its tenth cycle, the AIR Program has a multifaceted mission intended to benefit both the artists and a larger audience. The program strives to create a symbiotic relationship between artists and audiences, serving as a conduit for innovative artistic practice and meaningful community engagement, while cultivating dialogue around social equity and activism that is often overlooked.
We are excited to support this new cohort as they embark on their residency, creating work that bridges art, community, and social impact, and continuing PES’s ongoing mission to connect artists and audiences in transformative dialogue.
ABOUT CYCLE 10
AIMEE KORAN
Aimee Koran is an artist and sculptor whose work examines womanhood, motherhood, and the politics of the body through material transformation. Exploring the hidden labor embedded in systems of gender and reproduction, as well as the social, political, and emotional structures that shape them, Koran’s practice is material-driven, encompassing techniques that range from chrome and industrial finishes to textiles, breast milk, and soft sculpture. Her work moves fluidly between intimate and monumental scales, using material contrast to address themes of visibility, vulnerability, and endurance. Koran received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including ArkDes, Stockholm; the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia; MassArt Art Museum, Boston; the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; the Richard Saulton Gallery, London; and the Arlington Arts Center, VA. She has completed residencies at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Vermont Studio Center, the Wassaic Project, and Project for Empty Space. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Fabric Workshop and Museum; and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Koran lives and works in Philadelphia.
AMY RITTER
Amy Ritter is a Brooklyn-based artist and educator. For the past decade, she has documented mobile home parks across the United States, conducting interviews with residents and building an expansive archive informed by her personal history growing up in a double-wide trailer. Her work draws from this research to examine the American Dream—specifically the myth of social mobility and the stigma surrounding affordable housing. Ritter continues to visit mobile home communities nationwide, systematically expanding this archive through ongoing fieldwork.
Ritter has exhibited her work nationally and internationally for over a decade and has received numerous residencies and fellowships. Selected honors include the Fine Arts Work Center, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, LMCC, Yaddo, More Art’s Engaging Artist Fellowship, a Puffin Grant, a NYFA Grant, Anderson Ranch Artist-in-Residence, and a Santa Fe Art Institute Fellowship. She currently teaches at Hudson County Community College in Jersey City.
CAZORLA + SALEME
Queer Latin American artists, aunt and niece Patricia Cazorla and Nancy Saleme, moved to New York in the mid-1990s and formed their artist duo, Cazorla + Saleme, in 2010 as a response to Arizona's targeting of Latinx communities, particularly farm workers. Since then, their practice has blended visual art, social awareness, and community engagement. Their work reflects on migration, displacement, and the search for belonging and connection through color, form, and poetic symbolism.
Based in Newark, NJ, since 2011, the duo creates public art and mixed media works that merge the urban landscape with the human experience. Their luminous, fluorescent palette and layered compositions express resilience, memory, and transformation—an aesthetic of hope that invites collective reflection.
The duo has achieved recognition at both the local and international levels, with an impressive exhibition record. They have received awards and grants from prestigious institutions, including the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Puffin Foundation, UNIQLO/NYC Parks, and El Museo del Barrio. Additionally, they have been commissioned by notable organizations to create public art, including the Garment District Alliance, the NYC Department of Transportation, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, and NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine.
DANIELLE DE JESUS
Danielle De Jesus is a Nuyorican painter and photographer born and raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn, whose works tell the story of growing up in New York City amidst gentrification and displacement. She draws from her experience growing up in the diaspora as a native of Bushwick, New York, to document her home neighborhood while creating narratives that uplift the lives and stories of the multi-diverse residents she grew up with. De Jesus’ background is in photography, and she utilizes her images of the people native to Bushwick as a reference to tell the story of Bushwick’s displaced residents, informed by her personal experiences with gentrification and displacement. Danielle De Jesus’ images make us rethink the significance of the image and the politics of representation involving the largely low-income people of color depicted in her paintings. Her work pushes us to think critically about the larger economies of urban America, but also about matters of intimacy and the interior lives of local residents. Ultimately, her works make viewers think about the effects of capitalism and the urban settler colonial histories impacting Puerto Rican diaspora communities in Brooklyn, Puerto Rico, and beyond. Danielle works in painting, photography, and uses multimedia objects such as dollar bills and common household items such as tablecloths to create textured stories of everyday life and resilience.
Danielle received a BFA in Photography from F.I.T in 2019 and an MFA in Painting from Yale School of Art 2021. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS.1, the Akron Museum in Akron Ohio, and most recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art. De Jesus’s work is part of the permanent collection at the Perez Art Museum of Miami, the Whitney Museum of American Art and most recently El Museo Del Barrio in New York.
ZALIKA AZIM
Zalika Azim is an interdisciplinary artist and archivist in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA in Photography & Imaging and a BA in Social and Cultural Analysis from New York University (2014), and a MFA in Photography from the University of California Los Angeles (2023).
Azim has presented solo exhibitions at the Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX), Baxter Street at The Camera Club of New York (New York, NY) and Soho20 Gallery (New York, NY). Her work has been included in national group exhibitions, including Southern Guild (Los Angeles), Prospect New Orleans P .6 (New Orleans, LA), Island Gallery (New York, NY), MASS Gallery (Austin, TX), Various Small Fires (Los Angeles, CA), Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, WI), Gagosian (New York, NY), Welancora Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MA). Azim has completed residencies through Pioneer Works, EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Pratt>FORWARD, McColl Center, NXTHVN, BRIC, and Baxter Street at The Camera Club of New York. In 2024, she was named the Deutsche Bank New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellow, and the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow for Interdisciplinary Work.
Azim currently serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.