Residency Dates: June 25, 2023 - July 15, 2023
Application Deadline: April 02, 2023
Please note this is a themed residency titled Forums for Storytelling:
This ACA residency with visual artist Alteronce Gumby, interdisciplinary artist Helina Metaferia, and writer/curator Larry Ossei-Mensah will be an experience designed to unfurl the power of overlapping ideas, abstraction, the body, and materiality as forums for contemporary storytelling.
This three-week residency will feature dedicated time with each mentor and group sessions organized for the collective to build comradery, learn, and listen to each other.
During the residency, the mentors seek to unpack a series of questions, including:
-How can the human body connect to physical materials?
-How can the body be energized through engagement with the material world?
-How can one use their body and materials to tell a story about their identity?
-How can writing, painting, or dance be abstracted?
-How can the act of painting be a dance and performance within itself?
-How can movement work and performance be a form of writing?
Larry Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces around the globe from New York City to Rome featuring artists such as Firelei Baez, Allison Janae Hamilton, Brendan Fernades, Ebony G. Patterson, Modou Dieng, Glenn Kaino, Joiri Minaya, and Stanley Whitney to name a few. Moreover, Ossei-Mensah has actively documented cultural happenings featuring the most dynamic visual artists working today such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Federico Solmi, and Kehinde Wiley.
A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a 501(c)(3) and global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class. ARTNOIR endeavors to celebrate the artistry and creativity of Black and Brown artists around the world via virtual and in-person experiences. Ossei-Mensah is a contributor to the first-ever Ghanaian Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennial with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Ossei-Mensah is the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at MOCAD in Detroit. Ossei-Mensah currently serves as Curator-at-Large at BAM, where he curated the NY Times heralded the exhibition Let Free Ring. Ossei-Mensah recently co-curated the 7th Athens Biennial – ECLIPSE with OMSK Social Club. Additionally, Ossei-Mensah curated Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo’s first museum solo exhibition – Soul of Black Folks at the Museum of the African Diaspora.
Follow him on Instagram at @larryosseimensah and Twitter at @youngglobal.
Residency Statement:
Forums for Storytelling is a residency created to examine the power of intersecting ideas utilizing modes of abstraction, the body, and materiality as essential components. The process of unpacking these notions will create a pathway for participants in the residency to better understand the potency imbued in the multitude of strategies utilized for storytelling. Regardless of the medium whether it’s the written word, performance, painting, exhibition-making, or public programming, storytelling is a central tool that enables artists, writers, and curators to create a forum for rigorous discourse revolving around culture, contemporary society, and the self.
Weekly meetings will alternate between discussions, readings, critiques, and studies in the field. Participants will have exposure in larger group settings with fellow participants and mentors including visual artist Alteronce Gumby, over the course of the residency ensuring cross-pollination of ideas and creative practices. Subjects will range from building narratives to professional development all in an effort to holistically shape the storytellers of the future.
Application Requirements:
- CV
- 3 examples of prior projects that you are most proud of
- 250-word response: Why would you like to attend this residency? What do you want to work on during the residency?
Application closed January 15.