For nearly two decades, the not-for-profit organization New York Art Residency and Studios [NARS] Foundation has welcomed emerging and mid-career artists to its International Residency Program, currently in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. NARS offers four three-month residencies annually, providing a studio space, exhibition opportunities, public programming, and a supportive creative community.
I visited with five of the 13 artists participating in the Season II residency (April to June). They were enthusiastic and excited to discuss their practice and plans for the season.
Ye Cheng: Originally from China, Ye Cheng has lived in the United States for the past 15 years and currently lives in Manhattan. She received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from Parsons. Cheng was also part of NARS’ Season I cohort (January to March). “I really love the program,” she says. “I love all the artists here. We feel like a community.”
M.E. Sparks is an abstract oil painter who also works in video. Sparks uses collage to inform her paintings, “bringing together pieces from other voices, other times, other narratives,” she explains. “I’m particularly interested in early modernist painting, looking at just a handful of painters…. I’m looking at how they depicted femininity, youth, and girlhood.” She cuts out forms (e.g., a tornado-shaped spiral, a dress minus the wearer’s body) from paintings by Picasso and Balthus and subverts the pieces into collaged compositions of “something completely unfamiliar” which she then paints.
“I thought it was interesting to remove my body from the frame in the same way that I’m removing the body from these [collage] sources…. I think of it as a freeing of the body from this narrative.” Sparks showed a small projection of the video alongside one of her suspended compositions earlier this year. “It’s a very slow burn, building the composition and then deconstructing it.”
Liza Wolters: “I’m a bit of a hoarder of encounters,” says Liza Wolters, an artist from the Netherlands who creates site-specific installations incorporating photography, video, text, sound, and found objects. Wolters’ practice relies on collaboration — spending time with subjects in their environments and creating multi-media installations based on her experiences.
For a recent project, Bodily Metaphors of Various Kinds, Wolters immersed herself for six months at a Rotterdam hospital that specializes in organ transplants, questioning “what it means to be sick” and when does one become well? The installation included video, text, photography, and audio excerpts exploring human vulnerability.
Nik Cho’s vivid acrylic paintings address city life, identity, and human connection. “I think a lot about urban life. I was born in Seoul which is a big city and every place that I go to is a city,” he says. “I love [seeing] so many things happening.”
He documents his observations, oftentimes interactions at bars and nightclubs. “Isolation is an ongoing theme,” Cho explains. He plans to work on a new piece about family dynamics, inspired in part by David Wojnarowicz’s Untitled (Burning House). “I want to make more works about relationships,” he says.
Isabel Bonafé's site-specifc installations are difficult to document. “It's the worst and the best part of my work, that you only can experience it in the present time. There are a lot of subtleties, tromp l’oeil, and optical illusions that the eye can see but the camera cannot,” she explains. “I try to materialize the unseen. I use elements that are related to light, vision, and optics.”
Working with a computer programmer, she created an algorithm that tries to recreate the images that were lost “based on the corrupted data,” she says, but the photos can never fully be recovered, so the algorithm displays fragmented images on a constant loop. The images were included in an immersive installation that was exhibited in Granada earlier this year. She plans to continue creating immersive, light-based installations during her time at NARS.
NARS Foundation will exhibit the work of all the Season II resident artists on June 6 and 7 and host open studios that weekend. Save the date and stop by to see how Brooklyn inspires the artists.
This interview has been summarized for clarity. To read the full text, click here.
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