The New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation is pleased to present Shifting /\ Gazes, a group exhibition featuring work from the Season I, 2025 International Residency Artists: Tisha Benson, Ye Cheng, Lafina Eptaminitaki, Gloria Fan Duan, Inbar Hagai, Kei Ito, Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Jung Won Lee, Karine Locatelli, Grace Qian, Romilly Rinck, Jiyoung Song, and Thomas Tait, curated by NARS Curatorial Fellow Joyous R. Pierce.

How do we come to know space, not as something fixed, but as something we feel, move through, and reshape in real time? What happens when space is not just a container but something that shifts beneath us, unsettles us, or invites us to play?

Shifting /\ Gazes brings together new and developing works from artists who question the ways we navigate the world, the histories we carry, and the environments we move through. Through brushstrokes, installation, sculpture, breath, and material exploration, their works reorient passive observation, drawing us into a frame of more active engagement. Some pieces make the familiar feel strange, nudging us to look twice. Others play with time, memory, and perception, offering quiet disruptions that ask us to reconsider what we take for granted. Each work invites us to pause, step back, and shift our way of seeing.

The connecting undercurrent of these works is a deeper undoing—a gentle but deliberate unraveling of the systems that shape our understanding of space, identity, and power. The structures we inherit, whether built, social, or biological, are rarely neutral. Here, they are stretched, fractured, and rearranged. Sometimes with humor, sometimes with quiet defiance and always with curiosity. Rather than offering fixed conclusions, Shifting /\ Gazes opens portals of possibility, asking: What else might we see if we allowed ourselves to look differently?

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Read the process statements from the artists.

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Accompanying the exhibition period of Shifting /\ Gazes will be a series of programmatic interventions: Expanding Spaces. Curated in collaboration with the curatorial fellow, visitors are invited to engage with the artists in context with their work. These interventions will include artist talks, research and process reviews, a work screening, and more. Join us for interventions that weave process, presentation, and context together as a deeper invitation into each artist’s practice.

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About the Curatorial Fellow:

Joyous R. Pierce (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary curator/space shaper, artist, and researcher whose practice re-envisions ceremonies of creation and collaboration through intrinsic relationality and care. Her work as an arts and cultural producer engages creative and cultural spaces as liberatory sites for transformation, reflection, connection, expansion, and joy.

She has collaborated with artists internationally and with institutions such as the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, the Guggenheim, the African Artists Foundation, the Apollo, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Barnard, Burning Man, and Google. She was a fellow in Cycle IV of the Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship with the Caribbean Cultural African Diaspora Institute (Harlem) and Nafasi Artspace (Dar es Salaam).

Joyous holds a Bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College in International Relations with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a Master of Science in International Relations and the Politics of Africa from SOAS, University of London. Some areas of interest include contemporary afro-indigenous migration, seabed mapping & ecosystems in the marine water column, immersive technology, and having way too many tabs open at any given moment.

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About the artists:

Tisha Benson (b.1992) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Primarily working in sculpture and installation, her practice explores the unintended capabilities of manufactured materials and the ways that specificity cultivates object-power. She received her MFA in 2024 from University of South Florida in Tampa, FL and BFA in 2015 from San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. Her work has been exhibited at the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL, Northern California Museum of Art, Chico, CA, Heiress Gallery, Saint Petersburg, FL and Bass and Reiner Gallery, San Francisco, CA. In 2024 she received the Mernet Larsen Award and was invited to participate in the inaugural season of the Indeterminacy Incubator Residency hosted by New York Arts Program.

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Ye Cheng is a Chinese American artist currently based in New York. Ye graduated with a MFA degree in Fine Art from the New School at Parsons, New York in 2022. And a BFA degree in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. Through painting, Ye draws inspiration from her personal cultural hybridity to explore the themes of home, mobility and modernity. Ye has had her solo exhibition in Latitude Gallery in New York and exhibited widely include NADA Miami 2023; Chambers Fine Art in New York; Make Room in Los Angeles; and RHAA, Chicago; Soka Art in Beijing, China.

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Lafina Eptaminitaki is a visual artist, architect, and poet from Crete, Greece, based in New York. She holds an MDes (with Distinction) from Harvard University, an MA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and an MArch (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Thessaly. Professionally, she has collaborated with the Guggenheim Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and MOS Architects, contributing to various exhibitions, installations, objects, and publications. Lafina has received several grants, awards, and residencies, and has exhibited internationally, including at New York Live Arts, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, 11th and 10th Biennale in Athens, 6th Architecture Triennale, AIA Architecture Conference in Las Vegas, Milan Furniture Fair, et al. Currently, she teaches at Syracuse University.

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Through sculpture, new media, and installation, Gloria Fan Duan’s practice draws from biotechnology experimentation and landscape painting. She is exploring the tension between fragility and permanence in how we control, care for, and see ourselves in our environments.

Duan has exhibited at Ars Electronica, Currents New Media Festival, and the Digerati Experimental Media Festival, engaging with the intersections of art and technology. She collaborated with the Chicago Botanic Garden on her project The Bonsai Paradox and was part of the Women Bauhaus Collective, contributing to an international exhibition for Art Basel in Basel and La Prairie’s global campaign, which garnered press in Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. Her first solo show, Mobius Waves, was reviewed in The Washington Post.

Her interest in the emotional and existential undercurrents of scientific discovery has shaped her educational journey. She studied biotechnology at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology before earning a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Art and Technology/Sound Practices from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Currently, she teaches at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design, fostering critical engagement with emerging technologies in art and design.

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Inbar Hagai is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work spans video, virtual reality, sculpture, installation, and experimental documentary filmmaking. She gained her BFA with honors from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Beyond her practice, Hagai is also involved in public experimental film and video programming: Together with her collaborator, artist Rebecca Shapass, she co-initiated Touchstone Cinema, a screening series dedicated to facilitating discourse around artworks that challenge the boundaries of the moving image. She also serves on the board of PittsburghSound + Image, a nonprofit committed to fostering an accessible and inclusive film and cinema.

Hagai’s video works, films, and media installations have been screened and exhibited internationally in venues such as the Tomayko Foundation, Miller ICAPittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Center for Digital Art Holon, Hamidrasha Gallery Tel Aviv, Hecht Museum Haifa, Manifesta 11, and in film and media festivals such as PrintScreen, DocAviv, NMFF, RIFF, and On Art Warsaw.Most recently, Hagai received a New Work Grant from Prospect Art Organization and was selected to be an artist in residence at the Center for PostNaturalHistory in Pittsburgh, PA.

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Kei Ito is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is centered around utilizing the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. Mainly employing camera-less photographic techniques, performance, and installation, Ito creates large-scale installations and a variety of photographic projects that excavate hidden histories. As a third-generation atomic bomb victim living in the US,Ito employs his generational history as a series of case studies that oftenapplies the language of monuments and memorials, initiating a journey of healing and growth while inviting audiences to explore nuanced social issues and honor the memories of those lost to both historical and contemporary tragedies.

Ito's artistic contributions have been widely recognized and exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions. His works have garnered attention in publications such as the Washington Post Magazine, Hyperallergic, BBC Culture & Art, Bmore Art, Denver Post, ESSE Magazine, and various newspapers worldwide.Notably, his pieces are held in institutional collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Norton Museum of Art, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, the Candela Collection, the Eskenazi Museum of Art, JohnsHopkins University, and the Georgia Museum of Art.Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge

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Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge grew up in a small francophone coastal village in eastern Canada. She completed her BFA in photography at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and her MFA in electronic integrated arts at Alfred University (Alfred, New York). She has received multiple grants from Canada Council for the Arts and participated in artist-in-residence programs across continents, including Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, New York), La Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France), AIR 3331 Arts Chiyoda (Tokyo, Japan), SIM (Reykjavik, Iceland), and Arteles (Haukijärvi, Finland) where she produced multifaceted projects published as books, videos, zines, exhibitions, performances, and/or ephemeral installations. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Lens Based Media at the University of Rochester.

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Jung Won Lee (b. Seoul,Korea) is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY, and Seoul, Korea. She holds a BFA inGeneral Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a BA inMedia Studies and Korean Language and Literature from Ewha Womans University. She has exhibited at Subtitled NYC in Brooklyn, NY and Current Space, GatewayGallery, Middendorf Gallery, and Sheila & Richard Riggs Gallery inBaltimore, MD. One of her daily rituals is to observe the corners of spaces and look up at the sky.

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A native of Québec (Canada), Karine Locatelli lives in the region of Charlevoix.Through the representation of landscapes in drawing, she continues the plein ariste tradition distinctive of her region. She has held more than thirty collective or solo exhibitions and artist residencies in Canada, Portugal, and France. Her works can be found in public and private collections, including those of the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, the David Suzuki Foundation, the city of Lévis, the TD Bank of Toronto, and Hydro-Québec.

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Grace Qian (b. 2002)is a Chinese Canadian artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, NewYork. She graduated with honors and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2024. She was awarded an Elizabeth Green shields Foundation Grant in 2023. Her solo exhibitions include Becoming More at Arts Etobicoke Storefront Gallery, Toronto, Canada, and Brief Encounters at SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, NY. Selected group exhibitions featuring her work include Liminal: Interstices Between and Betwixt at Beaver Hall Gallery, Toronto, Canada, the 2022 ArtistProject Art Fair, Toronto, Canada, and Make Yourself at Home at FragmentGallery, New York, NY.

Qian’s paintings capture moments when the stability of one’s living space meets an unsettling flux. Her work examines how built environments simultaneously reveal and obscure—the histories, memories, and rituals that root us in place. Through layered compositions and manipulated perspectives, Qian’s work highlights moments when familiar surroundings begin to estrange and disorient. By revealing the dissonance between how spaces are constructed and lived in through formal and structural alterations, Qian frames the relationship between self and environment as an ongoing negotiation, prompting reflection on the fluid ways we find meaning and solidarity in the places we inhabit.

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Romilly Rinck’s process is craft-based, led by the materials she works with and the places she inhabits and researches. Drawn to the anima loci, or spirit of a place, her work is often site-sensitive and incorporates materials from specific locations. She researches how crafts are connected to ecosystems, such as the harvest tradition of wheat weaving known in the British Isles as ‘corn dollies.’

As a curator of material processes, Romilly sets up experiments where different material agents play and interact with each other, decentering herself in the process. She sees her pieces as characters in a mythology of materials. The outcomes serve as vessels for speculative myths and alternative cosmologies, offering new ways of understanding the entangled relationships between humans, the land, and the unknown.

Romilly was shortlisted for the Dorothy Waxman International Textile Prize and was recently in residence on the Sakata Orimono Apprenticeship in Japan. Her work has been featured in Arte Morbida, Surface Design Awards, and New York Textile Month. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design.

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Jiyoung Song’s (b.Seoul, Korea) work explores the portal as a fluid, ever-changing dimension and direction that responds to movement, blurs boundaries, playing between opposites. She’s also exploring both physical and conceptual meaning of space.Trying to be both grounded and mobile at the same time. Jiyoung holds BFA from Seoul National University (Korea) and MFA from CalArts. She currently lives and works in brooklyn, NY.

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Thomas Tait is a multidisciplinary artist born in 1991. Having initially studied ComparativeLiterature, Tait began their practice in performance in 2015 in Brooklyn’s underground scene, using a theatrical setup of costumes, music, narrative texts, and performing objects. Tait's practice has evolved over the years to include video, installation, handmade machines, sound, text, and live performance, and explores a broad range of influences from theater, literature, queer theory, technology, animism, and low-tech or obsolete culture – to nurture allegorical narratives based on relationships and exchanges between worlds expected to be ontologically separate. Tait received an MFA from Hunter College in 2024, and is a recent recipient of a grant to participate in the SOMA program in Mexico City.

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NARS Foundation Galleries are open to the public from 12pm - 5pm, Monday - Friday. Please contact info@narsfoundation.org with any other inquires.

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