PRINCESS LOCKEROO (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: January 3-13, 2023
Samara Cohen (aka Princess Lockerooo) is a multifaceted producer, director, choreographer, and educator with an 18-year tenure in the dance and entertainment industries. Her talents also encompass mentorship, public speaking, and women’s empowerment. Princess Lockerooo is a fellow of the RSA and a Bessie Nominee for sustained achievement & Breakout Choreographer. As an ambassador of the 70’s LGBTQ dance style Waacking, she has spread Waacking to over 27 countries across the globe, using it as a tool to encourage self-love and invoke confidence. Princess Lockerooo brought Waacking back into the spotlight with her unforgettable feature on Season 8 of “So You Think You Can Dance?” A philanthropist and activist for LGBTQ rights, she has used her platform to raise money for LGBTQ organizations (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, The Center, GMHC). Lockerooo has been showcased on many of the entertainment industry’s leading television platforms (Harry Connick Jr., Wendy Williams, “So You Think You Can Dance?” & “America’s Got Talent”) and has worked with top pop artists (Madonna, Jody Watley, Icona Pop). Princess Lockerooo’s productions have been featured across the world: including Lincoln Center, NYBG, Summerstage, Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, HATCH, Original Thinkers, SAP Next-Gen, United Nations & NYC Pride.
Princess Lockerooo is the featured artist of The Watermill Center’s partnership with Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” residency. The work created will sequence into an iterative performance at Works & Process at the Guggenheim on January 15, 2023
LEA BERTUCCI (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Music
In Residence: February 1-24, 2023
Lea Bertucci is an experimental musician from New York. She has performed extensively across the US and Europe with presenters such as The Museum of Modern Art New York, Blank Forms, Gagosian Gallery, Pioneer Works, The Kitchen, The Walker Museum, Tempo Reale in Florence, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Sound of Stockholm Festival, ReWire Festival, Borderline Festival, and Unsound Festival Krakow. In 2018, she was awarded a Jfund for New Music grant from the American Composers’ Forum and a commission for a brass octet from the Levy Gorvy Gallery in New York. She has recently been commissioned by the INA GRM in Paris, Quartetto Maurice in Turin and by ARS Nova Workshop in Philadelphia for new compositions that are forthcoming in 2021/22.
VINSON FRALEY & COMPANY
International (United States & Europe)
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Performance
In Residence: February 1-24, 2023
Vinson Fraley and Company is comprised of multidimensional artists who practice across various spectrums and forms including dance, choreography, music, voice, writing, and filmmaking. Their goal is to create a microcosm where all of their offerings can coexist in communication with each other. Through research and performance, Fraley and Company hope to find intersections where experiences overlap to create a collective performance.
TUÇE YASAK (she/her/hers)
Turkey, United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Visual Art
In Residence: February 1-24, 2023
Tuçe Yasak has been following light in NYC since her move from Istanbul to New York in 2009, creating over 100 site-specific light installations for performance in the US and abroad. Yasak received the 2018 BESSIE (“…Memoirs of a… Unicorn” by Marjani Forte-Saunders) and 2019 BESSIE (“Oba Qween Baba King Baba” by Ni’Ja Whitson) for Outstanding Visual Design with her lighting design. She has been collaborating with Raja Feather Kelly and the feath3r theory since 2015. Among her recent collaborations: “Wednesday,” “UGLY,” “HYSTERIA,” and “BLUE” by Raja Feather Kelly (NYLA, Bushwick Starr and ImpulsTanz), “This Bridge Called My Ass” by Miguel Gutierrez (The Chocolate Factory/NY, Montpellier Dance Festival, The Walker Center, PICA), “M—ER” by Autumn Knight (On The Boards and Abrons Arts Center), “Cannabis” by Baba Israel & Grace Kalu (La Mama and HERE Arts) among others. Light, movement and architecture intertwine in Yasak’s work to support space-making and story-telling. Her “Light Journals” were presented in March 2021 by Ars Nova and her first solo installation “light is generous” was presented by Five Myles Gallery in July 2022.
CARINA KOHN (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Literature
In Residence: March 1-31, 2023
Carina Kohn is a multi-genre, queer, Jewish writer and educator from New York. She received an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook University, and a BA in English at SUNY New Paltz. She has been published in Ponder Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Chronogram, and is a top prize recipient for 2022’s Money For Women in Fiction: Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is the recipient of the SUNY New Paltz Tomaselli Award for Dramatic Writing (2018), and her short plays have been performed at The Fresh Act Play Festival at SUNY New Paltz. She is working on a memoir.
PE MELLADO DANCE COMPANY
Chile
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: March 1-15, 2023
Pe Mellado Dance Company was founded by choreographer Paulina Mellado in 2000 with the intention of establishing a space where performers can investigate and experiment from the intersection of various techniques and offer answers to their creative concerns. Mellado has been awarded the following scholarships: Fondo de las Artes and Fundación Andes (1992, 2000, 2005, 2009) and has received the Best Work Award by the Arts Critics Circle in 2010. She has been invited to international festivals like the 10th Biennial of Lyon (2002), Festival Escena Contemporánea Madrid (2006), Diálogos Montevideo (2008), International Contemporary Dance Festival Paesaggi del Corpo (2020) and Internationale Tanzmesse nrw in Düsseldorf, Germany (2018) and Festivals in Chile like Santiago a Mil Festival (2016), The best of GAM (2016), FINTDAZ (2017) and International Festival Stgo Off (2019). Today, “La Bailarina”, based on Gabriela Mistral’s poem of the same name, is still being presented as a repertory piece and “Deshacer el Rostro” (the latest piece premiered in April 2022 at Centro Cultural GAM) will be showcased in January 2023 as National Digital Selection at Festival Santiago a Mil 2023.
ANTHONY VINE (he/him/his)
United States
Discipline: Music
In Residence: March 1-31, 2023
Anthony Vine is a composer and guitarist living in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His music has been presented internationally through collaborations with Alarm Will Sound, Quatuor Bozzini, the Minnesota Orchestra, Yarn/Wire, and many other musicians. In 2016, he was awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award. The jury noted, “Anthony Vine creates a solid, mature, beautifully crafted fragile sound world. He knows how to blur the identity of the different sources of sounds including the use of electronics in a very singular way.” Vine currently serves as the composer-in-residence at The Filomen M. D’Agostino Music School through the support of an Artist Employment Program grant from Creatives Rebuild New York.
KATERINA ANDREOU (she/her/hers)
Greece, France
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: April 5 – May 5, 2023
Born in Athens and based in France, Katerina Andreou graduated both from the Law School-University of Athens and the State School of Dance in Athens. She attended the program ESSAIS in CNDC d’ Angers and holds a master’s degree of Paris 8 in research and choreography. As a dancer, she collaborated with DD Dorvillier, Lenio Kaklea, Bryan Campbell, Dinis Machado, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Ana Rita Teodoro. In her work, she is interested in developing states of presence sorting out from a constant negotiation between contrasted tasks, fictions, and universes, often questioning the relation to ideas such as authority and autonomy, communication, and censorship. She often makes the music design of her own pieces. She was awarded the choreography prize Prix Jardin d’Europe, at ImpulsTanz Festival in 2016 for the solo dance piece “A kind of fierce.” She then created the solo “BSTRD” (2018) and the duo “Zeppelin Bend” (2021) with Natali Mandila, “Rave to Lament” (2021), a site-specific performance with a tuned car, and recently the solo “Mourn Baby Mourn” (2022). She is associated artist at centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie and the Master Program EXERCE in CCN de Montpellier.
Katerina Andreou is a recipient of the Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts at The Watermill Center.
ALESSANDRO DI PIETRO
Italy
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: April 5 – May 5, 2023
Alessandro Di Pietro (Messina – IT, 1987). Lives and works in Milan. Notable solo and double solo shows: “Occult Desserts” at All Stars, Lausanne (CH), 2022; “Animal Hazzard,” at Karussell, Fermo (IT), 2022; “ZULU TIME – Concerto Fantasma,” Museo per la Memoria di Ustica, 2022; “HOBOBOLO” at Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, Bologna 2021; “Lo Spavento Vinse il Giorno” at MEGA, Milan 2021; “FELIX” at Marsèlleria permanent exhibition Milan, 2018; “Towards Orion Stories from the Backseats” at LA PLAGE, Paris, 2017.
Notable group shows: “CAUTERE” at FRAC Corsica, Corte (FR), 2022; “Stages of Adulthood” at Sitterwerk – Kunstbibliothek und Materialarchiv, Sankt Gallen (CH), 2021; “Badly Buried,” at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, 2021; “Transatlantico” at MANA Contemporary, New Jersey (NY), 2020; “#80#90” at Villa Medici, Rome, 2019; “Performativity” at Centrale Fies, Trento, 2019; “Radieuse” at Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Bruxelles Brussel, 2017; “VISIO – Next Generation Moving Images” at CCC La Strozzina, Florence, 2015; “The Tesseract” at American Academy in Rome, Rome, 2018.
An Italian fellow at American Academy in Rome in 2017, Di Pietro received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2020.
Alessandro Di Pietro’s work is based on linguistic structures and cinematographic grammars, outlining methodologies that generate new narratives and production strategies through hybrid environments, inhabitants of monstrous plausible characters and non- objective technologies.
BRIANNA L. HERNÁNDEZ (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary
In Residence: April 5 – May 5, 2023
Brianna L. Hernández is a Chicana artist, curator, educator, and death doula guided by socially-engaged values. In developing as an artist, Hernández credits her late mother, Sylvia D. Hernández as her most significant mentor for the lifelong creativity she demonstrated. Hernández’s studio practice focuses on end-of-life care, grieving processes, and mourning rituals based on lived experience, cultural research, and collaborations with peers. In addition to formal artworks, she offers workshops for viewers to self-educate on grief and end-of-life planning through the safety of the creative process. As a curator, Hernández works with artists to make socially-charged topics publicly accessible in order to create opportunities for education and empathy. She also collaborates with community health researchers to incorporate the arts into public health projects through curatorial consulting.
Brianna L. Hernández proudly serves as Director of Curation at Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, Curatorial Fellow at the Parrish Art Museum, Board Treasurer at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, and Committee Member for the Gente Chicana/SOYmos Chicanos Arts Fund.
ROBERT TAYLOR (he/him/his)
United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Literature
In Residence: April 5 – May 5, 2023
Robert Taylor is a fiction writer and filmmaker from Long Island. His work leans toward literary horror and the speculative, inspired by the unexplainable and weird aspects of race and sexuality. Currently he is experimenting with short films, finding different ways to convey his style of fiction. Robert received his MFA from Stony Brook University. His fiction has appeared in The Southampton Review, The Molotov Cocktail, and The Wild Word.
SARAH BRAHIM (she/her/hers)
Saudi Arabia, United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary Performance
In Residence: May 10 – June 9, 2023
Sarah Brahim (b.1992, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) is a visual and performance artist working across many mediums to present work rooted in experiences of the body. She trained as a performer, teacher, and choreographer at San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and received a BFA (Hons) from London Contemporary Dance School. Her research-based practice began while studying medicine at university, as she continued practicing and performing. The pursuit to understand the body through every possible lense– biological, physiological, experiential, and more– led her to receive her BS from Oregon Health and Science University, with a focus on medical anthropology and public health.
In her work, Brahim examines how gestures of the body create a language that can be used to voice grief, metamorphosis, the unseen form, and our relationship to the natural world.
Sarah Brahim is a recipient of the Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts at The Watermill Center.
PHILIPPE CHENG (no preference)
United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Visual Arts
In Residence: May 10 – June 9, 2023
Philippe Cheng is an artist based between New York City and Bridgehampton, Long Island. Cheng studied at The School of Visual Arts and New York University. His work is in the book collection of The Museum of Modern Art, The Parrish Art Museum, and private collectors. His recent book, “Still, The East End Photographs” explores the landscapes of Long Island’s eastern tip. Current projects include “Bullets in The Sand,” a book about Coney Island and growing up in a historical inner-city neighborhood; “Requiems,” a book in collaboration with Bastienne Schmidt; “Echo Still” a black and white street photography book; and “On The Cusp,” a documentary illuminating the voices of 175 women around the 2008 presidential election.
MATTHEW LEIFHEIT (he/him/his)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: May 10 – June 9, 2023
Matthew Leifheit is an American photographer, magazine editor, and professor. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Yale School of Art, Leifheit is Editor-in-Chief of MATTE Magazine, the journal of emerging photography he has edited and published since 2010. Leifheit was formerly photo director of VICE Magazine, and his photographs have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Aperture, TIME, and Artforum. Leifheit’s photographic work has been exhibited internationally and is held in public collections. He is currently on faculty at Pratt Institute and Yale.
MÓNICA-RAMÓN RÍOS (they/them/theirs)
Chile, United States
Discipline: Literature
In Residence: May 10 – June 9, 2023
Mónica-Ramón Ríos is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, scholarly essays, and the editor of a small press. They are the author of the books Látigo versus luma (essay, 2022), Autos que se queman (short stories, 2022, published in English as Cars on Fire, 2020), Alias el Rucio (novel, 2015, also Alias el Rocío, 2014), Segundos (novel, 2010), and a series of essays that explore Latin American feminist/transfeminist aesthetics and theory in Latin American film and lit. Their writerly work uses archival interactions, theoretical exchanges, and conversations in workshops to investigate the in-betweenness of the women and femmes who cross the south border of the United States. Theorized as the component that makes Latinx unreadable and thus invisible in neocolonial structures, the existence in between points to the lack of language––and thus a potentiality––to name the experience of crossing. By utilizing dialogue (letters, workshops, narrative tool), Ríos foregrounds literature as sexlove and a political desire to construct an alternative form of dwelling. Ríos teaches theory and creative writing at Pratt Institute and is one of the editors of Sangría Editora.
This residency is supported in part by the Dr. Kerry English Fund, established by Olga Garay English.
REGINA JOSÉ GALINDO (she/her/hers)
Guatemala
Discipline: Performance Art
In Residence: July 17-31, 2023
Regina José Galindo is a visual artist and poet whose primary medium is performance. Galindo lives and works in Guatemala, using its own context as a starting point to explore and accuse the ethical implication of social violence and injustices related to gender and racial discrimination, as well as human rights abuses arising form the endemic inequalities in power relations of contemporary societies. Galindo received the Golden Lion for Best Young Artist in the 51st Biennial of Venice (2005); in 2011, she was awarded the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands; in 2019, she received the Soros Art Fellowship; and in 2021, she won the Robert Rauschenberg Prize. She has also participated in the 49th, 53rd, and 54th Venice Biennials; Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel; the 9th International Biennial of Cuenca, the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts of Ljubljana, the Shanghai Biennial (2016), etc.
Regina José Galindo is a recipient of the Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts at The Watermill Center.
FANA FRASER (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Interdisciplinary
In Residence: Sept. 26 – Oct. 20, 2023
Fana Fraser is an interdisciplinary artist and director. She is a BAM 2022 Jack Nusbaum Artist in Residence; 2022 Petronio Residency Center RETREAT & RESTORE awardee; 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Dance; and 2021-22 Performance AIRspace Resident at Abrons Arts Center. A 2021 Caribbean/The Future Space resident artist, Fana was shortlisted for the 2020 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize. She is a full-spectrum doula from a Reproductive Justice lens. Fana served as Rehearsal Director for Ailey II from 2016-20 and as a co-director/consultant for Pepatián from 2018-21. Her work has been presented at Abrons Arts Center, BAAD!, Brooklyn Museum, Gibney, ISSUE Project Room, Knockdown Center, Movement Research at the Judson Church, region(es), Wassaic Project, La MaMa Moves!, BAX, Emerging Artists Theatre’s “Best of New Works Series”, Dixon Place, WestFest, the CURRENT SESSIONS at The Wild Project, Dance & Performance Institute, and Trinidad Theatre Workshop. She has performed with Camille A. Brown & Dancers, The Metropolitan Opera, Sidra Bell Dance New York, The Francesca Harper Project, Andrea Miller for Hermès, Ailey II, and Ryan McNamara.
INGA GALINYTE (she/her/hers) &
CHLOÉ BELLEMERE (she/her/hers)
Lithuania, France
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Performance Art
In Residence: Sept. 26 – Oct. 20, 2023
Inga Galinytė & Chloé Bellemere are interdisciplinary artists who first met during the International Summer Program at Watermill Center in 2018. After the program, they continued their creative dialogue while living in two different countries. The two artists met again in 2021 during a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where they developed research on the subject of memory through performance and installation art.
CHRIS JONES (KRIS JONZ) (he/him/his)
United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Music
In Residence: Oct. 25 – Nov. 21, 2023
Chris Jones (Kris Jonz) is a composer, sound designer, and musician working in all visual media. In the film and TV world, he is especially known for his electro-acoustic collage work within the supernatural horror genre. His sound design material is arrived at via live improvisation, field recording, software-based manipulation and other aleatoric performance practices. He is an improvising musician in the NY free jazz community (upright bass, Chapman Stick) and a one-time percussion student with Frank Cassara (Steve Reich, Philip Glass). Additionally, Chris is a graduate from Berkeley College of Music’s Film Scoring department. His diverse work regularly occupies both avant-garde and commercial landscapes His performance collaborations include The MoMA, Guild Hall, CBGB’s, The Knitting Factory, McDonald’s, Hyundai, Quentin Tarantino, Sputniko!, and SNL (host Lady Gaga).
PONTUS LIDBERG (no preference)
Sweden, United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Dance
In Residence: Oct. 25 – Nov. 21, 2023
Pontus Lidberg is a choreographer, filmmaker, dancer and recipient of a 2019 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, who has firmly established himself as a visionary artist that merges dance and film. As a choreographer for the stage, Lidberg has created works for luminary dance companies around the world, including Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company and many more. His work has been commissioned and presented by festivals and venues including Montpellier Danse, Théâtre National de Chaillot and The Joyce Theater. His film, “The Rain” received numerous awards. His film, “Labyrinth Within” won Best Picture at the Dance on Camera Festival in 2012. His first feature film, “Written on Water” starring Aurélie Dupont, premiered at Le Festival International du Film sur l’Art in Montréal in 2021. Raised in Stockholm, Sweden, Lidberg trained at the Royal Swedish Ballet School and the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Danse de Paris. He holds an MFA in Contemporary Performing Arts from the University of Gothenburg, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts.
ASIA STEWART (she/her/hers)
United States
Discipline: Performance Art
In Residence: Oct. 25 – Nov. 21, 2023
Asia Stewart is a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose conceptual work centers the body as a living archive. After receiving degrees in the social sciences from Cambridge and Harvard University, she has sought ways to transform the language specific to studies of race, gender, and sexuality into materials that can be felt and worn on the body. As a National YoungArts Winner in Musical Theatre and a former National Arts Policy Roundtable Fellow with Americans for the Arts, Stewart uses her past experiences on stage to inject her work with a heightened sense of theatricality. Stewart has received various honors for her works in performance from organizations that include Franklin Furnace, GALLIM, and the Brooklyn Arts Council.
Stewart routinely questions how she can best document her performances and represent movement and physicality across mediums. Her works in video and installation have been exhibited at venues across the United States, including the Mercury Store, Untitled Space, NARS Foundation, Goodyear Arts, A.I.R. Gallery, Kellen Gallery, and Anthology Film Archives. Her first series of prints is also held in the permanent collection of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC.
Artist Photos © Lea Bertucci by Colin Conces, Fana Fraser by Tony Turner for BAM, Chloé Bellemere by Stephane Lavoue, Matthew Leifheit by Shala Miller, Pontus Lidberg by Nir Arieli, Alessandro Di Pietro by Riccardo Banfi, Tuce Yasak by Maria Baranova-Suzuki. All photos are courtesy of the artists.
Please note that all copyrights for the images of the works on this site remain with the individual copyright holders. Reproduction, including downloading of the works, is strictly prohibited without written permission from the rights-holders or The Watermill Center.