SEKOU MCMILLER AND FRIENDS
United States
Discipline: Dance, Multidisciplinary
In Residence: January 5 – January 11, 2026
The collective known as “Sekou McMiller & Friends” is led by the esteemed choreographer, Sekou McMiller, and comprises a talented ensemble of seasoned professional dancers, musicians, composers, and club/street performers. The primary objective is to persistently create authentic artistic endeavors that not only enable individuals to experience the captivating fusion of music and dance, showcasing their infectious rhythmic nature, but also actively engage in and witness a profound cultural reunion of once interconnected communities. By doing so, this initiative contributes to the ongoing dialogue on reshaping and fortifying the concept of self-identification for individuals with black and brown bodies in an era of increasingly blurred borders and global citizenship. Past performances include Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bryant Park, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Little Island NYC. Most recent performances include Jacob’s Pillow Henry J. Lier, Pocantico: David Rockefeller Center and Guggenheim: Works & Process.
This residency is supported by Works & Process.
Dance at The Watermill Center is made possible with lead support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels.
URIEL BARTHELEMI (he/him)
France
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
In Residence: January 5 – January 30, 2026
Uriel Barthélemi is a polymorph artist, drummer and electronic musician. His language combines percussion, performance, installations, sound & video programming and composition. He infuses each of his projects with this multifaceted identity, dense and unclassifiable.
Establishing links between his drums & computer practice , this has led him to collaborate in numerous areas of the performing arts from 2002 onwards: dance, theater, as well as the visual arts.
These multiple themes have made him reflect upon the concepts of performance and improvisation, to take into account the notions of plasticity and physicality of sound through immersive spatial installations, as well as questioning the place of the performer and the frictional psychological contexts.
He has been commissioned by the French ministry of Culture, Sharjah Art Foundation, FIAC, Maerzmusik, Al Mamal Art Foundation, Intonal, Beijing National Theater, C74, Steirischer Herbst, Césaré-cncm.
He collaborates and appears with many artists, such as Hélène Breschand, Tarek Atoui, Haegue Yang, Nikhil Chopra, Hassan Khan. He is currently supported by Drac Ile de France.
Uriel Barthélemi is a recipient of the 2026 Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts.
MARCELA CORREA (she/her)
Chile
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: January 28 – February 20, 2026
Marcela Correa Maturana (b. 1963, Viña del Mar, Chile) is a Chilean sculptor who earned her BA in Sculpture from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1986. Over four decades, she has developed a prolific career, recognized for solo and group exhibitions and large-scale public and private works.
Her solo shows include Galería Patricia Ready, Galería Animal, Galería Gasco, and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, as well as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (USA). She has participated in group exhibitions such as the Bienal Textil in Santiago, FIAC in Paris, the XII Venice Biennale, and projects in Italy, Japan, Switzerland, and France.
Correa has created major public artworks, often with architect Smiljan Radic, including Drops (Croatia, 2020), Caminantes (Coquimbo, 2018), and Altar Mayor (Cathedral of Santiago, 2005). She has also produced site-specific commissions for vineyards, memorials, and various locations in Chile. Her work, blending sculpture and architectural dialogue, has earned the Altazor Award for Sculpture (2007), the Critics’ Circle Art Prize (2022), and multiple Fondart grants, making her a key figure in contemporary Chilean sculpture.
This residency is supported by Fundación Teatro a Mil, the Dr. Kerry English International Arts Fund, and Olga Garay-English.
CAPT. JAMES STOVALL V (he/him)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art, Design, Sound, Interdisciplinary
In Residence: January 28 – February 20, 2026
Capt. James Stovall V, A self-taught artist from Altadena, CA. Stovall works across drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and sound, letting each medium bleed into the next until boundaries dissolve. His marks carry the immediacy of lived experience: line work that feels like handwriting, brushstrokes that hold the weight of memory, written text that hangs between poetry and confession. In recent years, theatrical sculpture and sonic composition have become extensions of this vocabulary, building environments that invite viewers inside rather than keeping them at a distance. Guided by bell hooks’ call to “embrace the spirit of change,” Stovall creates work that is as much about encounter as it is about object. His practice has unfolded through murals, installations, solo and group exhibitions, and site-responsive projects, supported by residencies including NXTHVN, Rokeby Lab at the Rokeby Museum, AB180, and Arts Letters & Numbers.
ALEX BARD (he/him)
United States
Discipline: Interdisciplinary, Visual Arts, Performance Art
In Residence: January 28 – February 20, 2026
Alex Bard is a U.S. based interdisciplinary artist, whose works span a range of mediums including sculpture, costume, performance art, photo and video.
Anthropology, mythology, comparative religions and psychology inspire his work. He strives to explore universally understood symbols that transcend cultural, historical and political boundaries, and speak to audiences from all backgrounds. Each piece presents archetypal images that reflect different facets and levels of human consciousness, encouraging self-awareness and reflection.
The goal for his art is to help people know and understand themselves better. Alex Bard aims to remind viewers of their own innate strengths and qualities, empowering the deeper meaning of their own lives.
MICHELE RIZZO (he/him)
Italy
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: January 28 – February 20, 2026
Michele Rizzo is an Italian artist based in Milan whose practice merges choreography and visual arts, exploring collective movement, spatial relations, and the link between motion and imagination. Rizzo’s artistic research often blurs the boundaries between performance, sculpture, and installation, combining physical and emotional resonance. His key works include HIGHER xtn. (2018), acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; Rest (2020), presented at the Quadriennale d’Arte in Rome and later acquired by Fondazione Sandretto (Turin); and Reaching (2021), shown at KW in Berlin with the Julia Stoschek Collection.
In 2021, Rizzo produced the video work Rest, reflecting on the global pause caused by the pandemic, acquired by the Stedelijk Museum. His 2023 project Coalescing towards is a traveling choreographic score that engages local performers and musicians in each location, with editions presented at STRUT Perth, Toronto Nuit Blanche, and the Palais de Tokyo during Paris Fashion Week.
Since 2020, he has collaborated with major fashion houses including MARNI, Off-White, Magliano, and Moschino.
Dance at The Watermill Center is made possible with lead support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels.
STEPHEN LAUB (he/him)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: February 25 – March 27, 2026
Stephen Laub is a multidisciplinary artist with a practice spanning performance, video, and sculpture. Laub completed his studies at UC Berkeley, receiving his MA in 1970. Throughout the past five decades, his process has involved historical research and the juxtaposition of images and forms. In his early performances, the artist positioned himself 1:1 into the projected photographs of familial and historical characters by observing himself in mirrors, at 110 Greene Street, The Kitchen, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum. Laub’s video work of the 1980s used techniques of projections with political references, and is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMoMA, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Addison Gallery of American Art. Through his sculptures, Laub furthers his investigation of history, media, and spatiality. His sculptural work has been exhibited in museums locally and internationally, and collected by institutions including The Watermill Center and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Matthew Diafos Sweeney + Sebastian Peters-Lazaro
United States
Discipline: Interdisciplinary, Theatre/Opera
In Residence: February 25 – March 27, 2026
Director / Composer Matthew Diafos Sweeney and Choreographer / Designer Sebastian Peters-Lazaro, working as four larks, create “visually enthralling” work “at the intersection of art, theatre, music, and dance,” described as “the future of live performance” (LATimes). Their productions invoke historical and mythic narratives to address the anxieties of the 21st century, incorporating motifs and methodologies from postmodern dance, classical opera, experimental pop music, folk traditions, and installation-based performance art. Currently operating in LA, they have presented work in theaters, galleries, museums, alleyways, a barn, homes, and all manner of disused industrial spaces. They “hurtle over the boundaries between genres to create immersive, transformative events.”(NPR).
Matthew Diafos Sweeney was the recipient of a 2024 Fulbright to Greece where he studied the northern polyphonic vocal traditions, and a McDowell Fellow in 2023. Sebastian Peters-Lazaro is an Ovation award winning designer and a 2022 Bogliasco fellow.
This residency is supported by Fundación Teatro a Mil, the Dr. Kerry English International Arts Fund, and Olga Garay-English.
EDISON PENAFIEL (he/him)
Ecuador, United States
Discipline: Visual Art, Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary
In Residence: February 25 – March 27, 2026
Edison Peñafiel (b. 1985, Guayaquil, Ecuador) is a Miami-based artist whose immersive installations merge projection, sculpture, and sound to explore cycles of migration, power, and transformation. Influenced by German Expressionism and the omnipresence of surveillance, his work constructs allegorical worlds where myth and history intersect.
His ongoing trilogy — MARE MAGNVM (2019–2024), De Profundis Clamavi ad Astra (2026), and Arcturus (forthcoming) — traces humanity’s passage from political displacement to spiritual transcendence. Peñafiel’s work has been exhibited internationally at Sabrina Amrani Gallery (Madrid), BienalSur (Argentina), and in the U.S. at USF Contemporary Art Museum, MoCA North Miami, and the Ringling Museum of Art.
He is the recipient of major honors including the VIA Art Fund Artistic Production Grant, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Research Award, and the Knight Foundation Art Grant.
ALMOND ZIGMUND (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: February 25 – March 27, 2026
New York based artist Almond Zigmund works to intensify the perception of the viewer in unexpected ways, juxtaposing form, color, pattern, texture, and architectural design in striking contrasts. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design, in New York and Paris and an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she studied under award winning critic Dave Hickey. Zigmund’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in public and private collections. She has completed numerous public commissions including for the NYC DOT, The Whitman Walker Health Center in Washington DC, Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, and in NYC as part of the Brookfield Arts program. She recently completed a commission for a public sculpture with the US State Department Art in Embassies Program in Paraguay. Almond Zigmund’s Even, Still, a public sculpture commissioned by HYHK Alliance, is currently on view In Bella Abzug Park in NYC.
SILAS JONES (he/him)
United States
Discipline: Creative Writing
In Residence: March 13 – March 27, 2026
Silas Jones is a writer. His short stories have appeared in print in The Paris Review, The Drift, and the Cleveland Review of Books and elsewhere. He has received grants and fellowships from Hunter College, The Wassaic Project, In Cahoots, and Papillion Farm. He lives in New York City.
AZIZA KADYRI (she/her)
Uzbekistan, United Kingdom
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Visual Art, New Media, Interdisciplinary
In Residence: April 1 – May 1, 2026
Aziza Kadyri is a London-based interdisciplinary artist working with textiles, installation, performance, and creative technology, and the co-founder of Qizlar, a collective of artists and activists from Uzbekistan and its diaspora. Her practice explores how handcraft, Central Asian identities, and global digital cultures intersect, using textiles and interactive installations to tell speculative stories, preserve memory, and resist erasure – contributing to wider conversations on decolonial aesthetics and feminist tech.
In 2024, Kadyri represented Uzbekistan at the 60th Venice Biennale alongside Qizlar Collective with “Don’t Miss The Cue”, a large-scale site-specific project exploring AI biases, migration, decolonial feminist tools and socially engaged practice. Her work has been shown at the Bukhara Biennial, UZ (2025); Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, CN (2025); International Triennial of Textile, Łódź, PL (2025) Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, DE (2025); KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2024); Pushkin House, London, UK (2024); Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin, DE (2023); Prague Quadrennial of Performance (2023), and Athens Digital Arts Festival (2021, 2022), etc.
BILLY MARTIN AKA ILLY B (he/him)
United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary, Design, Visual Art, Music/Composition
In Residence: April 1 – May 1, 2026
Born in New York City in 1963, percussionist, composer and visual artist Billy Martin dedicated himself to music full-time at age 17—casting himself into Manhattan’s thriving, eclectic musical landscape. He carefully honed his craft everywhere from chamber orchestra stages to Brazilian nightclubs to the underground performance spaces that nurtured the burgeoning downtown improv community. He has published anti-instructional films, literature, artwork and music worldwide. Martin also teaches improvisation and composition at The New School.
CEYLAN ÖZTÜRK (she/her)
Turkey/Switzerland
Discipline: Performance
In Residence: April 1 - May 1, 2026
Ceylan Öztrük is an artist based in Zürich. She completed her practice-based PhD (2016) in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Istanbul) that she initiated her subject in Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna at Post Conceptual Art Practices in 2014. She received her graduate (MFA-2011) and undergraduate (BFA-2006) degrees from the Fine Arts Faculty, Sculpture Department at Anadolu University.
In 2022, she received the Swiss Art Award.
Some of her solo and group exhibitions and performances include: Fourth Eye, 4:40AM, Gessnerallee, Zürich & Sophiensaele, Berlin (2025); Pink Tabula Rasa, Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich & Swiss Institute, Rome (2023); Wearing the Angles, Kissing the Room, Gessnerallee Theatre, Zürich (2023); Sculpture Garden, Geneva Biennial (2022); Self-specular, a moment, Galerie PhilippZollinger, Zürich (2022); Matter of non, FriArt Kunsthalle Fribourg (2021); Orientalien, Gessnerallee Theatre, Zürich (2020); Am a Mollusk, too; re/producing tangents, Longtang, Zürich (2020); IV. Berliner Herbstsalon, Berlin (2019); Oriental Demo, My Wild Flag Festival, Stockholm (2019); Call me Venus, Mars, Istanbul (2016).
Ceylan Öztrük is a recipient of the 2026 Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts.
KEIOUI KEIJAUN THOMAS (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Interdisciplinary, Performance Art
In Residence: May 6 - June 5, 2026
Keioui Keijaun Thomas is a New York-based artist. She creates live performance and multimedia installations that address the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation, encompassing affective, material and economic dimensions. Through a captivating fusion of voice, video installation and sculpture. Thomas seeks new pathways to understand and express what it means to be a doll—both a work in progress and a force of nature. Utilizing an array of materials such as hair, tape, water, latex, enamel and skin to create tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. Her performances combine rhapsodic layers of live and recorded voice, slipping between various modes of address, to explore the pleasures and pressures of dependency, care, and support. Thomas is a 2023 Jerome Foundation Grant recipient, 2022 MAP Fund Awardee, the Inaugural Winner Queer|Art 2020 Illuminations Grant for Black Trans Women Visual Artists, and Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient for 2018. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with James Nelson Raymond Fellowship and her BFA with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Keioui Keijaun Thomas is a recipient of the 2026 Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts.
ISLA HANSEN (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art, Interdisciplinary
In Residence: May 6 - June 5, 2026
Isla Hansen is an artist making sculptures and objects for play, performance, interactive installation, animation, and video. Her work explores cultures surrounding personal technologies, play, work, labor, children’s media, fantasy, and the relationship between bodies and technological progress. Isla teaches sculpture at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On the east end, she serves as the Co-director of Programming for the Folly Tree Arboretum in Springs. Isla’s solo and collaborative installations, sculptures, and performances have been exhibited at the Mattress Factory Museum, Guild Hall, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Hammer Museum, Akron Art Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, Lightwell Gallery at the University of Oklahoma, Anderson Gallery at VCU, the Moss Art Center at Virginia Tech, MoCA Cleveland, and more. Amongst other awards, Isla has been the recipient of a Heinz Endowments Creative Development Award, a Mattress Factory museum artist residency, a Rauschenberg Foundation artist residency, and a Fellowship from the Center for the Arts in Society.
SHIRIN ABEDINIRAD (she/her)
Iran, United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
In Residence: May 6 - June 5, 2026
Shirin Abedinirad (b. 1986, Tabriz, Iran) is an artist whose practice spans video, performance, land art, and installation. Her work explores themes of identity, unity with nature, and the infinite essence of being through elemental materials such as mirrors, water, and light. By crafting minimalist environments, she invites viewers into liminal spaces that reflect both the external world and inner self, dissolving boundaries between human presence and the living Earth.
Shirin began her artistic journey with painting before pursuing degrees in graphic design and fashion. While researching the relationship between fashion and conceptual art, she turned toward performance, staging public interventions in Iran that addressed gender, sexuality, and compassion. A pivotal desert experience in 2013 shifted her practice toward land and installation works, centering natural imagery and creating contemplative encounters with light and reflection. Since 2010, she has exhibited internationally in biennials and festivals across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and North America.
BAYE & ASA
United States
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: May 6 - May 27, 2026
Baye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects directed & choreographed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington & Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt. They grew up together in New York City, and that shared educational history is the mother of their work. Hip Hop & African dance languages are the foundation of their technique. The rhythms of these techniques inform the way they energetically confront contemporary dance, theater, and film. They’ve presented their work at The Joyce Theater, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Pioneer Works, The 92nd Street Y, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Guggenheim Works & Process, The American Dance Festival, 2nd Stage, Quick Center for the Arts, and more. They were selected as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2022, and are recipients of Dance Magazine's 2023 Harkness Promise Award. They’ve created works for rep companies that include The Martha Graham Dance Company, BODYTRAFFIC, and Alvin Ailey II. They’re choreography has been featured in theater projects from directors including Zhailon Levingston, Knud Adams, and Dimitry Krymov. Their film work has also won numerous awards and has been presented internationally.
Dance at The Watermill Center is made possible with lead support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels.
TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY WITH JEANINE DURNING (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Dance
In Residence: June 7 - June 19, 2026
The Trisha Brown Dance Company is dedicated to the performance and preservation of the work of Trisha Brown and projects related to her legacy. Established in 1970, TBDC has toured throughout the world presenting work, teaching, and building relationships with audiences and artists alike.
Jeanine Durning is a Guggenheim Fellow and Alpert Award winning choreographer and performer whose work spans the disciplines of dance, performance, and philosophical inquiry based in New York. Durning’s choreographies, described by The New Yorker as having “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster,” have been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, and Canada. She has been commissioned by international companies such as Candoco Dance Company, Norrdans, Toronto Dance Theatre, as well as by many independent artists. She has been a guest teacher at SNDO/Amsterdam, Movement Research/NYC, HZT/Berlin, SKH/Stockholm, Exerce (CCN)/Montpellier, and many University dance programs in the States. Durning has learned from and worked with pioneering dance artist Deborah Hay, on and off since 2005, as performer, coach and co-director, and consultant to Motion Bank (a project of the Forsythe Company). From 2020-2023, Durning was Rehearsal Director for Stockholm-based dance company, Cullberg, overseeing and touring Hay’s repertory works.
Trisha Brown Dance Company is a recipient of the Dance Reflections Fellowship by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Dance at The Watermill Center is made possible with lead support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels.
HIBA BADDOU (she/her)
Morocco, France
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Hiba Baddou (b. 1997, Rabat, Morocco) is a filmmaker, photographer, painter, performer, and art director whose practice bridges Moroccan heritage with global perspectives. Blending traditions with retro-futuristic aesthetics, her work explores identity, ritual, and language across film, painting, photography, and performance.
She studied filmmaking at the International Film School in Paris, where her graduation film won awards for Best Direction and Best Cinematography, before completing a master’s in Art Direction at Penninghen, earning the Jury Prize from Jean Charles de Castelbajac.
Her photography has been shown with the Fondation Nationale des Musées in Morocco and at Paris Photo (Grand Palais), while her paintings have been presented by the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the French Institute.
Her film Paraboles on imagery and migration—won the AVIFF Art Film Festival in Cannes, the Art for Change Prize at London’s Saatchi Gallery, and was shown at the Dakar Biennale (2024). Her multidisciplinary work will be exhibited at the MACAAL (Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Madeen during the year. Hiba has collaborated with international musicians and performed at ICA London.
CHRISTIANA KOSIARI (she/her)
Greece
Discipline: Dance, Performance Art
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Christiana Kosiari is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in Athens, Greece. She graduated from the Greek State School of Dance (2012) and the Athens University of Economics and Business (2008).
From 2021–2023, she joined the U(R)TOPIAS Choreographic Academy (Eleusis 2023 – European Capital of Culture), presenting *Bouboulina*, *Bouboulina’s*, and *Bouboulines* with women over 65. Her solo *RUNWAY* premiered at Onassis Dance Days 2024 and toured internationally at Credixa/Anima Fluo (Bologna), Under The Radar (New York), Moving Balkans (Slovenia), and TanzPlatz (Serbia). She also presented Chained at Arc for Dance Festival 15, Dance Laboratory Rhodes 7, Patras Art Festival 3, and Masdanza 28, receiving the second jury award.Her dance films Sink and Bouboulina were screened in festivals in Greece and abroad. In July 2025, she was selected as a resident artist for the Summer Program, at Bob Wilson’s Watermill Center, developing her new work *UnPhobia*.
As a performer, she has collaborated with Romeo Castellucci (*MA*), Siamese Dance Company (*Lamenta*), Stereo Nero Dance Co., and others. She has taught classical, modern, and contemporary dance since 2007.
Dance at The Watermill Center is made possible with lead support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef and Arpels.
PAOLA MARTINEZ FITERRE (she/her)
Cuba, United States
Discipline: Performance Art
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Paola Martínez Fiterre is a Cuban artist based in New York, whose practice focuses on the representation of the female body as shaped by the migratory experience. She studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana and graduated from the International Center of Photography in 2019. She has received fellowships such as the Reed Foundation Fellowship for Cuban artists and, in 2023, the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Photography. The work of Paola Fiterre offers an intimate reckoning with the body, identity, and the immigrant experience. Using her own body as both subject and medium; as a space of confrontation and contemplation. Her work is a reflection on the tension between personal and cultural identity, exploring themes such as migration, the female figure in a globalized society, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Fiterre’s work evokes a visceral response, drawing attention to the shared experience of “otherness” that transcends borders, cultures, and bodies.
KOFI KONADU BERKO (he/him)
Ghana
Discipline: Creative Writing
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Kofi Konadu Berko is the winner of the Adinkra Poetry Prize 2024. As a writer, his work explores family, identity, relationships and preserving his cultural heritage. My poetry draws on elements of Akan culture - including language, tradition, art, music, dance, proverbs, and riddles to interrogate the Ghanaian identity.
At the Watermill residency he will be on a collection, under the working title ‘Section B: Compulsory Questions’ is an interrogation of elements of Ghanaian identity through poetry, zooming onto Akan Twi language itself. Through riddles and proverbs, the collection weaves together and explores a myriad of issues facing Ghana, with identity at its center.
His work has been published in Pure Wata Zine(2025), Adinkra Poetry Prize(2024), How To Write My Country's Name(2021) and Tampered Press(2019).He is an alumnus of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize Workshop and was shortlisted for the Samira Bawumia Literary Prize 2022 in the Fiction category. He is also a co-writer of the children’s graphic novel ‘Aku and the Journey of the Turtle Spirit (2023).
This residency is in partnership with the Adinkra Poetry Prize.
DARIO FELLI (he/him)
Italy
Discipline: Music/Composition, Sound
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Dario Felli is an Italian sound artist based in Amsterdam. His work ranges from theatre sound design, to music composition. He studied Audio Engineering and later Electroacoustic Composition. He works as sound designer with the theatre director Robert Wilson since 2017 and with the Italian directors Antonio Latella, Leonardo Lidi, Giacomo Bisordi and Alessandro Businaro. He designed sound for a large number of theater shows and art exhibitions around the world.
FLAVIO PEZZOTTI (he/him)
Italy
Discipline: Design, Visual Art
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
Flavio Pezzotti is an Italian set designer and visual artist. He studied Scenography at Brera's Academy in Milano. Since 2017 he works with Robert Wilson around the world as associate set designer for theatre productions, installations and in studio for Wilson solo exhibitions. In Italy he worked at Piccolo Teatro di Milano as propman and works as set designer with the italian directors Davide Gasparro, Marco Corsucci, Giovanni Firpo, Marco Pedrazzetti and small theatre companies.
MIZU (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Music/Composition
In Residence: September 23 - October 23, 2026
MIZU is a New York-based musician, composer, and performer exploring themes of transformation and the infinite possibilities of self through an expansive musical practice. Trained as a cellist at The Juilliard School, her solo work transforms self-recorded acoustic samples into bold and distinct soundscapes through processes of layering, analog effects, and digital deconstruction. Within her compositions and performances, she melds her classical background with a distinctively experimental approach, breaking free from the constraints of tradition through timeless and deeply emotional storytelling.
Her two albums 'Forest Scenes' and 'Distant Intervals' received critical acclaim from publications such as Pitchfork, NOWNESS Asia, and Bandcamp Daily. Her score for '4 | 2 | 3', a full-length dance production by choreographer duo Baye & Asa, premiered at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2024. The composition received praise from The New York Times, Pitchfork, and The FADER. MIZU has performed at Rewire Festival, LEV Festival, and in venues throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
EGLE BUDVYTYTE (she/her)
Lithuania
Discipline: Performance Art
In Residence: October 28 - November 20, 2026
Eglė Budvytytė is an artist working at the intersection between visual and performing arts. She approaches movement and gesture as technologies for a possible subversion of normativity, gender and social roles and for dominant narratives governing public spaces. Her practice, spanning across songs, poetry, videos and performances, explores the persuasive power of collectivity, vulnerability and permeable relationships between bodies, audiences and the environment.
Eglė Budvytytė’s work has been shown at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Le Plateau, Frac Île-de-France in Paris, the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, KR, Vleeshal in Middelburg, NL, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Canal Projects, New York, the Lofoten International Art Festival, the Block Universe festival in London, Art Dubai commissions, the 19th Biennale of Sydney, De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, CAC in Vilnius, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. She was a resident at Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR, 2012), and at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre (Brussels, BE, 2013). In 2026, Eglė Budvytytė will represent Lithuania at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Eglė Budvytytė is a recipient of the 2026 Baroness Nina von Maltzahn Fellowship for the Performing Arts.
WEI XIONG (he/him)
China, United States
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: October 28 - November 20, 2026
Based in Brooklyn, Wei Xiong has been working as a sculptor, performer, and visual artist since 2013. As an artist with a cross-cultural background, Wei focuses on reinterpreting classic aesthetic images and symbols from history, while exploring the dilemmas faced by individuals navigating diverse cultural, national, and ideological landscapes amid the ongoing challenges to globalization.
Combining his foundation in social realism sculpture training with postmodernist conceptual art practice, Wei has exhibited his work at Stroll Garden(NY), CUNY Hunter College-Thomas Hunter Project Space (NY), The Blanc Gallery (NY), The Border Project (NY), Latitude Gallery, (NY), Watchung Arts Center (NJ), Shockboxx (LA). He has received residency awards, including AnkhLave Arts Alliance (Governors Island, NY); Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio (Shinnecock Nation, NY); Vermont Studio Center (VT), etc.
EMMA OFOSUA, THE FREESTYLE POET (she/her)
Ghana
Discipline: Creative Writing, Performance Art
In Residence: October 28 - November 20, 2026
Emma Ofosua is a West African writer, cultural curator, and freestyle "extempore" poet passionate about African literature, creative arts, and literacy advocacy.
Her work centers on themes of identity, culture, and memory, highlighting the resilience and courage of African women. Through her writing, she explores love, loss, motherhood, generational trauma, and the search for autonomy within complex cultural and social frameworks. She authored I Wish You Courage in the Night Season and directs the All African Women Poetry Festival; a UNESCO-partnered platform celebrating women’s voices in a four-day conference that hosts 6-10 poets from 6 African countries and the diaspora annually. As Managing Editor of Hadithi Magazine and creative lead of Tuniq Africa and its foundation, she champions cultural entrepreneurship.
In 2021, she was named one of the top 100 writers. 2023 saw her receiving the most promising writers award from Pagya sponsored by the EU delegation. Her work Reclamation, published in Decolonial Passage, was nominated for Best of the Net in 2024. In 2025, her debut fiction was published in the Perfect Place Anthology by Smartline Publishers.
TAMMIE DUPUIS (she/her)
United States
Discipline: Visual Art
In Residence: October 28 - November 20, 2026
Tammie was born and raised in Northwestern Montana, on the Flathead Reservation. Her father was Qlispe' (Upper Pend d'Oreille) and Seli’š (Bitterroot Salish) and her mother was the daughter of non-Indigenous settlers who moved to the reservation in the 1920s. Her aesthetic is situated between these two cultural heritages and explores their complicated history as well as her own identity as a mixed blood person.
Using both Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of making and seeing, her work ranges across several different processes and materials including but not limited to paint, wood, fabric, resin, hair, bone, paper, and beads.
Tammie earned her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, located in Boston, MA, in 2022 and her BFA from Cornish College of the arts located in Seattle, WA in 2019. Additionally, she holds a BS in Anthropology/Archaeology from Montana State University, located in Bozeman, MT. She and her art practice are located in Bremerton, WA.
ANA MAZZEI (she/her)
Brazil
Discipline: Multidisciplinary
In Residence: October 28 - November 20, 2026
Ana Mazzei, 1979, lives and works in Cotia, São Paulo/ Brazil. Ana is a visual artist, professor, and founder of Teatro Facada. With a Master's degree in Visual Poetics. Mazzei develops a distinct and experimental visual language that expands the possibilities of sculpture, installation, and performance. Her multidisciplinary practice is characterized by a rigorous exploration of form, material, and movement, connecting the traditional and the contemporary with remarkable sensitivity. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions, including the 32nd São Paulo International Biennial, Glasgow International; the 14th Cuenca Biennial; the 37th Panorama of Brazilian Art, Americas Society, New York; the MARCO Museum, Monterrey; the NMNM, Monaco; the Centre for Contemporary Art; the Saludarte Foundation, Miami; Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro; the São Paulo Museum of Art, MASP; the CCSP; Pivô; and Sesc Pompeia, among others. She was selected as an artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; GASWORKS; La Galerie - Centre d’art Contemporaine; Sculpture Studios - Glasgow and has works in private and institutional collections in Brazil and abroad.
Photos 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.