ARTIST IN RESIDENCE - FALL 2023
WORTHLESSSTUDIOS’ inaugural Artist in Residence program ran from September to December 2023. The residency was production focused, supporting underserved sculptors and installation artists at pivotal moments in their careers.
This residency expanded on our comprehensive approach to helping artists realize their creative visions while ensuring that they had resources to advance their skills and careers. This program provided support for artists working in sculpture and installation to advance their fabrication and production processes while making a specific artwork. The first cohort was welcomed to WORTHLESSSTUDIOS' new 10,000 square-foot facility at 7 Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn. Our residency aspired to include Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQIAP+, women, nonbinary, and disabled artists, to fulfill the urgent need for fabrication tools, financial support, technical assistance, and space that so many underrepresented artists seek.
THE ARTISTS + Their work
JANNICK DESLAURIERS
Sculpture, installation art, fashion design and architecture are important influences on Deslauriers’ textile research. She continuously expands her practice by revisiting themes central to her work: memory, impermanence, fragility, and the ethereal and through the integration of materials such as steel rods, beeswax, tulle, clear vinyl, and wood ash. Her most recent work has something of the anthropology of equipment, drawing particularly on the registers of care (from prostheses palliating the incapacities of the body or resting and restrain devices), recreational equipment for children and flying machines. She builds object-beings; sort of imaginary prosthetics that speak to our need for support. Her process is based on the stratification and entanglement of referents, materials and making, through the ongoing deterioration and repair of the objects she fabricates.
CENOTAPH, 2023
Steel, stainless steel, tulle, nylon, beeswax, and vinyl
With Cenotaph, I'm concentrating on a single referent - the bed - while exploring the various registers to which it belongs, to bring out the philosophical, poetic and political dimensions of sleep. Cenotaph is the form of several vertical monoliths interweaving a panoply of bodiless beds: hospital beds, stretchers, camp beds, prison beds, orphanage beds and other types of dormitories. The work evokes several spheres of human existence, as well as the thresholds that distinguish them: the world of care and confinement, abandonment and war, childhood and aging, and death. The presence of winged prostheses adds a touch of lightness, reinforcing the dreamlike dimension and the idea of escape and elevation conveyed by the sculpture's verticality.
ALICIA MERSY
Alicia Mersy is an artist and filmmaker of mixed origin- French Canadian Lebanese based in New York City. Her work uses the camera to connect to people and to the divine, by forging pathways towards personal and collective peace. She is attracted to free spirits, radicals, and revolutionaries. Alicia creates space for conversations through video, documentary, photography and installations.
LEAN ON YOUR BREATH, MY LOVE, 2023
Trampoline, Textiles, Video Projection, Sound
This work invites visitors to enter a sanctuary of sound and light to regulate and boost their energy. This trampoline is a recharge station — a therapy session for the streets of New York City — intended to soon be installed in public space throughout the five boroughs. The mantras (displayed as text messages) have been collected through countless interviews and conversations with people on the streets of New York and Palestine/Israel. These uplifting messages are from people at corner stores near Alicia’s home and messages from friends in the past 2 months.
KARINA SHARIF
Karina Sharif is a multidisciplinary paper artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores wearable and non wearable sculpture; highlighting multitudes of the divine Black femme. Sharif focuses on rest, adornment, space and sensory encounters as catalysts for her vision and centers Black bodies, minds and experience throughout her work. Each piece by Sharif serves as a form of therapy and restitution for individuals within her constituency. Today she combines her dedication to the medium as an endless source of form and possibility with her nearly 20 years of sewing, styling and construction experience. This intriguing union has allowed Sharif to fully embody the range of her visions; ensuring her devotion to Black femme-hood and her chosen medium. Boldly encouraging viewers to experience how the two are intertwined.
A WARM EMBRACE, OBSIDIAN INCARNATE, 2023
Paper, gouache, acrylic, steel, plaster, wood, ink
For my mother, Diane Elene Lewis and my great Aunt, Nesta Lydia Hyatt Strickland.
Inspired by the women who have shaped my life and the countless deposits of “ore” produced by Black women and femmes. Both recognized and unrecognized. Your labor is seen, your love and wisdom appreciated.
MARYAM TURKEY
Maryam Turkey (1994) is an Iraqi-American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. In 2009, she moved with her family as refugees to the United States, where she attended Baltimore School for the Arts high school and learned traditional painting. She continued her art and design education at Pratt Institute, where she earned her Bachelor of Industrial Design in 2017. Shortly after graduation, Turkey was awarded an art residency at the Museum of Art and Design. A number of other esteemed residencies followed, including the Silver Arts Residency at the World Trade Center, (LMCC), and WorthlessStudios, all in New York City. Turkey has been featured in Architectural Digest as “one to watch,” in 2021 as well as being featured at Surface Magazine, Galerie Magazine, Interior Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Turkey was granted the ForFreedoms 2023 annual fellowship, supporting artists with a focus on social change. And she recently revealed her public sculpture at the Socrates Sculpture Park as part of her Socrates Annual Fellowship this year.
FACADE, 2023
Brushed and bolted aluminum
I question and reclaim through symbolism our authoritarian system, by dismantling accepted norms such as architecture. Architecture as a symbol of the system; In its cycle of building (civilizations) and destruction (wars) to prove power. With this new body of work, I present the human body as rigid layers of a facade, exploring the dichotomy between the organic nature of humanity and the order of "architecture."
MARK ANTHONY WILSON JR.
Mark Anthony Wilson Jr is a self-taught sculptor and installation artist working in found objects. He marries the unveiling of African American heritage with Afrofuturism to establish instruments for liberation. Utilizing an assortment of material to repurpose often hidden narratives. Referencing Afro indigenous spiritual practices through its journey to contemporary religion. He fuses the spiritual practices with historical moments of Black militant duties, creating new forms of protection. His masquerade serves to unify and empower Black bodies across time.
THE REDBALL EXPRESS, 2023
Found items, found branches, metal, and wood
In homage to the Red Ball Express, a WWII convoy primarily led by African Americans aged 18-23, this installation is a replication dominated by found objects and branches, symbolizing the weight of history. Serving as a blueprint for oppressed communities globally, it signifies a collective response to crises. The installation embodies the transformation of untrained workers—cooks, agricultural laborers—into vital drivers. Donated shoes, adorning the truck bed, symbolize the call to action from everyday people. The charged energy within these shoes serves as a powerful force, collectively manifesting the reality of this vehicle and echoing the resilience of those who rose to the occasion in times of need.
EVENTS
OPEN STUDIOS
WORTHLESSSTUDIOS’ first ever Artist in Residence OPEN STUDIOS was hosted on September 30, 2023. Guests were invited to meet the first cohort of 5 artists that had been working at our new 10,000 square-foot facility at 7 Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn. Attendants got to know the artists’ production processes and hear about their experiences at working in WORTHLESSSTUDIOS. Each of the artists’ studio spaces were open to view as well as our fully equipped fabrication shop.
GOODTIMES GALA
The GOODTIMES GALA was an epic, denim-themed warehouse soirée at our home in East Williamsburg. Our community of artists, partners, and friends were welcomed for a very WORTHLESS event, celebrating the opening of the inaugural Artist in Residence group exhibition and raising the necessary funds to support our incredible projects and programs.
Guests were surrounded by the large-scale sculptures created by the five residency participants and were offered the opportunity to bid on artwork in our Artsy Auction. The night included an intimate dinner by Lev and private performance by Samora Pinderhughes’ The Healing Project Choir, followed by an after party with an interactive dessert installation plus dancing.
air closing reception
As we draw a close to our inaugural Artist in Residence exhibition, we invited the public to come view the final sculptures. People were able to meet, chat with, and celebrate Jannick Deslauriers, Alicia Mersy, Karina Sharif, Maryam Turkey & Mark Anthony Wilson Jr. and their finished work.