Meet our artists in residence
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.
ALICIA MERSY
Alicia Mersy is an artist and filmmaker of Lebanese/French origin, living and working in New York. 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. Her work has been exhibited internationally in spaces like the Institute of Contemporary Arts: ICA (London, United Kingdom), Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Zurich, Switzerland), UQ Art Museum (Australia) and Abrons Art Center (New York, USA).
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.
MARYAM TURKEY
Maryam Turkey is an Iraqi-American artist and designer 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 Domaine de Boisbuchet where she was mentored by Sabine Marcelis. Turkey’s sculptural practice began then. In 2019 she was awarded an art residency at the Museum of Art and Design, where she developed her ongoing paper clay techniques.
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.