The Studio Museum in Harlem has announced the recruitment for 2021–2022 for its renowned Artist Resident Program, recognized for its catalytic role in promoting creativity and launching the careers of generations of distinguished African and African-Hispanic artists.
Cameron Granger, Jacob Mason-McLean, and Qualeasha Wood have been selected as new members of the Studio Museum’s renowned resident artist community. They receive institutional and material support from the Museum from October 2021 to September 2022.
This next cycle of the program will be the second in which artists in the community will start remotely, ensuring the health and safety of themselves and the staff of the Studio Museum.
Despite this necessary precaution, the program will continue to offer residential artists institutional guidance and professional development, facilitate studio visits, along with the museum’s curatorial team and relevant art professionals, to support Harlem artists in their work during the ongoing pandemic, and also provide research support. All this led to the culminating exhibition.
The Artist-in-Residence program is the foundation of the institution and has a profound impact on the careers of aspiring Harlem artists. The exhibition which is going to take place in Autumn 2022 will form part of a long partnership between The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1.
This year, Cameron Granger, Jacob Mason-McLean, and Qualeasha Wood are on the list of outstanding resident artists of the Museum in Harlem.
Cameron A. Granger
A video artist, Granger uses her work both as a place to create memories and as a vehicle for strategizing new ways of remembering in this media age.
His recent projects include “Everybody’s got a little light under the sun,” free food and short film program made in collaboration with Willowbeez Soul Veg and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and “The Get Free Telethon” a twenty-four-hour Livestream community fundraiser for Columbus groups Black Queer Intersectional Collective, Healing Broken Circles, and Columbus Freedom Coalition, sponsored by Red Bull Arts. A 2017 alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Granger has exhibited his work at The Bemis Center, Omaha, NE (2021); Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York (2019); and Platform Rf, Vaasa, Finland (2019).
Jacob Mason-Macklin’s
His work explores the collision between image and material. Using archival imagery and personal forms, Mason-McLean explores new modes and subjects in an attempt to channel a flow that is crude, muddy, and desirable. His practice was driven by the media craze of the Power of Soul era in the United States.
Distorted screenshots of Soul Train sets, stills from Blaxploitation films, and covers for R&B and mid-twentieth century funky albums such as James Brown’s Hell (1974) and Marvin Gay’s I Want You (1976), Mason-McLean uses chopping, cutting and wavy strokes to create a confrontation between the corporeal and the depicted, in order to simultaneously embrace and frustrate the motives of libido and violence typical of countercultural iconography.
His work has been exhibited at:
- Page (with Ryan Huggins), New York (2021);
- Interstate Projects, New York (2020);
- No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH (2020);
- and Jeffrey Stark Gallery (with Cudelice Brazelton), New York (2017).
Qualeasha Wood
The artist blends traditional craft and modern digital materials, inspired by family-friendly textiles, queer craft, Microsoft Paint, and internet avatars. The works raise questions about the place, purpose and hope for a neontological black queer female body.
Wood has exhibited at:
- Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2021);
- CANADA, New York (2021);
- Kendra Jayne Patrick for Metro Pictures, New York (2021);
- the Trout Museum of Art, Appleton, WI (2020);
- NADA Miami Beach at Kendra Jayne Patrick, Miami (2020);
- New Image Art, Los Angeles (2020);
- Cooper Cole, Toronto (2019);
- and Gluon Gallery, Milwaukee, WI (2019).
About the Artist-in-Residence Program
The Studio Museum’s founding Artist in Residence program gives aspiring representatives of the African Artist Association and artists of African and Afro-Latin descent an unprecedented opportunity to develop their practice for eleven months and offers viewers the opportunity to see this work in the annual culminating exhibition.
The Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; and by endowments established by the Andrea Frank Foundation, the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Trust, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support is generously provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, The Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent.
