Visual Studies Workshop (VSW), the nationally-known nonprofit center dedicated to experimental and expansive approaches to photography, film and media arts, announces the open application period for its Project Space Residency Program. Applications are due by April 5, 2024.

For more than 50 years VSW has provided time, space and resources for artists from all over the world to expand their practice and continue ongoing projects. VSW supports artists in any stage of their career who are working in photography, film, or media art by offering four-week Project Space Residencies at VSW in Rochester, NY.  Project Space Residency alumni include Crystal Z Campbell, Ahndraya Parlato, Joshua Rashaad McFadden, Samantha Box, Anna Kipervaser, Ephraim Asili, and Aspen Mays, among others. 

"The Project Space Residency is a place for artists who are pushing the boundaries of their mediums," comments Hernease Davis, VSW Assistant Curator of Education and Public Programs. "Whether they are working through ongoing projects or attempting brand new directions, Visual Studies Workshop's facilities and archive materials are a unique resource that have been a creative catalyst to artists for decades."

Project Space Residents receive 24/7 access to a private studio, digital printing equipment, and an analog darkroom. They also receive a stipend of $1,000, plus $250 for supplies, a $500 travel budget for those traveling from outside the Rochester region, and accessible housing. All Residents receive the support of VSW's digital printing technician, program assistants, consultations with curators on staff, and research support in VSW's collections. 

The Project Space Residency also provides opportunities for artists to engage with the public through public lectures and Open Studios. 

Applications are open to U.S. based and international artists working in photography, film or media art. Each year, a jury panel consisting of VSW staff, past resident artists, and guest curators review applications to select up to 16 artists for four-week terms. This year, the jury includes Aaron Turner, Almudena Escobar López, and Asha Iman Veal.

More information and application instructions can be found at vsw.org. Application fee is $10.  Applications are due by April 5, 2024  and applicants will receive notification by July 1, 2024.

About Visual Studies Workshop: Visual Studies Workshop nurtures experimental and expansive approaches to photography and media arts, and builds community among artists and the public through exhibitions, publications and residencies. VSW was founded in 1969 in Rochester, NY by artist and curator Nathan Lyons (1930–2016), and became one of the earliest independent, not-for-profit, artist-run spaces in the country. More than 50 years later, the organization's mission is reflected in its core programs: VSW Salon, Project Space Artist Residencies, and VSW Press. In support of VSW programs, the organization holds photography and moving image research collections and an art library for artists, critics and the general public to explore, research and reuse. vsw.org 

Juror Bios

Aaron Turner is an artist, educator, and independent curator based in Northwest Arkansas. He is an Assistant Professor of Art and Director of the Center for Art As Lived Experience at the University of Arkansas School of Art. He uses photography as a transformative process to understand the ideas of home and resilience in two main areas of the U.S., the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas. Aaron also uses the 4x5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, blackness as material, and abstraction. Aaron received his M.A. from Ohio University and an M.F.A from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. He was a 2018 Light Work Artists-in-Residence at Syracuse University, a 2019 EnFoco Photography Fellow, a 2020 Visual Studies Workshop Project Space Artists-in-Residence, a 2020 Artist 360 Mid-America Arts Alliance Grant Recipient, the 2021 Houston Center for Photography Fellowship Recipient, a 2021 Creators Lab Photo Fund recipient from Google's Creator Labs & the Aperture Foundation,2022 Darryl Chappell Foundation photographer-in-residence at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and a 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council. 

Almudena Escobar López is an independent curator, archivist, and researcher from Galicia, Spain. She is Assistant Professor on Film History, Film Preservation and Collection Management at the School of Image Arts of the Toronto Metropolitan University. Her interdisciplinary research centers around documentary and artist's moving image practices concerned with decoloniality, visual historiography, and alternative information ecologies. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, and a MA in Film and Media Preservation from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. 

As a guest curator, Almudena has curated and co-curated a number of film and video series which have been presented at TIFF, Batalha Centro de Cinema, Arsenal, Lincoln Center, Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá, UnionDocs, Cineteca Nacional de México, among others. She was Assistant Curator of Media Arts at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) in Rochester from 2018 until 2022 where she presented the work of Kalup Linzy, Ja'Tovia Gary, Tara Merenda Nelson, Tony Cokes, Sky Hopinka, Crystal Z Campbell, among other artists. Her writing has been published at MoMA Magazine, Walden, Vdrome, Vertical Features, MUBI Notebook, The Brooklyn Rail, Afterimage, Film Quarterly, and Desistfilm Magazine, among other publications and catalogs. Since 2017 she serves on the Board of Trustees of the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Advisory Board of Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center in Buffalo, NY.

She is part of the curatorial team of CineMigrante Argentina and was program advisor of the 2020 and 2022 editions of Art of the Real at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Some of her more recent projects include Cinema of Sensations: the Never-Ending Screen of Val del Omar, an exhibition devoted to the work of José Val del Omar at the Museum of Moving Image in New York with the support of the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar, Continents of Drifting Clouds which he co-curated with Sky Hopinka.

Asha Iman Veal is Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago). Her recent exhibitions Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part (2022) and LOVE: Still Not the Lesser (2023) inspired cross-diasporic conversations between global artists including Xyza Cruz Bacani, Widline Cadet, Sunil Gupta, Ngadi Smart; and celebrations of love and desire by Mous Lamrabat, Jorian Charlton, Jess T. Dugan, and more. Asha Iman has separately led exhibitions for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Hyde Park Art Center, and more. Her biennial exhibition and radio broadcast series RAISIN vol 1. commissioned several new artworks and generated community among more than 30 global artists including Işıl Eğrikavuk, Amanda Williams, and Tintin Wulia; and was featured by international cultural organizations such as Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Chicago, and others. She has worked on projects and arts research in New York, Tokyo, Havana, Vietnam, Edinburgh, Berlin, Juárez, Chicago, and more. In her additional appointment, Asha Iman is Associate Professor Adj at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Arts Administration & Policy. She earned her BA at New York University's Gallatin School, MFA at The New School, and MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.