This will be the third summer that a few select visual artists will move into BRIC House and make it home for the summer. BRIC’s Visual Artist Residency program provides visual artists free studio space in BRIC House and at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights for an eight-week period. The experience gives artists the time and space to create, while providing them with exposure to the BRIC community.

BRIC is proud to announce the artists who have been selected as recipients of the BRIC Visual Artist Residency this summer:

• Aisha Tandiwe Bell
• Ilana Harris-Babou
• Tahir Carl Karmali
• Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Brooklyn-based Aisha Tandiwe Bell is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers upon the individual burdens, insecurities, stereotypes, masks and self-prescribed traps we wear and the ability to transform, resist and/or escape these traps. Bell creates life-sized traps out of cardboard, fabric, and other materials that the viewer can enter. Bell received her BFA and MS from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; and her MFA from Hunter College, New York. She has had work in shows at Space One Eleven, Birmingham, AL; Gallery 221 @ HCC, Tampa, FL; Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn; and Rush Arts Gallery, Marianne Boeksy Gallery, and Abrons Art Center, all NY; among others. Her residencies include Hunter College Ceramic Residency, The Laundromat Project Public Art Commission, and the LMCC Swing Space Residency on Governors Island.

Ilana Harris-Babou is a Brooklyn artist who makes video installations and sculptures. Harris-Babou’s work often incorporates tactile elements and the subject of food. She will use her residency at BRIC House to continue work on several projects, including a digital series in which she inhabits a character who is part cooking show hostess, part "video vixen," and part carpenter, welcoming viewers into an alternate world of taste and consumption. Harris-Babou received her BFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. She has had solo exhibitions at the Broad Street Gallery, Hartford, CT; and Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; along with participation in group shows at The Jewish Museum, and Judith Charles Gallery, both in NY; and Artspace, New Haven, CT; among others.

Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, and now based in Brooklyn, Tahir Carl Karmali combines mixed media with portraiture and photography. Karmali creates work that explores his racial background and cultural history, particularly in relation to colonial Africa and the building of the East African Railway in order to describe the complex history and narratives that come with being African. Karmali has had solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn College Library and United Photo Industries, Brooklyn, as well as work in group shows at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain; the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; and the Lagos Photo Festival, Nigeria; among others. He recently completed a residency at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA.

Based in New York and Copenhagen, artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen explores the relationship between fantasy, technology, and ecology, through video, 3-D animation, satellite recordings, sound, and performance. Steensen is focused on how new media and technological inventions influence our perception of reality and relation to nature, as well as our individual notion of self and how we relate to the world around us. During his residency at BRIC House, he will develop a new body of work in the form of videos and 2-D prints that represent tourist materials from the future. Steensen was particularly interested in working at BRIC because of the organization’s interdisciplinary programming, which is in line with his artistic practice. Steensen received his BA from Aarhus University, Denmark; and MFA degrees from the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins; and Copenhagen University, Denmark. His work has been in group shows at MAXXI, Museum of Modern Art, Rome; Project Space 184, Brooklyn; the National Institute of Architecture, Madrid; and in the Shanghai Design and Art Festival, at the Long Museum, West Bund, China.

Stay tuned for opportunities to engage with this summer’s artists in residence and to learn more about their work and artistic practice. 

To learn more about the BRIC Visual Artist Residency, click here.