Visual Studies Workshop Names 2027 Project Space Residency Artists
Kelsey Sucena, Sobia Ahmad and Lianne Milton are among the twelve artists chosen by a jury of curators.
Visual Studies Workshop (VSW), the nationally-known nonprofit arts organization dedicated to experimental and expansive approaches to photography, film, and media arts, announces its 2027 Project Space Residency Artists-in-Residence. Twelve resident artists were selected from a pool of 250 international applications, by a jury of artists and curators.
Project Space Residency Artists:
droqen/Alexander Clair Tseu Martin (Toronto, Canada)
Malaury Eloi (Pointe-á-Pitre, Guadalupe)
'We are excited for the opportunity to support the works of artists who are pushing interdisciplinary and conceptual boundaries using photography, film and new media. Our jury panel was impressed by the high calibre of work made by artists from all over the world,' shares Hernease Davis, Visual Studies Workshop Curator and Project Space Residency Manager.
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 arts by offering four-week Project Space Residencies at VSW in Rochester, NY. Project Space Residency alumni include Valentina Alvarado-Matos, Jasna Bogdanovska, Larry Cook, Sarah Friedland, Preston Gannaway, Jamie Ho, Myah Asha Jeffers, Jackie Liu, Carmen Lizardo, and Sonja Thomsen among others.
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.
The program is open to U.S. based and International Artists working in photography, film or media art. This year, guest jurors included Aspen Mays (Artist, Associate Professor, California College of Art, Project Space Resident 2022), Le'Andra LeSeur (Artist, Tulsa Artist Fellow 2024-2026, Project Space Resident 2023), and Nando Alvarez-Perez (editor-in-chief, Cornelia Magazine and VSW Project Space Resident 2017).
Visual Studies Workshop thanks Joy of Giving Something and the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation for supporting photo-based artists in this program.
Visual Studies Workshop program funders also include The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Monroe County, NY.
Kelsey Sucena (NY), January 7 - February 4, 2027
Kelsey 'Chloë' Sucena is a transexual photographer based in the isolated hills of New York's Southern Tier. Her work concerns the interplay of text and image in the shaping of narrative. Alongside collaborators, she crafts and performs slideshows under the name Pale Horse, combining analog photographs, auto-theoretical text, and experimental music into jeremiads on the crisis of trans* life. She holds an MFA in Image Text (Ithaca, 2020) and a BFA in Photography (Purchase, 2016). She works as an Assistant Professor of Photography in Alfred, New York, where she lives with her cat Talbot.
Spencer Vazquez (NY), February 9 - March 9, 2027
Spencer Vazquez is a Chicago-born artist currently based in Queens, NY. His debut solo show, Glue Traps, was on view through June 2026 at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. His work has been featured by publications such as ARTnews, Hypebeast, Interlocutor, and Musee Magazine.
Vazquez's work explores the intersection of memory, digital media, and the everyday image. Using a variety of cameras and photographic processes, his work spans music videos, adhesive tape transfers, panoramic pinholes, and scans of his phone screen. He received a BA in Film & Electronic Arts from Bard College in 2022.
Brandon Holland (LA), March 11 - April 8, 2027
Brandon Holland is a New Orleans-born artist whose work is rooted in Black family and the landscapes that carry its memory. Working in color negative film, Brandon photographs matriarchs and spaces of cultural and spiritual weight. His latest project, 'I Owe You A Call,' traces lineage through portraits and conversations with his Aunt Fannie. His work has been commissioned by The New York Times, Mellon Foundation,The Atlantic, The Southern Poverty Law Center, and is currently on view in Louisiana Contemporary at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
Yames (DC), April 13 - May 11, 2027
Yames is a game developer that lives in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Herdimas Anggara (VA), May 13 - June 10, 2027
Heheheheherdimas Anggara is an Indonesian artist and educator based in Richmond, Virginia. Working through RASUK (Indonesian for "possess"), hehehehehe hijacks familiar formats (like this bio) and coaxes them into deviating from their intended purposes. Hehehehehe holds an MFA from Yale School of Art and is currently an Assistant Professor at VCUarts, where hehehehehe teaches students to hoodwink the systems and conventions that structure participation and to look for ways to intervene within them. Hehehehehe titles nearly all of his works RASUK, a habit that regularly creates confusion about which RASUK someone means. Hehehehehe enjoys inflicting that confusion. Hehehehehe.
Mickey Aloisio (NY), June 15 - June 30, 2027
Mickey Aloisio (he/him) is an artist and educator originally from Long Island, NY, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He holds degrees from Suffolk County Community College, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Yale University. Aloisio has received numerous awards and grants, including the FST StudioProjects Fund and Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and has participated in the Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the AIM fellowship at the Bronx Museum, and residencies at Yaddo and Skowhegan. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Marlborough Gallery, NY (2024) and Ptolemy Gallery, Queens, NY (2026).
Lianne Milton (PA), June 16 - July 14, 2027
For more than two decades, Lianne has photographed in Latin America and Southeast Asia for international news journals, travel magazines, and NGOs. From 2013 to 2019, she lived in Brazil, where her photography brought global attention to the Zika crisis, environmental justice, and social issues. Her work has been recognized and exhibited by the Center of Photography at Woodstock, IWMF Fellowship, National Press Photographers Foundation, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Yves Rocher Foundation, Photo Festival La Gacilly, and Visa Pour L'Image. Lianne also served as a Sony Global Imaging Ambassador in South America. Currently, she is a teaching artist and adjunct photography faculty member in Philadelphia. Lianne continues her long-form photographic projects in both Brazil and the United States.
Sobia Ahmad (PA), July 15 - August 12, 2027
Sobia Ahmad is a Pakistan-born interdisciplinary artist whose work explores spirituality, ecology, and everyday ritual through photography, moving image, and social engagement. She received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2024) and has exhibited widely at institutions and festivals including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Beijing Experimental Short Film Festival, among others. Her work has been supported by the Wherewithal Research Grant and the Exposure Artist Grant. Ahmad is the recipient of Silver Eye Center for Photography's Fellowship '25 Keystone Award and is currently a Hamiltonian Artists Fellow in Washington, DC.
Malaury Eloi (Pointe-á-Pitre, Guadalupe), August 17 - September 14, 2027
Malaury Eloi Paisley is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and film curator from Guadeloupe. She studied art history and museology in Paris and Montreal, before pursuing filmmaking at Varan workshop in Guadeloupe and EICTV in Cuba. In 2026, she was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. She directed Chanzy Blues ( 30 min) and , L'Homme-Vertige: Tales of a City ( 93 min), premiered at the Berlinale in 2024 and has been presented at Centre Pompidou, BAM, Arsenal, and HKW. It received the Golden Stallion of Yennenga and Paul Robeson Prize at FESPACO. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Variety, and Cahiers du Cinéma.
C. Diaz (TX), September 21 - October 19, 2027
C. Díaz (b. 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist, memory worker, and community organizer currently living and working in the Rio Grande Delta region in South Texas. They are the co-founder of ENTRE, an artist-run community film center and regional archive located in Harlingen, Texas, where they hold roles as facilitator, programmer, and archivist. They have been an Assembling Voices Fellow at Columbia's INCITE program, an Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, awarded the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts Grant, and an Artist in Residence at the Echo Park Film Center.
droqen/Alexander Clair Tseu Martin (Toronto, Canada), October 21 - November 18, 2027
droqen/Alexander Clair Tseu Martin is a toronto-based game-maker who made hundreds of videogames (Starseed Pilgrim, Asphyx, Cruel World, etc.) over decades, then in 2024 became obsessed with the phrase 'kill gameplay' and made & released The End of Gameplay in 2025.
droqen is now: a tarot reader, an aspiring therapist, a poet, an urban sketcher, a pixel artist, a human being who loves long walks on the island, and inescapably still a game-maker. among other things.
yrécha gay Jheneall (LA), November 30 - December 28, 2027
yrécha gay Jheneall is a transdisciplinary artist born and raised between Kingston and Portmore, Jamaica, and based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Their practice moves between Caribbean and Gulf South landscapes, exploring ancestry, migration, gender, memory, and Afro-Caribbean movement through installation, sound, photography, sculpture, print, and film. Working with fiber drum barrels, bamboo, sugarcane, textiles, and water, Jheneall examines vernacular materials as living archives of labor, migration, and diasporic exchange. Their work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Alabama Contemporary Arts Center, NIKKI Gallery, and Uptown Laundry. They earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts from the University of New Orleans.
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. We envision a society that values the human need to create and share ideas. VSW was founded in 1969 in Rochester, NY by photographer, educator 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 public programs and exhibitions, Project Space artist residencies, and VSW publications and workshops. In support of VSW programs, the organization holds substantial photography and moving image research collections and an art library for artists, critics and the general public to explore, research and reuse. vsw.org
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