New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program
The New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program (NYCASHRP) is a yearlong residency for NYC-based international artists who have faced censorship, persecution, or other threats to their freedom of expression. This coalition-led program offers residents holistic services, including:
・Pro bono immigration assistance (Artistic Freedom Initiative),
・Customized professional development and community engagement (Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, Residency Unlimited, Tamizdat, and The New School),
・Financial assistance for living expenses and artist materials (The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Westbeth Artist Housing)
Founded in 2017 by Artistic Freedom Initiative, Todd Lanier Lester (ArtistSafety.net / FreeDimensional), Residency Unlimited, and Westbeth Artists Housing, the New York City Artist Safe Haven Residency Program (NYCASHRP) is an innovative urban artist safety hosting program. Arts and advocacy organizations come together to form the NYCASHRP coalition, providing holistic support for international at-risk artists who have faced censorship, persecution, or other threats to their freedom of expression.
Through this coalition, the residency offers artists legal aid, resettlement assistance, professional development, financial assistance for living expenses and artist materials, advocacy, community engagement, and other services. In 2024 and 2025, the program is hosting visual artists and musicians through a coalition that includes Artistic Freedom Initiative, Residency Unlimited, Tamizdat, and Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. From 2017 through 2023, the program hosted visual artists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers.
Specifically, Residency Unlimited provides visual and multidisciplinary artist residents with unique, customized professional residency programming composed of network support, project and production assistance, exhibition, and public programming opportunities.
To date, this residency program has hosted eighteen artists from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Congo, Vietnam, Haiti, Uganda, India, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palestine, and Kyrgyzstan.
List of participating artists at RU and related programs since 2018:
2017: Hadi Nasiri (Iran)
2018: Rashwan Abdelbaki (Syria)
2019: Khaled Barakeh (Syria)
September 19, 2019, Panel: Artist Safety Hosting, A Discussion on Practice: Presentation of a hosting guide that offers reflections on the rise of artist safety hosting and the best practices for its use in New York City and elsewhere. Speakers: Tania Bruguera, Laura Raicovich, Prerana Reddy and others.
2020: Faten Gaddes (Tunisia)
2021-2022: Nazanin Noroozi (Iran)
2022-2023: Alejandro De La Guerra (Nicaragua)
2024: Aida Sulova (Kyrgyzstan)
This program benefit from the support of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Wilhelm Family Foundation.
