Residency Unlimited (RU) is pleased to announce the four finalists of RU’s 2026 NYC-Based Artist Residency (NYCBAR) Program dedicated to supporting NYC-based artists traditionally underrepresented in the arts each year.
The 2026 NYCBAR artists Catherine Chen, Ekene Ijeoma, Rehan Miskci and Jiangshengyu Nova Pan were selected through an open call by a panel of three distinguished curators who reviewed 259 applications: Barbara London, Rose Salane and Phil Zheng Cai.
This three-month residency will run from March 1 through May 31, 2026. It will culminate with the group exhibition “Working Conditions” curated by RU Guest Curator Phil Zheng Cai, on view at Westbeth Gallery from April 28 through May 16, 2026.
About the Artists:
Catherine Chen explores the enactive dominance of digital platforms made by corporations and the ways in which they gamify everyday life. Through installation, image-making, and performance, she maps the physical accumulation of labor that renders their power possible and then exercises it–through inanimate, material manifestations that control the behaviors of encounter.
Chen has exhibited and performed at the ICA at VCU (2025), and shown with Immaterial Projects (2025), and A.I.R. Gallery (2021). She has participated in a residency at ACRE (2025) and was awarded an IFPDA Blackburn Scholarship at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (2022). She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a B.A. from The University of Chicago.
Ekene Ijeoma researches social, political, and environmental systems to develop multimedia works that poetically expose inequities and mutually empower communities. Working across monumental and personal scales, his practice spans community-based land works, interactive light installations, and data-driven sculptures and performances.
Ijeoma’s work has been presented by Boston Public Art Triennial (2025), Bloomberg Philanthropies (2025), Dutch Design Week (2025), Getty PST Art (2025), Onassis Foundation (2024), Van Alen Institute (2022), the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis (2021), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2020), Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (2020), The Arts Club of Chicago (2019), The Kennedy Center (2019, 2017), Annenberg Space for Photography (2016), Neuberger Museum of Art (2016), Storefront for Art and Architecture (2015) and Museum of Modern Art (2015).
Rehan Miskci is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice weaves together layers of archive, photography, and text to reimagine traces lodged within both individual and collective memory. Miskci’s work forges permeable connections across different temporalities, proposing conceptual terrains shaped by unseen encounters, potential affinities, and the overlapping surfaces of narratives.
Miskci holds an undergraduate degree in Interior Architecture from Istanbul Technical University and an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She is the first place winner of Baxter Street Camera Club of New York’s Annual Competition (2015). Her work has been exhibited in venues including Bronx Museum of the Arts, Transmitter Gallery, in New York; Arter Museum and Depo, in Istanbul. Miskci is an alumna of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019) and she is the recipient of the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace Fellowship (2019). Miskci was also awarded a NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship in Photography (2019). She was supported by IKSV (Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation) to complete a residency at Cité des Arts in Paris, France.
Jiangshengyu Nova Pan is a moving-image and installation artist whose work explores human mobility from an individual perspective, often her own, focusing on the profound transformations of space, power relations, and social networks faced by mobile populations. Initially inspired by China’s rapid migration, Pan uses this history as an aperture, playing with scale and moving beyond place, exploring how mobility is internalized and migration felt in the body.
Pan’s work has been exhibited internationally, including To the Letter (2025) at BIENALSUR, Centro Colombo Americano, Medellín; Lights Off at 8 pm (2025) at Stamp Gallery, College Park, MD; CHEW-ACHE (2025) at The Compound, Baltimore; Exceed Expectations (2025) at Asia North, Baltimore; Screening Project 2.0 (2025) at START Museum, Shanghai; and CURRENTS New Media Festival (2024) at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. Additional exhibitions include Confluence (2024) at Area 405 and Fleeting Presence (2023) at NoMüNoMü, both in Baltimore.
About the Guest Curator:
Phil Zheng Cai is a curator and writer based in New York. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA in Social Science, and received his MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has held posts at Mary Boone Gallery, Phillips Auctioneers, and is currently a partner at Eli Klein Gallery. Cai’s research focuses on systematic critique, providing recontextualized commentaries following the traditions of institutional critique, highlighting the non-severability of framework and context.
Cai’s curated exhibitions have received critical acclaim. His curated exhibition “(In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography” was reviewed by Hyperallergic, Musee Magazine, Asian American Arts Alliance AMP Magazine, and many others. His curated exhibition “Alienation?” was reviewed by the Brooklyn Rail. He has participated in panel discussions and talks at institutions such as the Asia Society Museum New York, the SCAD Museum of Art, Columbia University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, among others.
The 2026 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
