Residency Unlimited (RU) is excited to announce an open call for the 2025 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program.
This program is dedicated to supporting NYC-based artists traditionally underrepresented in the arts. RU encourages applications from artists who self-identify as part of underserved communities, including but not limited to BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Artists working in all mediums are welcome, with a special emphasis on interdisciplinary practices such as social practice, conceptual art, institutional critique, and other discursive approaches.
The three-month residency will run from April 1 – June 30, 2025, in collaboration with RU Guest Curator Jesse Bandler Firestone.
About Residency Unlimited (RU):
RU is a non-profit art organization dedicated to fostering the creation, presentation, and circulation of contemporary art and ideas. Situated in a historic former South Congregational Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, RU provides a multifunctional space for community engagement. It serves as a hub for public programs, artist and curator meetings, research, and occasional art production. Programs include talks, screenings, performances, and exhibitions.
Key Dates:
- Application Deadline: Sunday, January 19, 2025, at 11:59 PM EST
- Notifications: Monday, February 17, 2025
- Residency Period: April 1 – June 30, 2025
Eligibility Criteria:
- Open to artists who self-identify as part of underserved communities, including but not limited to BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals.
- Artists working across all mediums are encouraged to apply, with a focus on interdisciplinary practices such as social practice, conceptual art, and institutional critique.
- Applicants must reside in one of the five boroughs of NYC.
- Applicants must have a valid Social Security number.
- Participants cannot engage in another residency during the program.
- Matriculated students are not eligible.
Additional Notes:
- Artists are expected to participate in all program activities, including weekly one-on-one meetings with guest curators, monthly salons, and other social gatherings (to be determined).
Residency Features:
- Stipend: $3,500
- Production Support: $500
- Curatorial Engagement: Weekly one-on-one visits with guest curators and critics, tailored to align with artistic and curatorial interests. Sessions will include meetings with Jesse Bandler Firestone, the RU team, and invited art professionals.
- Community Activities: Participation in activities with RU’s international artist resident community, including artist presentations, monthly salons with Jesse Bandler Firestone, and field trips.
- Project Support: Assistance with production and project development.
- Culminating Exhibition: A group exhibition curated by Jesse Bandler Firestone (location and dates to be announced).
- Hybrid Format: Residency activities will include both in-person and virtual components.
To fill out the application form, please have the following materials ready:
- Contact information
- Artist Statement (Max 250 words/1500 characters)
- Statement of Interest / Proposal (Max 500 words/3000 characters)
- Current CV (PDF format)
- PDF portfolio including up to 10 images of work with title, date, medium, dimensions, and a brief narrative description (max 7MB) – If you are submitting samples of performance and/or time-based works, please include up to three links in the application.
Four artists will be selected from applications reviewed by a jury of arts professionals, namely Tahir Carl Karmali, Sara Reisman and Jesse Bandler Firestone.
Jurors for the 2025 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program
Tahir Carl Karmali‘s work spans photography, installation, papermaking, sculpture, and sound, concentrating thematically on migration, landscape/geology, labor, and belonging. Through the use of material, Karmali closes the distance and blurs the boundaries between the experience of the artist and the viewer by incorporating multiple senses and creating an environment of thought and introspection. Karmali holds a Masters in Photography from School of Visual Arts, New York. Solo exhibitions include Eternal Rent, Management, New York; Bound Between Cliffs, Circle Gallery, Nairobi; Paper Planes, Sotheby’s Institute, New York. Group exhibitions include Invocations, Dar’Art Biennale, Dakar; Circle Art Agency, Nairobi; Open Call, The Shed; Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture, Leslie Lohman Museum; Second Careers, Cleveland Museum of Art; and Making Africa at High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Blanton Museum, Houston, CCCB, Barcelona, Guggenheim Bilbao, and others. Karmali was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency. He was an artist in residence at The Watermill Center and Montello Foundation, Triangle Arts Association, Pioneer Works, Trestle Gallery, the MacDowell Colony, and BRIC.
Jesse Bandler Firestone has held curatorial positions at a diverse range of institutions, including The Shed, Montclair State University, Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, and Satellite Art Show, as well as various artist-run spaces and nonprofits. His research spans conceptual art, emerging trends, institutional critique, and exhibition-making as a form of social practice. He is committed to broadening artist rosters by incorporating intergenerational perspectives and amplifying diverse, often underrepresented voices. This includes artists who identify as LGBTQ+, BIPOC, as well as individuals with disabilities. He has been an advisor for Biennials, private collections, and corporate art programs, produced over 70 commissions, ranging from installations to opera, and lectured at institutions such as Harvard and Pratt. His writing has appeared in numerous catalogs and publications, including Sculpture Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and Slate. He holds degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and the School of Visual Arts.
Sara Reisman is a curator, educator, and writer based in New York City where, since 2021, she is the Chief Curator at the National Academy of Design. From 2014 to 2021 she was Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and from 2008 to 2014, she was Director of New York City’s Percent for Art program at the Department of Cultural Affairs, where she managed more than 100 permanent public art commissions across New York City’s five boroughs. Reisman has taught art history and contemporary art at the University of Pennsylvania and SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design, and since 2016, is on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts’ Curatorial Practice Masters Program. Her curatorial and educational engagements have focused on socially engaged art, the history of exhibition making, public art, both temporary and permanent, artist books, and the intersections between art and activism. At the National Academy, she has co-curated numerous shows with Associate Curator Natalia Viera Salgado, including Exercises in Imagination, Drawing as Practice, 191st Annual: Academy Style, Sites of Impermanence, and a two-part exhibition Past as Prologue: A Historical Acknowledgment currently on view through spring 2025.
We look forward to your applications and to supporting a dynamic group of artists through this residency program!
If you have any questions, please email nyc-based-res@residencyunlimited.org.
The 2025 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.
