Open Studio at RU House on Governors Island
June 27, 2026 | 12 – 5pm
Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island (map)
Ferry information | Video directions
On June 27, we warmly invite you to visit us for our second open studios event of the season with local alumni and 2026 resident artists Tatiana Arocha, Hayley Ferber, Chris Glabb, Petra Janda and Martin Vuong. Come hang out at the RU House to engage with these unique artists and discover works in progress firsthand.
Governors Island is open to the public with free ferry rides before 11am on weekends — we hope you will join us and make a day of exploring the Island!
About:
Tatiana Arocha is a New York-born Colombian artist. Her art practice explores intimacy between people and land, rooted in personal memory and her immigrant experience, and centers on community through public art interventions and transdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Most often, Arocha’s works vivify and reconstruct the vulnerable tropical forests of her homeland, confronting the ecological, emotional, and cultural loss caused by extractive economies and colonial practices. In weaving together historical and contemporary technologies, Arocha’s unconventional process and craft express her layered relationship with nature and cultural transformation.
Hayley Ferber is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores nautical themes through artist books, prints and paintings. Born on Long Island and now based in Brooklyn, Hayley delves into the layered, symbolic world of maritime culture, where sea life, ships, and cartography serve as metaphors for struggle, resilience, and transformation. She received her MAT in Art & Design Education from RISD and a BS in Studio Art from NYU. Hayley has exhibited solo at Yashar Gallery and in group shows at Kalamazoo Book Art Center, AIR Gallery, 440 Gallery, Established Gallery, and BWAC among others.
Chris Glabb aims to make the themes of Fine Art accessible through lowbrow referentiality, irony, a dry sense of humour, and the explicit appropriation of existing images. His practice is grounded in the philosophy that images and references function as social currency – tools that provide access to spaces, experiences, and opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible. Engaging with questions of hierarchy, intersectional Queerness, and Indigenous identities, Glabb employs a Post-Pop Art sensibility to redefine relationships between moments in culture through processes of image manipulation and printmaking.
Petra Janda is a multimedia artist moving across the spheres of creation and education, always interested in the relations between people and environmental issues, sustainable development of the outer world, and the ways to improve the environment, both external and internal – psychological. She is aware of the interconnectedness of the inner processes and of the influences they bear on the surrounding world. Her site-specific installations or art objects deal with the preservation of natural processes and life. In her work, she expresses ecological concerns not only via protective and predominantly feminine motives, but she also understands them as means of interpersonal communication. Her artistic creation responds to the current life with openness, indeterminacy, subtlety, and mystery, and relates to it by including community projects, ancient myths, and inner spirituality.
Martin Vuong is an emerging artist specializing in figurative oil painting, with a focus on portraiture. His work explores heritage, memory, and cultural identity through a diasporic lens, drawing on his Vietnamese background and colonial history. He examines the intersection of personal and collective narratives, translating overlooked stories into visual form. His paintings combine realistic figures with symbolic and surreal elements. He works from archival photographs, historical advertisements, found images, and linguistic expressions, reinterpreting them to reflect on how histories are constructed and remembered. His recent work focuses on French colonialism in Vietnam and its lasting social and cultural impacts.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. In-kind support is provided by Materials for the Arts.
RU is grateful for the partnership with Governors Island Arts.
