Curated Residencies

I believe, very deeply, that shared resources, access, supplies, and funds has the power to give marginalized artists the support they need to create the art they want to see in the world. For me, as a Black, Latinx, disabled, trans, and queer artist and arts administrator, I’ve personally witnessed how uninviting, unsupportive, and extractive arts institutions can be to people like me. Having to navigate and challenge antiblackness, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and homophobia in the arts and culture sector myself, I began creating accessible opportunities for other artists also living at the intersection of multiple oppressions because I noticed how many residencies, fellowships, and artist grants left us out.

The curated residencies on this page were dreamt up and executed by me as solutions to the silencing that artists with multiple marginalized identities face on a daily basis. My practice in using artist residencies as a socially-conscious artistic medium seeks to find answers to the question, “What if someone in the arts actually cared about our humanity and not just our output?”

The Oriana L. Lopez In Residence-In-Residence Project is a project that is very, very close to my heart. This virtual residency was created in honor of my older sister, Oriana, who passed away unexpectedly on August 15, 2019. Oriana was a talented visual artist and writer who passed during the time that we were planning her first solo exhibition. For the last two years of her life, she lived in medical facility where she received round-the-clock care. The arts were inaccessible to her as a disabled and chronically-ill artist who needed 24/7 healthcare. I created this residency for fellow disabled and chronically-ill artists who would benefit from a residency that didn’t force them to leave their living spaces to participate.

The residency is entirely virtual and provides the artists with as much support as I can give without being ableist to myself. As the creator and curator of this residency project, it has caused me to re-examine how the arts is ableist to artists and to arts organizers, often pushing all of us to break ourselves to meet impossible deadlines and live up to inhuman standards. In additions to finding accessible ways to support fellow disabled artists, In Residence-In-Residence has also caused me to investigate the ways that the arts and culture sector have caused and encouraged me to internalize ableism toward myself, in my own practice, in order to be viewed as an active artist.

This residency ran from January 2021 until January 2022.

Taking Up Space-In-Residence was the first time I created a short term artist residency in February 2019. The project was developed in conjunction with the QT Noir Arts Festival that I curate as well. The festival centers the work of Black LGBTQ+ artists from Philadelphia, PA, other parts of the United States, and living in other countries. This residency was an extension of the festival. I invited 30 Black LGBTQ+ creatives to take up space in a large gallery (The Icebox Project Space) together. For two weeks, the 30 artists were given 24-hour access to the space to work on artwork separately or collaboratively and to give workshops, if they so desired. Thanks to a programmatic grant provided to the Icebox, the residency was able to provide stipends to all 30 artists in residence. The culmination of the residency was a free, open-to-the-public community dinner, catered by a Black transgender chef, where the resident artists could invite their family & friends and share their visual, written, or performance work.