Future Artists in Residence
Sara Black
7 Mar. – 1 Apr. 2026
Sara Black (born Sarah Owusu-Ansah) is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist whose layered paintings explore the tension between memory, identity, and environment. Born in Ghana and currently based in Europe, her work is shaped by lived experiences of cultural displacement, emotional translation, and the complexities of belonging. She works primarily with oil paint, image transfer, and drawing, developing intuitive, fragmentary compositions where the body and space blur into one another.
Sara holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, and a Postgraduate Degree from the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe) in Germany. Her academic background has been central to the development of her practice, grounding it in both formal experimentation and critical theory, including postcolonial thought, feminist philosophy, and contemporary art history.
Her compositions often feature distorted or partially obscured figures, rendered in pink to avoid racial coding and instead evoke shared human vulnerability. She treats the body as a soft container of memory and emotional residue—something shaped as much by internal states as by its surroundings. Her process is largely intuitive, unfolding through layering, erasure, and interruption.
Sara draws inspiration from thinkers such as bell hooks, Edward Said, and Judith Butler, and from artists like Francis Bacon, Wangechi Mutu, and Louise Bourgeois—all of whom explore identity, fragmentation, and emotional depth in complex ways.
She has participated in exhibitions, residencies, and educational projects across continents. Whether working from a formal studio or domestic space, Sara creates artworks that resist resolution and invite viewers into quiet, emotionally charged spaces where the personal and political converge.
Sara Black, Anatomy of a Memory I, 2025, oil paint, image transfer on canvas, 60 x 50 x 1 in
Sara Black, What Nature Remembers, 2025, oil, image transfer on canvas, 53 x 86 x 1 in
Sara Black, Before We Knew, We Were, 2025, oil paint, image transfer on canvas, 104 x 55 x 1 in
Sara Black, Clarity, 2024, Oil paint, image transfer on canvas, 16 x 12 in
Austin Ballard
7 Mar. – 1 Apr. 2026
Austin Ballard was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where he also served as an Assistant Professor in Textiles. Ballard has received numerous awards including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculpture Fellowship, a Windgate Foundation Fellowship, a Kenneth Stubbs Endowed Fellowship, a Chenven Foundation Grant, a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, the Dan Bown Project Award, and the Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Studies Grant. He has been awarded full fellowships to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Ox-Bow School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project in New York, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Long Meadow and the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in Great Britain. Ballard has exhibited in numerous exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art, NY, Smack Mellon, NY, Wave Hill, NY, Whitespace, Pentimenti, PA, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, NY, GRIN, David B. Smith Gallery, Field Projects, Beers Contemporary, Rooster Gallery (NY), Napoleon (PA), and . He has also been included in exhibitions at Brown University, Provincetown Museum of Art, Chautauqua Institute, NY, Boston University, Mint Museum of Art, NC, Ithaca College, University of North Texas, Broward College and the Rhode Island School of Design. He has been featured in Maake Magazine, Art Maze Magazine, Wall Street International, Wide Walls and the New York Sun. He has served as visiting faculty at numerous institutions including, Anderson Ranch, Indiana University, University of North Carolina, Trinity College, Edinburgh College of Art, Ithaca College as well as a guest speaker at the NAEA conference from 2017-2022. He currently lives and works in Ridgewood, NY.
Austin Ballard, Eternal Genji in Irregular Warp Rib, 2024, Epoxy Clay, Cane Webbing and Textile Dye, 30 x 25 x 25 in
Austin Ballard, It Never Entered my Mind / Mumbler with Blind Riverts, 2025, Epoxy Clay and Cane Webbing, 28 x 26 x 26 in
Austin Ballard, Split the Ashes / Bruiser, 2025, Epoxy Clay, Cane Webbing and Textile Dye, 27 x 26 x 23 in
Austin Ballard, Maple Gathering in Square Repeat, 2024, Epoxy Clay, Cane Webbing and Textile Dye, 28 x 23 x 26 in
Miki Orihara
29 Jun. – 20 Jul. 2026
Miki Orihara, born in 1960, is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she joined in 1987 and earned a Bessie Award in 2010. She has performed on Broadway in The King and I and with Elisa Monte, PierGroupDance, Lotuslotus, Rioult Dance, Twyla Tharp, Martha Clarke, Anne Bogart (SITI Company), and Robert Wilson.
Her teaching credentials include numerous workshops in Japan, at Art International in Moscow, and at Peridance, the Ailey School, New York University, Florida State University, Henny Jurriëns Stichting (Holland), Les Etés de la Danse in Paris, and New National Theater Ballet School (Tokyo,Japan). She is on the faculty of the Graham School and The Hartt School (University of Hartford). She has set Martha Graham’s work all over the world, including for Diana Vishneva’s Dialogue and on Wendy Whelan of the New York City Ballet.
She recently released the Martha Graham dance technique DVD Level 1 and Level 2, collaborating with Susan Kikuchi, Dance Spotlight and the Martha Graham Center. A third DVD for advanced level 3 is coming in Spring 2026.
As a choreographer, Orihara has presented her work in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and in Japan. She premiered her solo work Searching Dimensions in New York in 1995, followed by, among others, VOICE, a piece for eight women for M’Deux Ballet in Nagoya, Japan (2001), Stage (2008), Prologue (2014) and Shirabyoshi (2017). In 2023, she was invited to choreograph for Anne Bogart’s Beautiful Lady at La MaMa, in NYC. Her on going solo concert project series RESONANCE-共鳴, in 2014, 2017, and 2019, presented works by modern dance pioneers alongside new creations.
She is a casting producer/Dance Director for mishmash＊Miki Orihara, a movement designer for Jen Silverman’s Crane Story directed by Katherine Kovner. In 2023, she was invited to choreograph for Anne Bogart’s Beautiful Lady at La MaMa, in NYC.
Orihara curated/produced the benefit concerts Dancing for JAPAN in 2014 and 2017, and started the NuVu Festival NYC in 2017 and 2019.
Her film Broken Memory was featured at Dance on Camera Festival in New York in 2017. With Stephen Pier, Orihara created this dance film Conversations and Ceci C’est Pas Un Jouet (this is not a toy) filmed by Gene Gort.
Miki Orihara was featured in the Inaugural performance of Peace is… at the United Nations as a part of the Permanent Mission of Japan in April 2017 and August 2018.
Orihara is a member of Dance On Ensemble in Berlin, Germany since 2019.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. They are a creative home to artists and audiences from around the world and a dynamic hub for risk-taking performance. La MaMa believes in the power of art to reveal our shared humanity and supports artists of all identities in the creation of new work.
Founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, La MaMa is the only original Off-Off-Broadway theatre still in operation. Over the course of 61 years, they have grown from an underground refuge for the avant-garde to a world-renowned cultural institution, with 30+ Obie Awards, dozens of Drama Desk Awards, Bessie Awards, Villager Awards, and the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award. They have supported nearly 160,000 artists from all over the world, such as Blue Man Group, Peter Brook, André De Shields, Ping Chong, Olympia Dukakis, Harvey Fierstein, Philip Glass, Tedeschi Kantor, Shuji Terayama, Adrienne Kennedy, Diane Lane, Taylor Mac, Bette Midler, Meredith Monk, Sam Shepard, Andrei Serban, Elizabeth Swados, and Julie Taymor, to name a few.
Purvai Rai
26 Aug. – 4 Oct. 2026
Alina Tenser
26 Aug. – 4 Oct. 2026
Alina Tenser is a Ukrainian born artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Working across sculpture, performance, and video, she makes propositions that elicit physical activation, play, and transference. Utilizing industrial and domestic materials and processes she reimagines taken-for-granted social and material relations; mining the entanglements of her experience as an immigrant and parent. Tenser is currently an Assistant Professor at Lehigh University.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at Hesse Flatow, New York, NY; 17Essex Gallery, New York, NY, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg, SE; and Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been widely reviewed and written about in publications such as New York Times, The New Yorker Magazine, Artforum, BOMB Magazine, Cultured Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Third Rail. She has participated in multiple artist residencies, most notably The Queens Museum Studio Program and Recess Activities. Her first public art installation is currently on view at Memorial Sloan Kettering Chemotherapy Treatment Facility in Brooklyn, NY.
Tsuyu Bridwell
8 Oct. – 5 Nov. 2026