Future Artists in Residence

Miki Orihara

29 Jun. – 20 Jul. 2026

This residency project develops an ongoing choreographic work that began with Orihara’s 2014 solo Prologue (performed at La MaMa), originally centered on her relationship with her mother and now expanding to explore the broader influence of “mothers”—women she has encountered who have profoundly shaped her life and artistic voice. Tentatively titled Resonance, the project will evolve through a series of workshops, an open rehearsal, and a final performance. A key inspiration for Orihara is her late teacher Nanako Yamada, who transmitted Dalcroze’s “20 gestures,” an early modern dance practice that influenced both Japanese and American pioneers. During the residency, Orihara will share a selection of these gestures with participants, guiding them to develop their own movement vocabularies and collaboratively build new material. An open rehearsal will provide space to experiment and deepen the work, while the culminating performance will present this evolving choreography, incorporating projection and video in collaboration with a videographer, as she continues to investigate the intersection of memory, lineage, and embodied resonance.

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.

A.L. Steiner

23 Jul. – 23 Aug. 2026

A.L. Steiner (b. 1967, Miami, FL) utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, performance, writing and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and a serial collaborator. Based in New York, she is faculty at Yale University’s School of Art and her works are featured in permanent collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Brandhorst Collection, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art | Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Julia Stoschek Collection and Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Steiner is recipient of the Art Matters Grant, American Academy in Berlin Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and Yale University’s Presidential Fellowship in Visual Arts. Her work is represented by Deborah Schamoni and recent publications include Textdemic (GenderFail Press) and Ridykeulous Presents (MIT Press).

The School of Art is one of Yale University’s graduate and professional schools conferring MFA degrees in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, and sculpture. The School also provides the curriculum for the undergraduate art major for Yale College students.

William Lamson

23 Jul. – 23 Aug. 2026

Photo by Matthew Spiegelman

William Lamson is an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves working with elemental forces to create durational performative actions. Set in landscapes as varied as New York’s East River and Chile’s Atacama Desert, his projects reveal the invisible systems and forces at play within these sites. In all of his projects, Lamson’s work represents a performative gesture, a collaboration with forces outside of his control to explore systems of knowledge and belief. Lamson’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Musuem, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. MOMA, Kunsthalle Erfurt, the Musuem of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles. In addition he has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Center For Land Use Interpretation, and Storm King Art Center. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Musuem of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a number of private collections. He has been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation, the Experimental Television Center, and is a Guggenheim Fellow. His work has appeared in ArtForum, Frieze, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Harpers, and the Village Voice. William Lamson was born Arlington, Virginia and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his MFA from Bard College, and he teaches in the Parsons MFA photography program and at the School of Visual Arts.

William Lamson, In the Roaring Garden, 2014, Digital C Print, 24 x 40 in

William Lamson, Badwater, 2018, Peristaltic Pumps, timers, hose, aluminum piping, aluminum trays, copper tray’s, speed rail fixtures, Glass, foam, resin, fans, dehumidifier, Variac, acrylic, sodium chloride, magnesium sulphate, Lemons, fluorescent lights, hot plate, earth from dry lake Harper, water, 84 x 84 x 228 in. Photo from Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles, 2018

William Lamson, Water Offering, 2021-2025, Granite, Sculpture 1: 207 × 68 × 36 in, Sculpture 2: 106 × 114 × 396 in. Public Art Installation (Renderings) commissioned for the Queens Botanical Garden by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

William Lamson, Subterra, 2019, Cement, earth, scaffolding, pumps, timers, hose, aluminum trays, 144 × 110 × 360 in. Commissioned by the Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens NY, 2019.

Purvai Rai

26 Aug. – 4 Oct. 2026

Purvai Rai is an artist, researcher, and educator whose practice engages Punjab as an evolving social archive shaped by extraction, labor, memory, and repair. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, textiles, sound, video, and artist books, she investigates how soil, water, food systems, architecture, and governance shape relationships between land, labor, and community.

Through long-term fieldwork, oral histories, archival research, and collaboration, Rai applies an interrogative methodology extending the dialogues on contemporary archaeology where her material knowledge treats Punjab as a living archive with personal narratives intersecting a thinking visuality of broader histories of colonialism, partition, migration, environmental change, and cultural inheritance. Grounded in her maternal family history and ongoing engagement with her ancestral village of Nawan Pind Sardaran, her research spans both Indian and Pakistani Punjab, drawing from family archives, government records, devotional traditions, and community knowledge systems.

Working at the intersection of governance, ecology, and the body, Rai examines agriculture, architecture, and care as interconnected infrastructures through which policy, labor, extraction, entitlement, and intergenerational memory are enacted. Central to her practice is a form of indexical making in which materials, gestures, and collaborative processes function as traces of encounters rather than representations of them.

Collaboration is integral to her work. Through long-term engagement with farmers, artisans, and women from her ancestral village, she develops projects that explore collective memory, stewardship, and intergenerational knowledge, creating spaces where local histories and lived experiences become visible through contemporary artistic forms.

Rai received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art and a B.Des from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Her solo exhibitions include Cartography of the Grounded Sky (Gladwell Projects, New York, 2026), Choreography of the Grid (Rajiv Menon Contemporary, 2026), Gestures of Infinity (James Fuentes Gallery, New York, 2025), Until Harvest (Nunu Fine Art, New York, 2025), and Confluence (Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2021). Recent group exhibitions include presentations at Perrotin, SOAS University of London, Aicon Gallery, Gallery Espace, and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Bikaner House. Her work has also been exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation at CSMVS, Mumbai; and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

Rai has participated in residencies and fellowships including the KinoSaito Residency Program, the Golden Foundation Residency, the Henry Moore Institute Residency, and the Paul Mellon Centre Graduate Summer Program.

Alongside her studio practice, she has taught and lectured at Yale School of Art, CEPT University, and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

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. – 4 Nov. 2026

Born in Tokyo, growing up in France, Tsuyu Bridwell draws on ancestral beliefs and rituals, exploring both the strength and fragility of life while subtly questioning the superstitions that surround them.

Working across a range of media, she incorporates traditional crafts from her cultural heritage—Japan, Korea, and France—to create installations and sculptural works that engage with themes of collective memory and the representation of nature.

She lives and works in Paris, France.

Tsuyu Bridwell, Sentôchô, Hanji (korean mulberry fiber paper), nylon thread, diameter 27.5 in, length 197 in

Tsuyu Bridwell, Réseau, Collaboration work commissioned by Mobilier National with Alençon lacemakers, Alençon lace, cherry wood, acrylic box, 35.5 × 19.5 × 19.5 in

Tsuyu Bridwell, Pagoda XIX, Acrylic cubes, pink quartz, celestine, 4 cu in and 3 cu in