(NEW YORK, NY) -- Following a year of resilience, growth, and a joyful celebration of its 20-year history, Hi-ARTS has announced its Fall 2021 artist residency recipients. Supporting artists who are in a pivotal phase of creating new work, CRITICAL BREAKS provides an intensive development process and a public offering. Joining Hi-ARTS as CRITICAL BREAKS Artists in Residence are Alexander Lambie, Tanika I. Williams, and collaborative duo Kirya Traber and Sissi Liu. This fall’s SKY LAB Artists in Residence are dance-theater collective Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances) and LINDALA.
SKY LAB supports socially engaged artists who center community in the development of their work, including practitioners who create outside of the traditional studio or theater. Core to Hi-ARTS’ mission—and reflected in this cohort—is to foster artists who engage Hip-Hop and urban aesthetics, especially Black artists and artists of color, and to amplify their work within and beyond the organization’s home in East Harlem, New York City. This comes at a time when the performing arts sector is reopening after a long year of shutdowns and business closings. While Hi-ARTS currently remains closed to the public, we are excited to enter into this new chapter with audiences and artists.
Alexander Lambie is a member of Middle Voice Theater Company and an alumnus of Atlantic Acting School. Working primarily in performance and theater Alexander will continue the development of a one-person show performed through his drag persona Gina Cakestand in Wittiness! African-Jamaican writer, video, and performance artist Tanika I. Williams investigates Black women’s use of movement, mothering, and medicine. Tanika holds an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary and plans to continue the development of PRESSING, a performance centering on an archival recorded interview between a matriarch and her great-granddaughter in order to illustrate, and disrupt, the generational cycle of family separation and its residual trauma. Nationally awarded writer, performer, and cultural worker Kirya Traber and award-winning musical theatre specialist and multimedia artist Sissi Liu will bring us If This Be Sin, a musical about the queer Harlem Renaissance entertainer, Gladys Bentley.
New York-based dance-theater collective SLMDances will work in collaboration with music producer Ebonie Smith, visual artist Shani Peters, and quilter Dr. Kim F. Hall to create an on-site multi-disciplinary exhibition entitled: What does PURPLE sound like? In partnership with Changing the Narrative, PURPLE’s community engagements facilitate the collection of oral histories and making those stories visible with a focus on public housing communities in New York City. Born of the House of Labaija, multidisciplinary performer, recording artist, writer, teacher, curator, host and model, LINDALA will lead new members of the House/ballroom community into weeks of discovery in Ballroom movement, culture, history, and legacy. With a special focus on welcoming and centering the voices of Black Trans artists and femmes, she will help begin to shape a production that speaks to the issues in the lives of those who participate.
This announcement follows a year of expansion for the organization. This summer, Hi-ARTS is relocating to a larger space within their current home at El Barrio’s Artspace PS109 in East Harlem. This will allow for increased programming potential for both artists and partners as well as make room for a quickly expanding staff.
Hi-ARTS is a leading cultural hub within the urban arts movement. Through artistic development residencies, vibrant multidisciplinary creative programming, and civic engagement opportunities, Hi-ARTS empowers artists to develop bold new work while creating a positive, lasting impact on the community. For over twenty years, Hi-ARTS has provided unique development opportunities to artists from historically marginalized groups, primarily people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ artists, always placing issues of equity and social justice at the forefront. To date, Hi-ARTS has supported works by over 1000 emerging and acclaimed artists, including boundary-pushing early-career artists like Zoey Martinson and The Illustrious Blacks, award-winning theatrical mainstays like Dominique Morisseau and Kristoffer Diaz, and visionaries such as Radha Blank, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Ebony Golden, and Nona Hendryx.
Hi-ARTS is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; National Endowment for the Humanities; New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with Council Member Diana Ayala and the City Council; and NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Leadership support is provided by the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, Ford Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and David Rockefeller Fund. Additional support comes from the Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Humanities New York, and Lucille Lortel Foundation.
