Textile Arts Center's Artist in Residence (TAC AIR) combines studio access with a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum, regular critical dialogue and mentorship, providing residents an opportunity to learn and explore the textile medium, and an alternative to traditional higher education programs.
The residency culminates in a group exhibition produced and hosted by TAC. Since 2010, TAC AIR has graduated over eighty artists and designers whose work continues to further textile art within the fashion, fine arts, design and art education fields.
TAC AIR Cycle 15 will run from October 2023 to June 2024, artists will exhibit in September, 2024.
Apply now. We are accepting applications until March 31.
Cycle 15 residents are selected through a two-stage, competitive selection process judged by TAC staff and professionals with expertise, knowledge, and long-standing work in different fields of textile arts.
George Del Barrio (he/him): Born 1976 in New York City and raised with the global immigrant community of Queens, Del Barrio is the Founding Creative Director × Executive Producer of The Vanderbilt Republic (2008) & MIDHEAVEN Network + Studio (2020), as well as Creative Director × Executive Producer at Universe City NYC(2021). As a 1st-generation American and all-media Creative/Technical Director deeply versed in photographic physics, immersive curatorial design, and all phases of production, Del Barrio's practice is concentrated on archetype expansion. Every site response is architected by a resolute humanism; every invention, design, & transformation is in search of duende. Meaning is not a discovery, it is a creation. Clients include The Keith Haring Foundation, Rutgers University, Textile Arts Center, MADERA, On The Revel, BARE Opera, Cardistry-Con & the dawning sunlight of an awakened mind.
Isa Rodrigues is an artist and educator currently based in Brooklyn, New York and Lagos, Portugal.
She works mostly with weaving and dyeing, inspired by natural phenomenons, handmade textile processes, and sustainable materials. She is also interested in art education as a means to create community and preserve material culture. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Ace Hotel Brooklyn, Heirloom Brooklyn and the Textile Arts Center. v
Isa is a founding team of the Textile Arts Center (TAC), where she has worked as Co-Executive Director, and founded the project Sewing Seeds, activating natural dye gardens in empty lots and community gardens in Brooklyn. She also runs a textile fabrication business, 505 Textiles, through which she has created work for clients such as Altuzarra, Gabriela Hearst, Ace Hotel, M.Patmos, Thompson Street Studio, amongst others. She teaches textile materiality, weaving, natural dyeing and other surface design techniques at TAC, Ox-Bow, Rhode Island School of Art, Pratt Institute, and other venues.
Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. Their work outputs woven forms, moving images, and relational actions that look toward a future-past horizon where one can exalt queer grace. They have exhibited internationally including the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions (San Francisco, CA); Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects (Long Island City, NY); Document (Chicago, IL); the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA); the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Collections include the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal, Canada) and the Textile Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL). In tandem with studio production Morabito pursues a practice-led scholarship that positions weaving as a critical platform of cultural production. Their writing has been published in Art China, The Textile Reader 2 (China Academy of Art), The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, Textile: Cloth and Culture, and Bloomsbury’s forthcoming Encyclopedia of World Textiles. They are the editor of Weaving Beyond the Binary, a special issue of the international peer reviewed journal, Textile: Cloth and Culture. Morabito serves as Director-at-Large for the American Tapestry Alliance and Poly-Chair for the Queer and Trans Caucus for Art. They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morabito is Assistant Professor and Head of Textiles at the School of Art at Kent State University. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery (Los Angeles, CA).
Kelly Valletta is an artist, art educator and one of the founding team members of TAC. She attended Pratt Institute where she received her Masters in Art Education. She believes that the arts can play a vital role in community engagement, and thoroughly enjoys sharing her broad knowledge of art with people of all ages.
Linda Sok is a Cambodian-Australian sculptural installation artist and TAC AIR 13 Alum. Linda has exhibited internationally in institutions such as Center for Craft (North Carolina), Textile Arts Center (New York), Multicultural Arts Center (Massachusetts), Firstdraft Gallery (Sydney), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Artspace (Sydney), Casula Powerhouse Art Center (Sydney), and the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane).
She has been shortlisted for major prizes such as the Create NSW Visual Arts Fellowship, Emerging, Ravenswood Art Prize, Footscray Art Prize, and was awarded the American Australian Association Arts Grants Fund in 2022. She has participated in residencies at the
NARS Foundation, Hambidge Arts Center, Boston Center for the Arts, Cementa Arts Festival, and Vermont Studio Center.
Linda is currently a mentee at the New York Foundation of the Arts Immigrant Artist Program.
Romina Chuls (1991, Lima) is a researcher and multidisciplinary artist. She holds an M.A in Arts Politics from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a Bachelor in Fine Arts, with a major in painting, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her work focuses on postcolonial gender issues in Peru and Latin America, topics related to androcentric memory, gender violence, and sexual and reproductive practices. In 2021 she was granted the AAUW International Fellowship to support her studies at NYU and her research on anti-colonial pregnancy interruption practices.
Her solo shows include Clandestinas (2020), project that portrayed the emotional stage of being pregnant with an unwanted being in a context where abortion is criminalized, at Galería Forum, Lima; and Tierra Incógnita (2017), project that maps the relationships and stories of the women in her family, at Fundación Euroidiomas, Lima. Her work has been shown in spaces such as Kunstraum (NYC, USA), at Palácio e Centro e Centro Cultural Vila Flor (Guimarães, Portugal), at Museo de Sitio Julio C. Tello (Paracas, Peru), and Centro Cultural San Marcos (Lima, Perú).
Romina has led embroidery workshops as part of her project Qué rico menstruo in the cities of Lima, Oaxaca and New York.