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 100 artists and designers whose work continues to further textile art within the fashion, fine arts, design and art education fields.
TAC AIR Cycle 16 will run from October 2024 to June 2025, artists will exhibit in September, 2025.
Apply now. We are accepting applications until March 17.
Cycle 16 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.
Read more about the AIR 16 Jury below.
Sarah Zapata is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She has held solo exhibitions at the ASU Art Museum, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Museo MATE, amongst many others. Her work is held in many private and public collections including the Museum of Arts and Design, Museo de Arte de Lima, and the Stedelijk Museum. She was a recipient of the 2023 Artist Awards from the Harpo Foundation.
Rhonda Khalifeh is a Syrian-American interdisciplinary artist based in upstate New York. She received her MFA from the fiber department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2017 and has been an artist in residence at SVA Bio Art Lab, Textile Arts Center, and Center for Book Arts. Khalifeh has exhibited her work across the country and is included in the collections of the Met Museum, New York Public Library, and Stevenson Library at Bard College. She published Project Z (2018) and Project Z Book II (2022) with Open Projects Press.
Transdisciplinary weaver John Paul Morabito engages queerness, ethnicity, and the sacred through the medium of tapestry reimagined in the digital age. They approach weaving as an ontological practice through which blasphemy, devotion, the incarnational spirit of Catholicism, the decadence of drag, and the impossibility of queer grace are bound as resonant sensibilities within their opulent tapestries. Morabito has exhibited at international venues including Patricia Sweetow Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem, NC); 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). Their work is represented in public and private collections including 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). 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 Surface Design Journal. Morabito is a 2024 United States Artists Fellow. 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 Kent State University School of Art. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
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.
Born 1976 in New York City and raised with the global immigrant community of Queens, George Del Barrio is the Founding Creative Director × Executive Producer of The Vanderbilt Republic (est. 2008) & MIDHEAVEN Network + Studio (est. 2020), as well as Creative Director × Executive Producer at Universe City NYC (2021-present), Space for Arts (2023-present) & j. bouey Dance Projects (2023-present).
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, NYC Department of Education, The Association of International Photography Art Dealers, MADERA, On The Revel, PALISSIMO, Textile Arts Center & the dawning sunlight of an awakened mind.
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.
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. She also holds a Bachelor's in Fine Arts, with a major in painting, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. 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.