The Greene Space’s Artist-in-Residence program hands the mic to ambitious artists, curators and collectives in the New York metro area who are eager to connect with live audiences, creating something new together in real time.
See a list of our past Artists-in-Residence below and view their series archives.
Leadership support for The Greene Space’s Artist-in-Residence program is provided by the Jerome L. Greene Foundation. Additional support is provided in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.
The Civilians
Credit: Photo by Janice Yi
The Civilians, is a theater company dedicated to ambitious and exuberant new theater that creatively interrogates our lived experience; questions and tests the stories that shape our world; and awakens new thinking and perceptions. Its signature work is “investigative theater”—projects created through field research, community collaborations, and other methods of in-depth inquiry.
Their performances showcase improvised scenes and music using AI-generated content, a theatrical event using archival WNYC recordings with experimental filmmakers and radical poets, and a one-of-a-kind performance bringing real stories of failure and flops to life through hilarious songs.
Piehole's Christmas Mountain
Credit: Photo provided by artist
Winter 2022
Piehole’s Christmas Mountain is an interactive holiday story that rolls out in an “advent calendar” window display featuring animatronics, embedded videos, and original music on a handcrafted diorama.
Michael Mwenso
Credit: Photo provided by Artist
Winter 2022
Bandleader and singer Michael Mwenso discusses Black music with Jon Batiste, examines the “nutritional value” of the music we consume, talks with legendary blues musician Bobby Rush, and performs with his troupe of global artists immigrating from each corner of the globe.
Toni Thai Sterrett
Credit: Photo provided by Artist
Fall 2022
Founder Toni Thai Sterrett and her NFT project, Bad Grrls Creative Club, explore, discuss, and showcase what it’s like to be a creative in this new world where the creator is queen!
Staceyann Chin
Credit: Photo provided by Artist
Summer 2022
Staceyann Chin and friends present an interrogation of Kindred and Tribe and Belonging. Where is home? Will it always be the same place? When you leave, can you ever return? When it changes, how does it affect who you are, what you eat, who you call family?
The poet, actor, and performing artist is the author of the new poetry collection Crossfire: A Litany For Survival, the critically acclaimed memoir The Other Side of Paradise, cowriter and original performer in the Tony Award–winning Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and author of the one-woman shows Hands Afire, Unspeakable Things, Border/Clash, and MotherStruck. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes, and her poetry been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post. She proudly identifies as Caribbean, Black, Asian, lesbian, a woman, and a resident of New York City, as well as a Jamaican national.
Eunbi Kim
Credit: Photo provided by Artist
Spring 2022
Pianist and host Eunbi Kim presents It Feels Like, an interactive collage of personal inquiry, taking the audience on a truly creative adventure — the vivid journey of coming into one’s own. Over four evenings, Kim and friends — cutting-edge musicians, writers, artists and more — share great music, delicious food, deep conversation, some good jokes and even better dance moves.
Angélica Negrón
Credit: Photo by Quique Cabanillas
El Living Room is a 4-part offbeat variety show imagined and orchestrated by Puerto Rican composer & performer Angélica Negrón and directed by Puerto Rican undisciplined artist Macha Colón. It’s a playful multimedia exploration of sound and story, of personal history and belonging. The show is a hybrid of funhouse, variety, Latin American morning TV, and late-night talk shows baptized in the waters of magical realism—the studio/set becomes a truly immersive musical landscape, blending the warmth and intimacy of your best friend’s living room with a whimsical, surrealist playground open for experimentation. Each week, “El Living Room” is activated by composers, performers, sound artists, comedians, and storytellers exchanging ideas with Angélica, delving into subjects both ordinary and complex, through the lens of humor and familiarity.
Winter 2021
Hailed by The New York Times as “invariably energetic and finely burnished… playing with earthy vigor,” the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet graced our stage in Winter 2021 with rare performances of work by five historically important Black composers, bringing to light these beautifully-crafted and — in some cases — heretofore never-recorded works. View series archive.
Winter/Spring 2021
Joe Biden made a campaign promise to end for-profit detention, and immediately after his election, two of the country’s largest private prison companies saw their stock prices collapse. Now the President has made good by signing an executive order, but changing the $80 billion business of mass incarceration will take so much more.
Over four thousand corporations are now invested in the imprisonment of 2.1 million people and the surveillance of another 4.4 million who are on probation or parole. They’re not always obvious; they include architects who design 6-by-8-foot cells for solitary confinement where people spend 23 hours a day, manufacturers that produce the shackles incarcerated mothers wear while giving birth, and consultants who run mock riots to train officers in combat.
In collaboration with Worth Rises and based on its comprehensive report, The Prison Industry: How it Started, How it Works, How it Harms, we’re gathering advocates, journalists, attorneys, and academics, leading with directly-impacted people, to talk about every aspect of the business of punishment, sector-by-sector, accounting for its myriad consequences today and exploring visions for a very different future. View series archive.
Credit: Photo by The Greene Space
Summer 2020
Visual artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh‘s collage portraits of Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Nina POP and Atatiana Jefferson appeared on The Greene Space’s facade at the corner of Charlton and Varick Streets in the summer of 2020. See photos and artist’s statement here.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Imara Jones
Ongoing 2020
Lives at Stake is a series of frank conversations by and for trans people about the issues affecting their communities, hosted by Emmy and Peabody Award winner Imara Jones, The Greene Space’s first-ever Journalist-in-Residence. Building off Jones’ storytelling project TransLash, these online gatherings will also highlight the resilience, creativity and artistry that are critical ingredients to trans life, showcasing trans creatives performing their craft. View series archive.
Credit: Photo by Shervin Lainez
Spring 2020
Pianist Jeremy Denk curated and performed in a series of events exploring J.S. Bach’s life and his most iconic work as artist-in-residence at The Greene Space.
A winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk drew audiences into the technical, musicological, cultural and philosophical elements involved in his own approach to this deeply personal work. He looked at how these timeless themes and shared aspects of the human experience can help to unite us in these divided times. View series archive.
Credit: Photo courtesy of the artist
Fall/Winter 2019
Singer-songwriter Madison McFerrin joined us to present The Sissieretta Series, inspired by 19th century soprano Sissieretta Jones and her innovative productions that showcased her unique vocals and her friends’ talents. McFerrin convened local performers, artisans, creatives and vendors, specifically highlighting women of color. Each show was preceded by a happy hour featuring live DJ sets and artisanal crafts for sale. View series archive.
”That I am a mother. I want people to see that I am a mother.” – Tatiane
Credit: Photo by June Canedo
Spring 2019
Artist and curator June Canedo — whose photography of Roma star Yalitza Aparicio appeared in Vogue’s recent November issue — lead a conversation about authentic collaboration in art-making: artists, curators and subjects engaging as equal partners, with collective input on direction, process and intention. Her photography was also on display in The Greene Space. No series archive available.
Credit: Photo by Ali Smith
Spring 2019
Writer and theater critic Hilton Als explored the ways poets and poetry reflect contemporary life, beginning his series in April 2019. Als put poets at the center of the conversation as it concerns America, its goals, aspirations, defeats and realities. Guests included Natalie Diaz, Michael Dickman, Michael R. Jackson, Saskia Hamilton and more. View series archive.
Credit: Photo courtesy of the artist
Spring 2019
For four months beginning April 2019, six-time Grammy Award Winner Arturo O’Farrill held forth from his pianistic pulpit with the mission to be transcultural and genre-fluid and to embrace all persuasions of musical deviancy and fun. The Greene Space transformed into an arena for the new and the bold – for experiments in jazz, afrobeat, Latin fusion and those slippery compositions that escape our efforts to apply labels. View series archive.
Credit: Photo courtesy of the artist
Spring 2017
Could our genes affect our romantic choices? Does love inhabit a particular region of the brain? If this song makes us too sad to drive straight, why are we playing it on repeat?
Rapper and essayist Dessa hosted her four-event series in The Greene Space in May 2017 – a collision of art, music and scientific research on love, sex and human adventures in pair-bonding. View series archive.
