New York, NY…The West Harlem Art Fund is proud to announce the first round of artists participating in their Visual Muze Storytelling and Residency Program. According to Savona Bailey-McClain, Executive Director of the West Harlem Art Fund, “We are so delighted to have an opera composer developing work, as well as visual artists, a playwright and filmmaker. Our artists come from different parts of the country with varied backgrounds that will make their experience on Governors Island at our seasonal location, even more special”.

July Artists

Kat Agudo (she/they) is a Filipinx playwright, screenwriter, poet, graphic artist, and wedding singer from Austin, TX. Four of their productions all been produced by The University of Texas at Austin during the pursuit of her undergraduate degree. They graduated from The Actors Studio Drama School MFA Program in NYC this past Spring. Her awards include Semi-Finalist status for Theatre Mu Tang Clan, The Women’s Playwright Center at Speranza, and Emerson Stage NewFest. They also received a full scholarship for a Centrum Artist Residency in Washington. Recent publications include Pile Press, Lucky Jefferson, and Poet’s Choice. They seek to translate poetic narratives about mental health, Asian-American experiences, LGBTQ representation, and social media culture to the stage by confronting trauma with comedy.  They thank their family and friends for their support.

Eva Redamonti is an artist who depicts drawings that blend realism with fantasy, through movement and detail. She works in multiple media forms like ink on paper, digital, gouache, and acrylic. Through her drawings, Eva strives to convey the emotion and narrative around various topics like empowerment, mental illness, superstition, and futurism. Music has a great influence on her work; she’s been playing music since she was ten and began writing her own music later on in her career. Born and raised in Connecticut, Eva went on to pursue music at Berklee College of Music in 2013. She lives and works as both an artist and musician in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Jane Wong is a composer who grew up in Hong Kong where she attended training in Cantonese Opera.  As a ballet pianist, she has played for many different groups, from toddlers and professional dancers.  She discovers through her experience that what really captures people is their memories.  After her studies at the Boston Conservatory, Jane had also lived in Asia, North America and Europe, playing and teaching music to populations of diverse resources.  Community engagement is an important theme in her composition.   Outside of the studio, Jane enjoys working with voices that are often ignored by society. Her recent project is partnering with Carnegie Hall's Lullaby Project where she facilitates single moms in prison in writing lullabies for their babies.

Tanika I. Williams (b. 1981, St. Andrew, Jamaica; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women’s use of movement, mothering and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdoms of ecology, spirituality and liberation. Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School and MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. Her films have been screened at festivals and broadcast on American television. Williams has been awarded residencies at New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, Cow House Studios, MORE Arts, and BRIC. Additionally, she has been featured on 99.5 WBAI; and in Art in Odd Places; Creative Time; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC; Let Us Eat Local, Just Food; and Performa.

After receiving his MFA from Carnegie Mellon in 2011, James Robert Southard has worked in the art world through invitations to international exhibitions such as the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Hel’Pitts’Sinki’Burgh in Finland, Supermarket in Stockholm, Camaguey Cuba’s 5th International Video Art Fest and participation in the Internet Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in Venice Italy. In 2012, James started a collaborative photography and video series with the collaboration of the city of Seoul, Korea at Seoul Art Space Geumcheon. Soon after he took his project to Maine where he was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, then later to MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Yaddo Retreat in New York, Jentel in Wyoming, Vermont Studio Center and to the MASS MoCA residency in North Adams, MA. His digital construction process allows for public interactions and collaborations to bleed from the conception stage of a project into the aesthetics and compositions of each frame. While continuing this process in new communities, He has also returned to academia by teaching photography at the University of Kentucky.

West Harlem Art Fund is a proud member of the Artist Communities Alliance is an umbrella organization that supports the people who work in the artist residency field and artist-centered organizations and provides training and networking opportunities; leverages funding and promotes evaluation, reflection, transparency and the development of equitable practices.