2013/14 SHIFT RESIDENTS

Sidd Joag is the current director of freeDimensional which is kinda like RU, but on a social justice side, helping persecuted artists in worldwide areas of distress.. through a network whether informal or structural. He has his own practice and is constantly juggling. Sidd comes from backgrounds in the visual arts and social sciences, having spent several years prior to joining fD, working with community arts projects in New York, India, China and co-founding an artist residency/exchange program in Southwestern China, focused on ethnic minority cultural preservation in the China-Burma borderlands. Sidd has an MSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science with concentrations in Crime, Control and Globalisation, Cultural Theory and New Media and a B.A. in Sociology from New York University. His paintings, installations and experimental films have been seen in the United States, Canada, India, the Philippines, China and Northern Ireland. He is a co-founder of Zero Capital Arts, which supports low-cost socially and politically engaged creative projects and exhibitions.

Karen Ostrom is a Canadian born Brooklyn based artist working in photography, installation, video and most recently, animation. She is the recipient of MacDowell Colony Artist Fellowships, Canada Council for the Arts Grants, the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography from the Canada Council, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in museums, galleries and festivals throughout North America and Europe, including the Liverpool Biennial and Bring to Light; Nuit Blanche on the Brooklyn waterfront. Patent Pending, her most ambitious project to date and recent collaboration with the composer’s collective Spectrum Music, was performed as part of the CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto.

Hatuey Ramos-Fermín is a professional-amateur artist, educator and curator based in The Bronx, NY. Hatuey has studied at San Juan Art League, received his B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico and has an MFA from St. Joost Art and Design Academy, Breda, Netherlands. As an artist he uses a combination of documentary and fine arts practices to investigate issues related to urban space. He is part of meta local collaborative. As an educator he has worked with community-based programs such as Communications Project of the Puerto Rico Public Broadcast Corporation, The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Teen Council, Center for Urban Pedagogy (C.U.P.) among other institutions and organizations. As a curator he has developed projects and exhibitions in traditional as well as non-traditional art venues including a security guard training school, community centers and churches, as well as restaurants and laundromats. His work has been reviewed and/or published in the New York Times, Artforum, Public Art Review, Edutopia, DNAinfo, New York Daily News, among other publications. His work has been exhibited nationally as well as internationally. Hatuey loves riding his bicycle everyday.

Ellen Uzane Schneiderman grew up in Los Angeles and holds a BA cum laude in Visual Art and Biology from Brown University. Her mixed media paintings strip away layers of the surface to reveal sensuous, rigid, and mysterious spaces. Part of her education as a painter took place at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Pont Aven School of Art. Her artwork has recently been shown at Jeffrey Leder Gallery, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Dutch Kills Gallery, and the Art Gallery at University of Maryland. In addition to her studio practice, Ellen oversees special events and individual giving at Henry Street Settlement, a social service and arts organization on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Todd Shalom works with text, sound and image to re-contextualize the body in space using vocabulary of the everyday. He is the founder and director of Elastic City. In this role, Todd leads his own walks, collaborates with artists to lead joint walks, and works with artists in a variety of disciplines to adapt their expertise to the participatory walk format. He often collaborates with performance artist/director Niegel Smith. Together, they conceive and stage interactive performances in public and private environments. Todd’s work has been presented by organizations such as Abrons Art Center, Creative Time, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, The New Museum, P.S.122 and Printed Matter. He is a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts and also holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston.

Carolyn Sickles is an artist with a material foundation in fiber arts methods, repurposed found objects, and altered terrain. She was born in Maryland, raised in South Florida, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Sickles is currently the Director of StudioLab at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, overseeing audience engagement experiences, artist teaching residencies, and public programming. She has recently facilitated several programs for the New Museum, Dia Art Foundation, and e-flux; guest lectured for Columbia University, Parsons The New School for Design, and the Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development at New York University; collected/processed exhibition evaluation for Museum of Modern Art. Previous institutions include the Norton Museum of Art and Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art.

Rachel Steinberg is an artist, curator, and organizer living in Brooklyn. She is interested in video art, collaborative practices, as well as facilitating projects by emerging artists and curators. She graduated in 2008 with a BFA from Pratt Institute. From 2009-2011, she was a member of the video art collective BFFAEAETDDUP along with Giana Gambino. Steinberg is the organizer and curator of the semi-annual video exhibition Videorover at NURTUREart Gallery, where she is also the Assistant Director. Since early 2012, she is has been an active member and co-organizer of Trade School New York. She also works as the Assistant Registrar at Museum of Arts and Design.