ABOUT SHIFT: A RESIDENCY FOR ARTS WORKERS
Since its inception in 2010, SHIFT residency has been providing peer support, mentoring, studio spaces, and exhibition opportunities for over ninety artists who work in various arts organizations (as curators, educators, administrators, etc.), to advance their creative practices and to support the balance of their careers. SHIFT recognizes the contribution of arts workers to the art community, providing other individuals and the public with opportunities for growth and expansion. The SHIFT residency honors these artists’ commitment with a supportive, enriching, and collaborative environment.
SHIFT hosts a cohort of artists working in a range of media each year, from sound and installation to painting, performance, and social practice. In addition to its role as a support network, SHIFT promotes advocacy for arts workers and seeks to increase equity and representation within the field.
To date, SHIFT has welcomed arts workers as residents from the following institutions: Abrons Art Center, Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, Artists Alliance Inc., Bronx River Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Children’s Museum of Manhattan, CUE Art Foundation, Czech Center New York, Elastic City, Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, Flux Factory, FreeDimensional, Henry Street Settlement, International Center for Photography, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Metropolitan Opera, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), Museum of the City of New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), NURTUREart, Queens Museum, Reanimation Library, Residency Unlimited, Time Out New York, School of Visual Arts, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Triangle Art Association, Vera List Center for Art + Politics at The New School, Whitney Museum, and Wave Hill, among others.
2024 SHIFT Resident Artists
Born in Atlanta, GA in the 1980s, Brooklyn based multi-disciplinary artist Darlene Deloris studied History and African American Studies at the University of Georgia and SUNY Empire State University. She is a self-taught artist using ethnographic research and a variety of mediums, texture, colors, & symbols to create portraits that give voice to the Black woman who is constantly transposing between a state of angst and of regality. In 2014, she began pursuing an art career. In 2018, she moved to New York City where she flourished with the opportunity to instruct art classes. She has orchestrated hundreds of art projects for children between the ages of 2-14, in public and private facilities. Currently she is a teaching artist for Supermoon Community Artspace in Ridgewood, New York. She also teaches adult classes several times a year with Tiny Art Space, also located in Ridgewood, Queens. In 2019, she joined Brooklyn based gallery sk.ArtSpace as the Gallery Assistant and became a founding member of the SK Collective. In 2021, her work was selected by SaveArtSpace to be displayed on a billboard in Brooklyn, NY. Darlene Deloris has had artwork featured in dozens of exhibitions. She participated in the residency program at Ma’s House of Southampton in October 2023 and has been accepted into the Chateau d’Orquevaux Artist In Residency Program for April 2025. Darlene recently completed her first solo exhibition on view at Flecker Gallery in Long Island, NY.
Mari Claudia García (b. Cuba, 1989) is a U.S.-based multidisciplinary artist and educator interested in the intersection between arts and politics. She initiated art studies at San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in Havana, where she attended from 2004 to 2008. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts (2013) and an MA in Formative Processes in Art Education (2018) from the University of the Arts (ISA) in Havana as well. In 2023, she completed her MFA in Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. Mari Claudia’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in Cuba, the United States, Germany, Belgium, France, the UK, and Denmark. She is currently an artist-in-residence at SHIFT, hosted by The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York. She was also a resident at La Isla Residencia in Mexico (2017) and the online program Amalgama-Barcú Residency (2022). The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Cisneros-Fontanals Foundation in Miami have collected her work. Furthermore, her artistic journey is distinguished by various recognitions, with the Society of Presidential Fellows awarded by RISD being among the most recent.
Sonja John is a queer, first generation, Bronx-based artist, educator, and curator. John's interdisciplinary practice explores cultural, botanical, and material hybridity through paintings, textiles, printmaking, and site-responsive installations that reference plant forms and vernacular architecture across equatorial zones. These motifs investigate diasporic longing and nostalgic fictions of the Caribbean built from history, memory, and family lore. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. Her contributions to museum education have been featured at the RISD Museum and Hyperallergic. John has performed at Jazz At Lincoln Center and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her visual art has been featured on I Like Your Work Podcast, n+1 magazine, Seeing Color Podcast with Zhiwan Cheung and Them. John was awarded the ChaNorth Artist Residency Young Artist Fellowship Award in 2022, and received the General Fellowship residency award for The Studios at MASS MoCA in 2023.
Sira Marissa Lewis, a versatile artist, seamlessly blends music and visual art, with her creative expressions deeply rooted in her identity as a New York native with Black American and West Indian roots. Beginning her artistic journey with video creation, Lewis has passionately evolved to integrate various artistic mediums, directing music videos and short films, employing her spray-painting expertise for set design, and scoring both cinematic and personal projects. Her unique approach spans multiple artistic disciplines, driven by the primary objective of leaving an enduring mark on both the music and visual arts worlds. Recognized by notable platforms such as GIRLSINFILM, Teen Vogue, and GROWN MAG, Lewis' impactful contributions extend to completing an artist residency with MACRO, showcasing her talent in collage and video work. Selected for Birthright Africa's 2022 cohort led by artist Jidenna, she was celebrated for her artistic merit, entrepreneurial spirit, and connection to the diasporic legacy of innovation rooted in the continent. She is presently one of the chosen artists participating in the Bulleit Bourbon and Hypebeast “Pioneer Project,” dedicated to mentoring emerging artists. She’s also a SHIFT artist-in-residence, hosted by EFA Project Space in New York. Demonstrating dedication to her community, Lewis currently serves in Education Programming at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, making a positive impact on Harlem and beyond.
Carson Parish is an arts administrator, educator, and filmmaker based in New York. His work employs 16mm film to tell stories about queer history, particularly kink communities and the impact of the AIDS epidemic in alternative spaces. His films have been shown at Newfest LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Fest, Chicago Underground Film Fest, Xposed Queer Film Fest in Berlin, and Anthology Film Archives, among others. In his day job, he produces film exhibitions for The Museum of Modern Art and teaches experimental film and video at the School of Visual Arts. His curated and co-curated exhibitions include "Now We Think as We Fuck": Queer Liberation to Activism, The Experimental Narratives of Warren Sonbert, Carte Blanche: Samuel R. Delany, and full retrospectives of Shirley and Wendy Clarke and the Canyon Cinema archive.
Daniel Samaniego is an artist and cultural worker based in Queens, New York. Combining fantastic, grotesque, and pop imagery, his labor-intensive graphite drawings and theatrically scaled drawing installations explore the interplay between queer identity, desire, and monstrosity. Recent exhibitions include Lined and Torn: Paper Works from The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection in Las Vegas (2023) and I’ll Be Your Mirror: Reflections on the Contemporary Queer presented by Mighty Real Queer Detroit (2024). He received a BFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is currently an artist in residence at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space.
2024 SHIFT Curatorial Mentorship
The SHIFT Curatorial Mentorship is a new program established by EFA Project Space and launched in January 2023. Our 2024 SHIFT Curatorial Mentee is Annabelle Oates.
The main purpose of the Mentorship is to prepare an emerging curator to the practicalities of working alongside professional artists and supporting them through research, administration, and production towards the final product and exhibition space. The program begins with welcoming the artists into their shared studio at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and ends with the mentee as Assistant Curator of the SHIFT culminating exhibition at EFA Project Space. The mentee works closely with the exhibition curator throughout the mentorship to establish a thesis for the exhibition, and experience firsthand working collaboratively in a professional non-profit setting.
Annabelle Oates is an Art Historian and aspiring curator from Charlotte, North Carolina. She attended Skidmore College for her undergraduate studies, where she majored in Art History. She also pursued studio art, with a focus in fibers, oil painting, and color theory, as well as contributed to the collegiate field hockey team as a four year varsity athlete. She currently resides in New York City and is a second year Master’s student in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies program at Parsons. While pursuing her Master’s degree, she has focused on 18th Century French Interiors as well as 20th Century American design and fashion. By grappling with issues of cross-cultural exchange, race, class, and gender, her scholarship interrogates the way objects and art serve as active agents in constructing and pushing forth meaning. She has completed scholarship on both spaces and places of the French elite, as well as on American material culture, such as fashion and advertisements in the post-war United States. Additionally, she serves as a teaching assistant for the History of Fashion to undergraduate students at Parsons, as well as coaches field hockey at Ethical Culture Fieldston School.