The Philadelphia Residency
The Philadelphia Residency is a six-month career-building and creation module established by Twelve Gates Arts (12G) to provide early-career artists the physical and communal space, resources, and industry knowledge to plant roots and flourish in Philadelphia. The pilot residency convenes a cohort of two promising Philadelphia-based artists in a collaborative environment for creation, skill building and exchange. In addition to providing studio space, living stipends, and exhibition opportunities, TPR hinges on resident collaboration and discourse. To this end, the residency offers a robust season of participatory exposure programming that not only empowers residents to seek out the skill sets and knowledge they desire, but also provides direct access to Philadelphia’s makers, writers, creators, and producers. Ultimately, TPR is an opportunity to create, culminating in a final group exhibition.
Mission Statement
The Philadelphia Residency engages early-career artists in the city’s arts ecosystem and nurtures an artistic practice that is collaborative, dynamic, and rooted in Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Residency: Team
Didier William is originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He earned an BFA in painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, The Museum at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Carnegie Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Figge Museum Art Museum. He is represented by James Fuentes Gallery in New York and M+B Gallery in Los Angeles. William was an artist-in-residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Brooklyn, NY, a 2018 recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2020 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants and a 2021 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. He has taught at several institutions including Yale School of Art, Vassar College, Columbia University, UPenn, and SUNY Purchase. He is currently Assistant Professor of Expanded Print at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Coady Brown (b. 1990) is a painter from Baltimore, MD. She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2012 and her MFA from Yale University in 2016. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally with Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Taymour Grahne, London, England; Richard Heller, Santa Monica, CA; and Francois Ghebaly, New York, NY; among others. She is the recipient of several fellowships and residencies including The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; Fountainhead, Miami, FL; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; and the Yale/Norfolk School of Art, Norfolk, CT. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Variable West, Juxtapoz, and New American Painting. Brown’s works are in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, the Columbus Museum of Art, OH, and the X Museum, Beijing, China. Coady Brown lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Mark Thomas Gibson's (b. 1980, Miami, FL) personal lens on American culture stems from his multipartite viewpoint as an artist, a professor, and an American history buff. These myriad and often colliding perspectives fuel his exploration of contemporary culture through the language of painting and drawing, revealing a vision of America where every viewer is implicated as a potential character within the story. In 2016, Gibson co-curated the traveling exhibition Black Pulp! with William Villalongo at 32 Edgewood Gallery, Yale School of Art. The show examined evolving perspectives of Black identity in American culture and history from 1912 to 2016 through printed media and artworks. Gibson released his first book, Some Monsters Loom Large in 2016 with funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Gibson’s second book Early Retirement was released in 2017 with Edition Patrick Frey in Zurich and was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2021, Gibson was awarded residencies at Yaddo and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency as well as a Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Philadelphia, PA. And a Hodder Fellowship from the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. In 2022, Gibson was awarded A Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY and in February 2023 his most recent solo exhibition Whirlygig! will open at Sikkema & Jenkins Co. Mark Thomas Gibson is represented by M+B, (Los Angeles, CA) and Loyal, (Stockholm, Sweden). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase is an interdisciplinary artist who works in painting, video, sound, and sculpture to depict queer Black love and community. Rendered through layers of bright, visceral paint, make-up and glitter, Chase’s figures are suspended in various forms of articulation amidst the backdrop of urban and domestic spaces. These dynamic compositions blend emotional and physical, internal and external states of being to challenge and subvert canonical misrepresentations and exclusion of the Black body.
Artists in Residency:
Mia Fabrizio was born and raised in the Greater Philadelphia Area. She received her B.F.A from Tyler School of Art in 2002 and her M.Ed. from Arcadia University in 2006. She taught art in K-12 classrooms for a dozen years before graduating with her M.F.A. from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2020. Fabrizio explores identity and social constructs through her layered portraits, mixed media collages, and sculptures. She received Montague Travel Research Grant Awards in 2018 and 2019 and the Museum Council Sculpture Prize in 2020. She served as Sculpture faculty at SMFA at Tufts University and at Maine College of Art & Design. Fabrizio currently lives and works in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Dara Haskins (b. 1992 Baltimore, MD) works primarily in figurative oil and mixed media paintings. She is currently working on a series of large and small figure paintings called TASTE. It explores body language, color, and its connection to various environments. She previously created a series called “Havana time” inspired by her travels to Cuba. It features large and small-scale paintings of objects and people in domestic and natural environments that reflect the beauty of connection within the African Diaspora. Her work has been seen in Philadelphia at Commonweal Gallery, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Gross McCleaf Gallery, Rush Arts Philadelphia, and at Gaa Gallery in Cologne, Germany. Haskins is an InLiquid Wind Fellow (2022-2023) and is a recipient of the Mural Arts Fellowship for Black Artists (2021). She received her BFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2019 and lives and works in Philadelphia.
Shwarga Bhattacharjee is an artist from Bangladesh, currently based in North Philadelphia, PA. He has shown his work in Twelve Gates Arts, CFEVA, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Vox Populi, Fleisher art memorial, Dhaka Art Summit and other reputed venues. He is the recipient of Peter Benoliel Fellow at Center For Emerging Visual Artists, and Michelle Angela Ortiz Fellow at Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia. He has participated in residencies at Britto Student Residency, Jentel Artist Residency and Chautauqua Institution School of Art. In 2021, he participated in the Spring Curatorial Residency program at the New York Artists Equity Association in New York City. He also worked as a children’s book illustrator with Room to Read. He received an MFA in drawing and painting from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, and a BFA in drawing and painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka.