2024 RESIDENTS
Jonah Bokaer
Hudson, New York, USA
Story Machine
Bokaer, a choreographer and visual artist who worked directly with Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and their legacy organizations multiply and in-depth, has crafted a proposal for the Rauschenberg Foundation Archives Research Residency to explore all available material on STORY (1963), focusing on Rauschenberg's scenography, written ephemera, documentation, and kinescope.
Jonah Bokaer has cultivated a new form of choreography merged with visual art and design. Tunisian and American, he has deeply interwoven an international career as an exhibiting museum artist with a touring multi-ethnic dance company and a nonprofit practice that has succeeded in delivering four artspaces for younger artists.
Christian de Mouilpied Sancto
Montreal, Canada
Toward Nonhuman Performance: Projects by Experiments in Art and Technology, 1965-1980
de Mouilpied Sancto’s dissertation studies how E.A.T.'s projects expanded performance art beyond the human figure by using technical systems, synthetic materials, and "natural" environments as performing agents. It analyzes the social conditions of nonhuman performance by examining E.A.T.'s intersections with labor relations, environmental policy, art-world economics, and national economic development.
Christian de Mouilpied Sancto is a PhD candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, where he researches environmental aesthetics in post-1945 performance and sound art. His writing has appeared in Sound Studies, ASAP/Journal, Performing Arts Journal, and Resonance. He is a former professional musician and composer.
Rachel Fensham
Melbourne, Australia
Rauschenberg: Fabricating Costumes for Dance and Performance
This project will look at the extensive history of Rauschenberg’s work as a designer, wearer, and maker of costumes for dance and performance. With a critical lens on fabrication, it will examine his choice of materials and styles, as well as the collaborative nature of his costume practice.
Rachel Fensham is a Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies (University of Melbourne) with a curatorial interest in the digital humanities. She is author of Choreographing Costume (Oxford 2024) and Movement: Theory for Theatre (Bloomsbury 2021) and founding co-editor of an award-winning book series, New World Choreographies (Palgrave Macmillan).
Giorgio Motisi
Palermo, Italy
"It really did mean something": Rauschenberg and the Italian Art Scene, 1960-1970
Starting with a reconstruction of the occasions when Rauschenberg’s combine paintings were seen and studied in Italy, Motisi will delve into how these works influenced the perspectives of critics, the work of Italian artists, and the popular visual culture of that time.
Giorgio Motisi is a PhD candidate in Art History. Motisi studied in Pisa, and in 2022 worked at the Center for Italian Modern Art (New York). His doctoral project focuses on the theme of nature in Italian painting during the 1950s, with a special interest in contacts with American abstract expressionism.
Blake Oetting
Brooklyn, New York, USA
This Is a Portrait If I Say So: Rauschenberg and His Dealers
This project focuses on the relationships forged between Robert Rauschenberg and his various dealers. In examining his correspondence with Betty Parsons, Leo Castelli, Ileana Sonnabend and Iris Clert alongside the artwork he made for—and of—them, it investigates how Rauschenberg mediated the social, interpersonal character of art’s commercialization.
Blake Oetting is a PhD candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His dissertation focuses on the development of institutional critique practices in the 1980s and 1990s. His published and forthcoming writing can be found in Art Journal, Criticism, Nka, Artforum, Texte Zur Kunst, November, Flash Art, BOMB, and The Brooklyn Rail. He is currently a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program and working on a book about Tom Burr's Torrington Project.
Jonathan Rajewski
Detroit, Michigan, USA
The Past Lies Ahead, in View, and the Future Sneaks Up From Behind
Rajewski will research all archival instances where Rauschenberg's own commitments to civil and human rights—as evidenced in his public and private statements as well as his collaborative-activist motivations and works—align with prison abolitionist practices. Findings will contribute to expanding ongoing work in Detroit, where Rajewski co-organizes a re-entry/artist residency for formerly incarcerated returning citizens.
Jonathan Rajewski is an artist, writer and prison abolitionist. He is a 2020 Critical Practice Research Grantee from Yale University and a 2024 Wild Futures Grantee from Creative Capital. He received a BA in Philosophy from Michigan State University and an MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale University.
Inés Vallejo
Madrid, Spain
Robert Rauschenberg: The Use of Images
The Fundación Juan March is preparing an exhibition on Robert Rauschenberg focused on the artist's photographic practice and his use of images between 1949 and 1999. His complex multidisciplinary work process, one of the themes to be developed, requires prior research into his personal archive.
A PhD in Art History from the Universidad Complutense, Inés Vallejo Ulecia has worked on Spanish contemporary art from the 1950s to the 1980s. She is co-author of the catalogues raisonné of Manuel Hernández Mompó and José Guerrero and has curated exhibitions such as The Irascibles: Painters Against the Museum (New York, 1950).
2020/2023 RESIDENTS
Tom Engels
Brussels, Belgium
Steve Paxton: The Early Works
The project delves into the early artistic endeavors of American choreographer Steve Paxton, with a specific emphasis on "Afternoon (a forest concert)," a performance by Paxton that was filmed by Billy Klüver. Additionally, the project will explore the materials and paraphernalia produced during the creation of Paxton’s initial performances and choreographies.
Tom Engels is the Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria) and the curator of the 15th Baltic Triennial, taking place at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, in 2024.
Tora Hederus
Nacka, Sweden
Mud Amused: A technical research into Robert Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse
Several histories surround the creation of Robert Rauschenberg's Mud Muse, 1968-1971, but still, little research has been made into the complex technical creation of this now legendary work. Through combining research in the archives of the Rauschenberg Foundation with interviews and other source material, this project aims to clarify and gather knowledge on the creation, development, and timeline of this work in the Moderna Museet collection.
Tora Hederus is a Conservator for Modern and Contemporary Art with a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. from KADK - the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design, and Conservation. Since graduation, Tora has been working for four years as a Conservator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and for two years at SMK - The National Gallery of Denmar
Youngjae Lih
Malmö, Sweden
Billy Klüver: Dawn again after 9 evenings
This project pries on Billy Klüver as a figure based on the relationship between artist and engineer in specifics context, also as a contingent form of two similar but different self. It suggests different ways to understand the art-technology relationship through the central lens of his materials from RRF archives.
Youngjae Lih is a visual artist based in Malmö, Sweden and Seoul, South Korea. Previously, he studied and worked as an electronic engineer in the semiconductor industry. His practice explores the abstract compositions that emerge from ordinary objects and experiences through mixed media, videos, slide projectors, microphone circuits, and other rudimentary technologies that he adapts to construct new aesthetic forms in response to new stimuli. He has shown his work in various countries in Europe and Asia and he is teaching at Malmo Art Academy as a junior lecturer.
Leah Modigliani
Wyncote, Pennsylvania, USA
Subtle Moves Destroy a Society
Modigliani will use her time at the Rauschenberg Foundation Archives to locate all the documentation - private or public; audio-visual and written - through which Rauschenberg professed his belief in the freedom of speech. These findings will be the basis for a new artwork that re-enacts Rauschenberg’s texts through her own voice and vision.
Leah Modigliani is an artist and scholar whose interests include the history of the avant-garde and its relationship to political critique, conceptual art, social dissent since 1968, and feminist politics of visual representation and discourse. She is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Alon Nechushtan
Rishon Le Zion, Israel
Caged Songs
A setting of Rauschenberg’s texts about John Cage and various other influential moments in his inspiration- for a soprano voice and chamber ensemble, to be performed /recorded in NYC.
Composer Alon Nechushtan (Israel/US) has written for ensembles and orchestras all over the globe including: Phillippine Philharmonic Orchestra, The TelAviv Soloist, MusicaNova Consort, The Contemporary Israeli String Quartet, The New England Conservatory Composers Orchestra, The M.I.T Festival Orchestra, The Slee Sinfonietta, The Yokohama Festival Orchesra, The Savassi Festival Ensemble.
Katya Oicherman
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
To Journey with Fabric
An investigation of the role that textiles play in Robert Rauschenberg’s work, intending to trace the evolution of his relationship with textiles from their earliest fragmented appearance in the Combines series to the almost fully textile work produced during and after the Ahmedabad fellowship.
Katya Oicherman is an artist, researcher, and educator who works with textiles, video, installation, and performance. Her practice and research address the role of textiles in personal and collective memory and everyday life. She studied textile art and modern Jewish studies and earned a practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths, London. Currently she teaches at the St Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. She has taught textile practice and history and headed the department of Textile Design (Shenkar College, Israel)
Steven Paige
Plymouth, United Kingdom
Curiously Nonconforming: Desiring the Archival Encounter
In wanting to understand how Robert Rauschenberg is contained in the archive, Paige will explore how archival accounts manifest personal understandings of Rauschenberg’s discursive collaborations and performances. This sense making across archival encounters will inform a creative response through developing a manifesto of practice, relations and potential performances.
Steven Paige investigates archival histories through an art practice, incorporating video, installation and performance. A previous Kluge Research Fellow at the Library of Congress, he completed his PhD in 2019, University of Plymouth. He is Senior Lecturer and MA Fine Art Programme Leader at University of West England, UK.
2019 RESIDENTS
Kim Dhillon
Unceded territories of the SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples of Coast Salish Nation
British Columbia, Canada
Scripting the Future
Dhillon’s project researches text across Rauschenberg's practice and archive: instructions, writing, and his combines are researched to explore how text operates in his work.
Kim Dhillon is an art historian whose research explores text in contemporary art, legacies of feminist art, and Conceptualism. Her research questions how text engages audiences in political subjectivities. She teaches critical theory and art history at the University of Victoria, Canada. PhD (2017) from the RCA, London.
Dennis Dizon
London, England
Collaboration Configuration: (RE-)Imagining E.A.T. in a Web 3.0 World
Dizon’s project will investigate E.A.T.'s original collaborative systems structure and explore a (re-)imagined reconfiguration of a decentralized network form. It will attempt to translate E.A.T.'s original intentions in the contemporaneity of knowledge production and find out how it would reinvent itself in the imminent formation of a Web 3.0 society.
Dennis Dizon is an art producer, strategist and researcher. For several years, he was a Program Manager for Google Arts & Culture, working with arts and cultural museums globally to bring their digital content online. He is a Filipinx-American based in London; he's not used to writing in the third-person.
Andrea Eckersley
Melbourne, Australia
Body Object Assemblages (working title)
The various materialities expressed in Rauschenberg's practice have prompted sophisticated conceptual commentaries, although they have rarely been considered in discussions of fashion. Eckersley’s project investigates the conceptual and material aspects of Rauschenberg's use of fabric and garments in addition to his costume designs to build an expanded definition of fashion.
Andrea Eckersley is an artist and Lecturer in Fashion. Primarily interested in the way the body interacts with abstract shapes, Andrea's work investigates the material aspects of painting with a particular focus on its surface. Andrea is the art editor at the Deleuze Studies Journal and exhibits regularly in Australia.
Camila Estrella
Santiago, Chile
ROCI-Chile Research Project essay, "Your question is my answer"
Estrella’s research project focuses on the visit of Robert Rauschenberg to Chile (ROCI). This project continues 2017 research and will result in a bilingual essay contextualizing not only ROCI Chile, but the ROCI project in general.
Camila Estrella (1976): Artist and researcher, PhD in Philosophy University Paris 8, France. Teacher at the School of Visual Arts, University of Chile and also at other institutions of undergraduate and graduate education.
Isobel Harbison
London, England
Sunday Performer
Taking as its title Yvonne Rainer's quip about Rauschenberg's foray into performance, Harbison will look at archive material from the period between 1954 and 1965, to establish how his cross-disciplinary and media-responsive experimentation presents a blueprint for contemporary "Post-Internet" artists responding to accelerated technological changes and their various social ramifications.
Isobel Harbison is a London-based art historian, art critic, and Lecturer in Critical Studies in the Art Department, Goldsmiths. She writes regularly for a range of titles including Art Agenda, Art Monthly, and Frieze. Her book, Performing Image, will be published by the MIT Press in Spring 2019.
Antoine Idier
Paris, France
Politics of Friendship
Idier will research at the Rauschenberg Foundation Archives in order to write an essay about friendship in Rauschenberg's work. Idier intends to explore how friendship could constitute a strategy of subversion and resistance, as well as to tackle the hypothesis of a "politics of friendship" employed by Rauschenberg.
Antoine Idier has a PhD Degree in Sociology and is the author of several publications on sexuality, politics and the history of ideas as well as contributions to arts exhibition catalogues. He notably wrote the books "Les Vies de Guy Hocquenghem" (2017) and "Archives des mouvements LGBT+" (2018).
Jesus Macarena-Avila
Chicago, IL, USA
ROCI - BORDERLANDS RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Macarena-Avila’s research is to investigate ROCI and how it applies to artistic work on the topic of "borders". He will investigate if ROCI MEXICO's series of paintings, wall reliefs and exhibition records of the 1985 Museo Rufino Tamayo exhibit produces findings serving as connectives between mainstream art world with Latin American/Latina/o/x art.
Jesus Macarena-Avila has MFA from Norwich University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute and has lectured at the Australian National University; Victorian College for Arts, University of Notre Dame and Witswander University. He works under INC. (Instituto De Nuestra Cultura) implementing art partnerships and exhibit programming.
Carolyn Russo
Washington, DC, USA
The Ascent of Robert Rauschenberg
Russo’s research is focused on formulating an original proposal and exhibition script on the theme of flight throughout Robert Rauschenberg's oeuvre. The proposed exhibition has the potential to premiere for the grand reopening of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Flight and the Arts Center.
Carolyn Russo has worked at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum since 1988. She currently serves as the co-curator of the Museum's Art Collection and is the curator of the Trophy Collection. Russo has developed original research projects for exhibitions and is the author of four book publications.
2018 RECIPIENTS: INAUGURAL YEAR
John R. Blakinger
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Blakinger’s study examines the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) in comparison to previous models of global exchange in American art. It also interprets ROCI as a model for the spread of the art world into previously closed communist countries at the end of the Cold War. Blakinger’s research will first result in a scholarly article targeted for a major academic journal and will have the potential to become part of a book-length project.
John R. Blakinger studies modern and contemporary art. He completed his PhD at Stanford in 2016. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California and was previously a predoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. He will be the 2018-2019 Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.
Lauren van Haaften-Schick
Ithaca, NY, USA
The late 1960s-70s were a watershed moment of artists’ experimentations with legal instruments (contracts/certificates), and legal activism. Van Haaften-Schick’s dissertation follows this phenomenon to consider the legacy of artists’ interventions in the legal system and Rauschenberg’s collaborative advocacy for artists’ resale royalties.
Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a PhD Candidate in the History of Art at Cornell University, where her research merges histories and theories of art and law. Archives, curation, education, arts policy, and activism have been driving interests throughout thirteen years of previous work in art, which now informs her historical and methodological lens.
Kathleen Heil
Berlin, Germany
Heil’s project focuses on the Rauschenberg's collaborations with Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown, documenting her research at the Foundation through the writing of poems, as part of her ongoing investigation into cross-disciplinary art production as it relates to dance.
Kathleen Heil is a writer, dancer, and translator. She has published in the New Yorker, BOMB Daily, Fence, and other journals, and performed in New York, Madrid, San Francisco, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Sturgis Foundation, among others, she lives and works in Berlin.
Grant Johnson
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Johnson’s research focuses on Rauschenberg’s Bones, Unions and Jammers series, created during and following Rauschenberg’s trip to India in 1975. His project contextualizes these works formally alongside contemporaneous developments in Indian visual culture. This research will inform Johnson’s article on these works, which he intends to publish in an academic journal of art history.
Grant Johnson is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles, where he is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Southern California. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Modern Painters, Surface and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. He is a graduate of Kenyon College.
Leah Mackin
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Mackin proposes to create a self-published artist’s book and a new body of works inspired by her experience utilizing the Rauschenberg Foundation Archives. Through observation, handling, and documentation of archival materials, she hopes to collect and re-present imagery and language as a reflection around themes of abstraction and emergent technologies.
Leah Mackin is a visual artist who explores reflection, response, and re-creation. After years preserving archival materials as a conservation technician, Mackin utilizes the methods of library documentation and the aesthetics of research in her practice. In recent projects, she studies gestures of canonical artists, as encountered through collection-based research.
Megan Metcalf
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Metcalf’s project examines a series of “Bastard Theater” performances at LACMA in 1966. Research in the Foundation’s archives will support the publication of a scholarly article in a dance or art history journal as well as public performances that take this history as a starting point.
Megan Metcalf brings a practitioner’s perspective to research in art history, combining work archival sources with the study of movement practices, in order to reconstruct performances and contextualize the art world’s recent attention to dance and performance. Her research and writing have been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York’s Danspace Project, and several funding bodies at UCLA, among others. Photo (c) Zach Winnick.
Heather M. O’Brien
Beirut, Lebanon
O’Brien is interested in Rauschenberg’s use of photography. Her research seeks to unpack the intentionality and framing that took place over the years, in various locations and within an array of psychological modalities, as well as expand the knowledge she shares with the young artists and students that she works with in Beirut, Lebanon.
Heather M. O'Brien is an artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. She received a BA from Loyola University New Orleans and an MFA from CalArts. Her work explores how capitalist desire and militaristic legacy construct our ideas about home. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut.
Letícia Pumar
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Focusing on the working process of Rauschenberg, Pumar seeks to highlight how knowledge production can occur at the crossroads of different disciplinary fields, as science, technology and art, and how she can be inspired by this research to develop her artistic works. Research will result in an academic paper about the relationship of science, technology and art on Rauschenberg’s artworks and projects, as well as formulation of artworks inspired by materials in the Archives.
Leticia Pumar is a Brazilian historian with a Master and a PhD in history of science. She is currently on a postdoctoral position researching about the relationship between scientific and artistic fields at Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. She is also a student in the School of Arts of Parque Lage.