Art Omi: Artists 2025
Iran
Shirin Abedinirad is an Iranian artist whose work explores identity, unity with nature, and the boundless essence of being through video, performance, land art, and installation. Trained in graphic design and fashion, she transitioned to public interventions addressing gender and human compassion before shifting to land-based installations inspired by a transformative desert experience in 2013. Using mirrors, water, and light, her work creates liminal spaces that reflect our inherent belonging. Exhibiting globally since 2010, she is the author of Conceptual Art & Fashion in the 21st Century and holds an MFA from Michigan State University.
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U.S./Pakistan
Born and raised in Lahore, Sarah Ahmad's career path challenges traditional success narratives. Working from small urban settings in the American South, her installations confront estrangement from the natural world. She offers aesthetic sanctuaries, a means of relating to the land rooted in mutual care. Settings designed for meditation and wonder reimagine sites marked by loss and displacement. Sacred geometry and pattern are ubiquitous, enmeshed with nature: the connective tissue binding us to the earth. Ahmad’s solo show, Struggles in Art & Radical Becoming, was just hosted alongside the 2025 Faiz Festival in Lahore, celebrating Pakistan’s radical 20th-century poet. This summer, her work will be on display in New York City at Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery.
Benin Republic
Sanda Amadou was born and raised in a Fulani community in Northern Benin. He holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics (University of Ghana) and received art education in the form of residencies and masters workshops. He lived and worked in Lagos for several years, but returned to Cotonou in 2019. He started drawing in his early childhood, fascinated by the culture and tattoos of the nomadic Fulani, which he still studies and reinterprets to this day.
Amadou has developed a unique semi-abstract style of art exploring and depicting the universe based on these impressive body marks. He spent the first six years of his artistic career (1999-2005) on Fulani tattoos. His first solo exhibition was held in Niamey at the Palais des Congrès in 2002. From 2006 onwards, he redirected his research to the universe of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. He increasingly connected this research to the outside world and mixed it with other worlds of culture through his dance, poetry, and divinity studies. His divinity studies led him to the concept of sacredness.
His work obeys a rigorous geometry and forms complex architectures, which are simultaneously playful and surprisingly fragile. Lines, circles, triangles, and quadrilaterals, semi-mathematical figures that are never perfect, connect Fulani symbols of natural life with ropes at their base. His images result in imaginary forms and grotesque figures that show a ragged vulnerability, ethereal and always in motion. They allow the viewer to glimpse an unreal essence.
In his latest work, Amadou is experimenting with 3D effects by adding different textures and sculpting on canvas with plated synthetic hairs in different variations. For his Sacred Places series, he uses these braids to create sacred forest monasteries as a metaphor for the need to canonize and protect the natural environment and rebalance the human relationship with nature.
Amadou is a recognized artist both domestically and internationally. He has participated in many solo and collective exhibitions over the years, including in the Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Dubai, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.S. (San Francisco and New York) and has been featured at major international art exhibitions and fairs such as World Art Dubai, ART X Lagos, and AKAA Paris (2021 and 2022 solo).
U.S.
AYDO was founded in 2020 by artists A young Yu and Nicholas Oh. Recent exhibitions and features include The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design, apexart, and Hyperallergic. Solo exhibitions include the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, the HUB-Robeson Galleries at Penn State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Recess Art. Other exhibitions include Christie’s, Rhode Island College, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Artists Alliance, the AHL Foundation, and The Immigrant Artist Biennial among others. Forthcoming, AYDO will exhibit at The Shed and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.
Poland
Anna Barlik is a Polish visual artist and sculptor known for her installations and sculptures exploring relationships between space, perception, and human interaction. She uses powder-coated steel to highlight social tensions. Barlik studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź and Warsaw, earning her PhD in 2017. Her works, often inspired by architecture, address themes of identity and memory. In 2023, she represented Poland with her sculpture Datament at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She currently lectures at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw.
EREMUAK FELLOWSHIP AT ART OMI
Basque Country
Lide Billelabeitia Uriarte graduated in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She works with audiovisual, sculptural, and photographic forms. Her projects explore the notion of landscape through deconstructive and performative processes, with a special focus on materiality. Her project Erein, developed with the Ikasiker 2020/21 grant, was selected for the Ertibil 2022 exhibition and the feminist culture festival Feministaldia. It was screened at Tabakalera (Donostia-San Sebastian) and the Artium Museum (Vitoria-Gasteiz). In 2023, she was an artist-in-residence in Kurdistan for the Moving Artists program. In 2024, her film Çiyayên Dur was shown at the Zinebi (Bilbao) and InfinitoSuper8 (Buenos Aires) festivals, and a workshop at MACBA (Barcelona).
LARKIN DAWN FELLOWSHIP
Morocco
Khalid Bouaalam is a Marrakech-based visual artist exploring society, environment, and collective identity through sculpture, drawing, and installation. Influenced by Safi’s pottery heritage, he works with clay, wood, video, and iron. He exhibited in The Promise of Trace (2023) at Malhoun Art Space (Marrakech). In 2024, he joined the Tae’thir project in Marseille, addressing artisans' struggles in his hometown Safi. In 2025, he participated in another Malhoun group show, presenting his practice in an open studio, and continuing his residency for another year.
ART OMI AUSTRALIA COMMITTEE FELLOWSHIP
Australia
Lauren Brincat works with performance, video, installation, and sculpture to explore movement, music, and rhythm. She often creates site-responsive work that probes historical ruptures and failures of language, integrating local communities while exploring non-verbal modes of expression through the use of sound sculptures and performance instruments. Her use of fabric is intended to symbolize social cohesion, akin to a metaphorical social fabric; she experiments with the different ways it interacts with the body, space, and gender.
THE MILTON AND SALLY AVERY ARTS FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP
U.S.
v. nico d’entremont is a transdisciplinary artist who examines poetic entanglements across the veil of life and death through installation, experimental documentary, ritual/performances, inter-species collaborations, and socially-engaged practice. Their expanded practice blurs the edges of studio art, academic research, spiritual practice, and embodied ways of knowing, ultimately aiming toward healing and collective liberation. Commissions, solo exhibitions, and residencies include: the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Commonwealth & Council, MacDowell, Yaddo, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Joan Mitchell Center, Art Omi, Lighthouse Works, ACRE, SPACES Cleveland, The Berwick Research Institute and the Boston Center for the Arts Studio Residency. Grants and fellowships received have included a 2012 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, a 2016 Social Practice Art award, and a 2024 Collective Futures Fund grant.
LARKIN DAWN FELLOWSHIP
Argentina/Brazil
Iara Freiberg is an Argentinian-Brazilian artist currently living in Buenos Aires. Born in São Paulo as the daughter of Argentineans exiled from the military dictatorship, she has lived multiple nationalities, identities, languages, and in many territorialities from an early age. That perspective informs her artistic practice, which discusses space and its related issues, focusing on large-scale interventions on architecture. She has an MFA (USP, 2017), and since 2002 has had solo and group exhibitions. She has been invited and selected to participate in projects in Brasília, Buenos Aires, Fortaleza, Johannesburg, London, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Rosario, Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, and Toronto.
CHARLOTTE STREET FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP
Mexico/U.S.
Juan Diego Gaucin is a figurative oil painter with expressionist tendencies. Having experienced the process of immigrating to the U.S. early in his life, he is intimately drawn to work that explores the hardships endured by migrants. Living in the Midwest has imparted strong experiences with racism, alienation, and prejudice, which have contributed to his desire to enact positive change through art and education. His work aims to generate compassion and re-sensitize viewers to the reality of the humanitarian crisis occurring on our borders and to resist the culture of hate that continues to linger in the hearts of many.
ART OMI FELLOWSHIP FOR AN ARTIST LIVING AND WORKING IN CROATIA
Croatia
Hrvoje Hiršl is a conceptual artist exploring the relationship between nature and technology. His work reveals hidden complexities, making these systems’ structures and principles visible and tangible. Working across robotic environments, quantum optics, sound installations, paintings, and texts, he often tests the boundaries of human experience. He received the ARTeCHÓ fellowship for quantum technology research and participated in residencies such as HDLU AIR (Leipzig), Crossing Parallels (Delft), and Bildraum Studio (Vienna). A 2012 Radoslav Putar Award nominee, he participated at Documenta 13 and the London Design Biennale. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide.
Japan
Maruyama Junko graduated from the International Relations department of Ritsumeikan University in 1999 majoring in economy and ecology. She then received a BFA from Hunter College in 2002 majoring in sculpture. She collects and reconstructs everyday objects and waste materials using the keywords of "people," "nature," and "rebirth" to create installations. Her major awards and achievements include a Charitable Trust Oki Memorial Artists Grant (2007) and the Judge’s Special Award in Taipei/Yokohama Artist Exchange Program (2009). In 2021, she participated in the Overseas Study Program for Upcoming Artists awarded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. She was also a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2023.
HANWHA FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP
South Korea
Minhee Kim explores images shaped by paradoxical and self-contradictory perspectives, focusing on the depiction of the female body and skin. Rather than portraying the body itself, she draws on emotions as a resource, creating paintings that materialize internal conflict through visual form.
China
Hu Liwei comes from Chongqing, China where she is surrounded by fog all year (which makes her have fantasies of tropical islands, sunshine, beaches, ice cream, and coconuts). Under the illusion of tropical light, Hu's practice explores and questions image mechanisms. She works with a variety of media, principally moving images, but also engages with installation, radio, and participatory practices.
Hu was a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Awards in 2023. She has received fellowships and residencies from Taipei Treasure Hill Artist Village, MacDowell, Rijksakademie, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Asia Culture Center.
Democratic Republic of Congo/U.S.
Masela Nkolo was born in Kinshasa and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts with a focus on large-scale sculpture. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses installation, sculpture, textiles, photography, sound, video, and performance. By transforming excess production from various industries, he deconstructs and reconstructs materials such as screwdrivers, oil lamps, and doors, creating totemic figures that reflect both personal and collective experiences, offering a contemporary and syncretic reinterpretation of classical African art. His work has been exhibited at notable venues including The African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta, Johnson Lowe Gallery, Agora Gallery, The Mint Museum, Atlanta Contemporary, the PATH Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
AMERICAN DREAM FELLOWSHIP
India
Hemant Rao is an Indian self-taught visual artist (painter). For his use of dry pastels, he received the Visual Arts (Painting) Junior Artist Fellowship from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India (2011–12). He is also a recipient of the 60th National Academy Award from Lalit Kala Akademi (2019), India’s National Academy of Fine Arts. He is an artist-in-residence at Dhoomimal Gallery (New Delhi). His works have been exhibited at major contemporary art events, including the India Art Fair at NSIC (New Delhi, 2020, 2022), and at the BMW Collector’s Lounge at India Art Fair (2024), as well as Art Mumbai (2024), Art of India by Times of India Group at India Habitat Center (New Delhi, 2023), and Madras Art Weekend (Chennai, 2023, 2024). He has had solo exhibitions in venues such as Gallery Art & Soul (Mumbai) and group shows at contemporary galleries like Art Houz (Chennai) and CIMA (Kolkata), as well as institutions like Bharat Bhavan (Bhopal). His works are part of several collections, including the Bihar Museum, ITM University Gwalior, Triveni Museum (Ujjain), Silpakorn University (Bangkok), Mind Tree School (Punjab), Takshila Educational Society (Bihar), and Uttarayan Art Foundation (Gujarat). His paintings have been collected by notable individuals, including former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, India, Digvijay Singh.
U.S./Turkey
Eda Şarman, an artist and an architect, explores water as the common ground. She observes nature as a guide for her practice, in search of ways to implement learnings from nature to our societal dynamics. Grounded in bodily perception, she intertwines observations with technology and the way we weave nature to seek ways of grasping rhythms surrounding us. Interested in understanding entanglement, our interconnected and interdependent existence, she has been developing methods of perceiving landscapes as embodied and philosophy practical. She is currently working from Istanbul, showing her work in solo exhibitions and international festivals.
Hong Kong
Natia Ser is a Chicago-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores notions of intimacy within the itinerant experience. She is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and holds a BFA with Thesis in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited internationally in New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, and Japan. Her awards include the LeRoy Neiman Fellowship from the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, semifinalist in The Print Center’s 99th ANNUAL International Competition, finalist in the Luminarts Visual Arts Fellowship, and Special Mention in the Hong Kong Photozine Award. Her work is held in collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, among others.
UNLIMIT ART FELLOWSHIP
U.S.
Finnegan Shannon is an artist experimenting with forms of access. Some of their recent work includes Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces; and Don’t mind if I do, a conveyor-belt-centered exhibition that prioritizes rest and play. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, a Disability Futures Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project.
U.S.
Max Spitzer is an interdisciplinary sculptor and educator. His work is materialized in a range of formats, yet it always centers around objects: exploring the ways they are contextualized by our social conventions, institutional mechanisms, and cognitive habits. He earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Hong Kong
Wong Sze Wai was born and raised in Hong Kong. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2020. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, New York, Dubai, and China and focuses on the relationship between memory and imagination. Various daily objects found locally, such as blue and white tarpaulin, discarded fences, bricks, and plastic chairs are seen scattered around in her paintings. They represent the past of human activities as well as the passage of time. Inspired by ancient mural art and western painting masters, she uses mineral pigments, clay, and other materials, adding these materials onto the canvases layer by layer. The textures spawned from the dried clay magnify the paintings’ relationships with space and time leading viewers to explore a further dimension.
FRANCIS J. GREENBURGER FELLOWSHIP FOR MITIGATING RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC CONFLICT
Malaya/U.S.
Adelle Yingxi Lin is a Malaysian artist, activist, and technologist. Their practice explores resilience and interconnectedness through performance, immersive installations, and XR. Bridging ancient rituals with contemporary technology, they create spaces for collective healing, inviting audiences to inhabit the work and explore embodied presence. Their work has been shown at SIGGRAPH, Flux Factory, FiveMyles, and ChangWon Sculpture Biennale, they have led workshops at the New Museum, MoMA PS1, NYC Resistor, and Burning Man, and they have appeared on Al Jazeera for their activism within virtual worlds. A member of NEW INC, they have participated in residencies with One of Many Jordan and Harvestworks, and have received support from Meta Open Arts, Onassis ONX, and PlayNYC.
Critic-in-Residence, Poland/Kenya/U.S.
Klaudia Ofwona Draber is a strategy consultant and the Executive Director & Chief Curator of KODA—a social practice residency for mid-career artists. She has lived and led arts, technology, and strategy projects in Europe, Africa, and the United States. Her professional experience includes serving as Faculty at Sotheby's Institute of Art, as the Head of Public Relations at the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and as a consultant to the British Council Arts. She also worked at UBS, managing global change and local arts CSR projects. Ofwona Draber was the 2021-2022 Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum ISP Curatorial Studies Program. She is a board member at ArtTable and a mentor at NEW INC. Ofwona Draber holds an MA in Art Business from Sotheby‘s Institute of Art New York. She also holds an MA in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics. Ofwona Draber is a PhD candidate in Practice in Curating at the University of Reading and OnCurating Academy.
Critic-in-Residence, U.S.
Lauren Leving is a curator and writer based in Chicago. Her work explores how creative practice can expand institutionally-rooted understandings of access. She is the Associate Curator of the 2025 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art and Exhibitions Director for ACRE Projects. Previously, she was Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (moCa) Cleveland. In 2023, Leving co-curated Everlasting Plastics in the U.S. Pavilion during the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, which also traveled to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
At moCa Cleveland, Leving organized numerous projects including Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya’s first solo museum presentation; a large scale textile commission by Aram Han Sifuentes entitled Messages to Authorities (Go Away!); Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Synergy; and Don’t mind if I do, a group exhibition stewarded by Finnegan Shannon.
Leving holds an MA in Museum & Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois–Chicago and a BA from Tulane University. She is an AAMC 2024 Propel Program Fellow and in 2025 will be a Critic/Curator-in-Residence at Art Omi.
Visa Denied by the U.S.
Art Omi invites residents whose visas were denied by the United States to participate in the following year’s residency.
Nigeria
Boluwatife Victoria Lawal is a contemporary Nigerian painter known for her vibrant acrylic works on canvas. Her art captivates with swirls of Afrocentric hair and poignant representations of people of color. Through intimate and interconnected portrayals, she symbolizes a fusion of culture, liberation, and resilience unique to people of color. Lawal delves deep into the cultural significance of Afro hair and skin tones, viewing them as extensions of one's identity and cultural heritage. Her pieces question the impact of Eurocentric beauty standards on the psyche of people of color, particularly women of African descent. In each stroke, Lawal seeks to lay emphasis on self-acceptance, authenticity, and inclusivity through her powerful storytelling on canvas.
LARKIN DAWN FELLOWSHIP
Nigeria
Samuel Olayombo is a Nigerian contemporary artist who holds a bachelor's degree in Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Benin. He explores and challenges the boundaries of macho culture and societal gender expectations. His technique is inspired by the body marking traditions of the pre-colonial Yoruba people, his place of origin. He currently works and lives in Accra.
Rwanda
Ruganintwali Patrick is a self-taught artist from Kigali, who began his artistic journey in 2005 after secondary school. His work, influenced by his cultural heritage and everyday life, explores themes of identity, memory, and the environment. Ruganintwali uses various materials like wood, metal, and recycled elements, employing techniques such as collage, welding, and layering to create semi-abstract sculptures and installations. His art seeks to provoke reflection and evoke emotions, addressing both local and universal issues. Passionate about sharing his knowledge, Ruganintwali encourages young Rwandan artists and believes art is a vital tool for social expression and improvement.
Buryatia
Born in the Republic of Buryatia and currently based in Ulaanbaatar, Yumzhana Sui's artistic journey is a blend of introspection, cultural analysis, and reimagining ancestral imagery and Buryad-Chinese religious practices. These elements converge to create Surealia, an independent artistic realm that defines her work. Exploring diverse mediums like textile masks and photo collages, each piece resonates with the essence of Surealia, unifying her artistic expression within this unique world.
UNABLE TO APPLY FOR VISA DUE TO U.S. EMBASSY CLOSURE
Tom Bogaert
Belgium/Hungary
Tom Bogaert came to art after a career as a refugee worker with the UN and Amnesty International. At the age of 38, he gave up his legal career to settle in New York as an artist and has since exhibited internationally. Bogaert is one half of the collaborative Haitian-Belgian art duo Lafleur & Bogaert. Tom Bogaert and Michel Lafleur are best known for their critically acclaimed projects for documenta fifteen and the Lubumbashi Biennial. Lafleur & Bogaert are 2025 Mellon Foundation ARI Fellows at Duke University and in October 2025, their solo exhibition opens at Frosch&Co Gallery in NYC.
Michel Lafleur
Haiti
Michel Lafleur began his painting career as an apprentice to a decorator of Tap-Taps, the ornately painted pickup trucks that serve as public transportation all throughout Haiti. He is now responsible for decorating many of the most spectacular barbershops in his neighborhood. Lafleur is one half of the collaborative Haitian-Belgian art duo Lafleur & Bogaert. Michel Lafleur and Tom Bogaert are best known for their critically acclaimed projects for documenta fifteen and the Lubumbashi Biennial. Lafleur & Bogaert are 2025 Mellon Foundation ARI Fellows at Duke University and in October 2025 their solo exhibition opens at Frosch&Co Gallery in NYC.