Pioneer Works Announces 2025 Visual Art & Music Residents

NEW YORK, NY, JANUARY 10, 2025—Pioneer Works is proud to announce the return of its Visual Art & Music Residency with a cohort of 25 groundbreaking artists-in-residence, whose practices reflect a deep engagement with contemporary issues and experimental forms of expression. Each year, we invite artists to apply to our foundational residency program’s open call, and be reviewed by a jury composed of PW Alumni Residents, artists, curators, and community members. The 2025 Music Jury—which includes Gelsey Bell⁠, Lester St. Louis, and Andy Battaglia—and Visual Arts Jury—which includes PW Alumni Resident Le’Andra LeSeur and Graham Wilson—selected 15 visual artists and 10 musicians to create new work in Pioneer Works’s generative and collaborative environment.

The 2025 Pioneer Works Visual Art & Music Residents includes:

Zainab Aliyu
Zalika Azim
Maya Jeffereis
Mustarinda (Miina Kaartinen & Sanna Ritvanne)
Armando Rosales
Kara Springer
Ping Wang
Yujie Zhou
Matt Bruinooge
Peggy Chiang
Biraaj Dodiya
Cameron Granger
Mae Howard
Hanson Okere
Samora Pinderhughes
Laura Ortman
Yaz Lancaster
Isa Reyes
Omar Ahmad
Avila Santo
Henry Fraser
Still House Plants
Leah Victoria
Isabel Crespo Pardo
Daniel Fiskin

The 2025 Visual Art Residents, hailing from the United States as well as China, Finland, India, Mexico and Nigeria, represent an exciting spectrum of practices, from installations and new media art to sculpture and performance. Their work engages with themes of identity, cultural memory, the environment, and social justice. The seasonal Visual Art Residency provides artists with glass-enclosed, public-facing studios, and biweekly studio visits with curators, gallerists, and critics.

The 2025 Music Residents features composers, performers, and sound artists whose work pushes the boundaries of genres. From experimental jazz to electronic and new music, these musicians will use their time at Pioneer Works to explore innovative ways to engage with sound and performance, offering audiences new ways of experiencing music. The month-long Music Residency provides exclusive, 24/7 access and use of Pioneer Work’s uniquely-built recording studio, with direct production support from our artist-led Music and AV team.

All residents are provided access to resources (such as a darkroom, ceramic studio, risograph, and technology lab) and the opportunity to engage with Pioneer Works' vibrant public programming through performances, exhibitions, conversations, and its signature Second Sundays program—a monthly open house and forum for artistic experimentation through workshops, open studios, discussions, and performance. From multidisciplinary installations to avant-garde compositions, this 2025 cohort of artists-in-residence embodies the spirit of cross-disciplinary exploration that has made Pioneer Works a hub for groundbreaking creative work.

“We’re thrilled to welcome this new group of artists and musicians into the Pioneer Works community,” said Gabriel Florenz, Founding Artistic Director of Pioneer Works. “This cohort brings a rich diversity of perspectives, and we’re honored to support them as they push the boundaries of their work. Our residency program has always been a space for risk-taking, transformative dialogue, and work that challenges the status quo. We’re looking forward to what these talented individuals will bring to the table in 2025.”

Residencies at Pioneer Works are supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additionally, Sanna Ritvanen, Miina Kartinen, and Yujie Zhou’s residencies were organized in partnership with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, while Matt Bruinooge and Ping Wang’s residencies continue an ongoing collaboration between Pioneer Works and Brooklyn College.

Learn more about each of the 2025 Pioneer Works Residents on our website.

About Residencies at Pioneer Works

The Pioneer Works Residency Program has been a cornerstone of the center’s founding mission—deeply committed to providing emerging artists, musicians, and technologists with a space to work, tools to create, and a platform to exchange ideas. Aided by a jury of experts and Alumni Residents, we select residents through an open call who work outside existing models and “norms” of their field and will uniquely benefit from our facilities and community. As such, Pioneer Works shifts and evolves to reflect the interests and work of each new cohort of residents. All residents that complete the program join our ever-growing alumni network and are tapped for future opportunities like teaching, partnerships, and other public programs.

About the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York

The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York works across the fields of contemporary art, design and architecture, creating dialogue between Finnish and American professionals and audiences. For more information, visit their website.

About the Pioneer Works & Brooklyn College Partnership

Beginning in 2022, Pioneer Works partnered with Brooklyn College to select one recent graduate from their MFA program aimed at supporting an intergenerational cohort of emerging artists who demonstrate artistic excellence in work outside existing models and “norms” of their field, whose practice can make use of our unique facilities and collaborative environment, and those with an interdisciplinary practice.

About Pioneer Works

Pioneer Works (PW) is an artist and scientist-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn that fosters innovative thinking through the visual and performing arts, technology, music, and science. We support onsite production through our science, design, recording, and ceramics studios; media, virtual environment, and technology labs; darkroom; and garden. Multi-disciplinary programs, exhibitions, residencies, and performances are presented to the public, of which the majority are free.

Follow Pioneer Works on Instagram, Facebook, and X, and visit our website for upcoming announcements.

Press Contact(s):

Pioneer Works
Yume Murphy
Digital Marketing and Communications Manager
press@pioneerworks.org

Alma Communications
Hannah Gottlieb-Graham, President & Founder
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+1 (217) 369 8183