Name: Members Studio Tours with Artists-in-Residence
Start: 2022-11-02
End: 2022-11-02
Location: Pioneer Works

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Pioneer Works's galleries and garden are closed to the public on Friday, October 25th and Saturday, October 26th for the United Sounds NYC Festival 2024. 

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Due to weather conditions, Pioneer Works is suspending open gallery hours for Friday, September 29. MHYSA's performance has been rescheduled for Sunday, October 1, with all tickets being transferred to the new date.

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Just Announced: Pioneer Works Names Mara Manus Chief Executive Officer

The Board of Directors of Pioneer Works is pleased to announce that Mara Manus, former Executive Director for New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), has been appointed as the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer. 

We are grateful for your engagement and support of Pioneer Works over the last year. Now through December 31st, we’re fundraising to meet our end of year goal and close out 2024.

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We’re making Pioneer Works accessible to all! While our building is temporarily closed until this September, we are continuing to host offsite programming. See upcoming programs 

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We're pleased to announce the first major renovation of Pioneer Works! To accommodate the first phase of our construction, we're temporarily relocating to 133 Imlay Street opening in Spring 2022.

Early Closure 5/10/23

Due to programming, Pioneer Works will be closed to the public on Wednesday, May 10. We will be open from Thursday through Sunday for the remainder of the week. Learn more and plan your visit 

Winter Break Closure

Pioneer Works will be closed between December 16, 2024–January 24, 2025 for a winter break.

 provides emerging artists, musicians, and technologists with a space to work, tools to create, and a platform to exchange ideas. During their time at Pioneer Works, residents have the opportunity to expand their practice and continue ongoing projects working side by side with creators and educators across disciplines.

On Wednesday, November 2, join the Fall 2022 Residency cohort at Pioneer Works for an evening of intimate studio tours. Residents will invite guests into their studios and engage in conversation about their creative process and current projects.


A wine reception at 6pm will prelude the tours.

This event is open to Pioneer Works members of all levels. 

 to support interdisciplinary production and presentation of work through our Residency program.

Please note that part of this program will be held on our second and third floors, which are currently only accessible by stairs.

Sandeman Port

Open to all <a href="https://pioneerworks.org/membership">PW Members</a> 
RSVP to <a href="mailto:danielle@pioneerworks.org">danielle@pioneerworks.org</a>

 centers on a newly commissioned multimedia installation that takes inspiration from the seminal film and video artist’s ongoing interests in science and math—particularly, memory, thought formation, and numerical expressions. Combining original footage and segments culled from his extensive archives, the immersive video work extends across 100 feet of the institution’s interior architecture, projecting flickering images throughout its windows that simulate the ways in which ideas appear in the human mind.

Atlas envisions the brick wall of Pioneer Works’ Main Hall as an analogue for the brain, divided into left and right sections. Unified by an original score by musician and collaborator 

, the video toggles between numerical fantasies, dance sequences, abstract compositions, scientific ruminations, and internet memes to encapsulate the artist’s disparate thoughts and ideas. The work builds on a series of projections that he has completed over the past few years, including 

 (2019) on the 2.5-acre facade of Chicago’s Merchandise Mart and 

 (2021) on a free-standing, 19th-century Indian Pleasure Pavilion at Luhring Augustine Gallery.

The artist notes, “I have been making large-scale, site-specific installations since 2007, and animating the architecture of Pioneer Works represents my biggest challenge to date. Instead of creating a single wall-sized composition, I am creating twenty-six distinct videos projected to fit the windows, and filling the voids in between. I consider space and time to be my media, and this has led me to a fascination with physics, consciousness and cosmology—scientific themes woven together with my sustained interest in portraiture, performance and dance."

Since his beginnings as filmmaker-in-residence for Merce Cunningham Dance Company during the early 1970s, Atlas has collapsed the barriers between dance, performance, and media, often collaborating with a dynamic roster of creative figures to harness a distinctly multidisciplinary and experimental point of view. 

 continues a number of these working relationships.

A prominent component of the installation is a stage designed by artist 

, who previously collaborated with Atlas at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009) and South London Gallery (2011), in collaboration with 

, which transforms industrial scaffolding into an armature for performances featuring ongoing and new collaborators, and discussions that consider the theoretical origins of consciousness and mathematical sequences. A direct response to Atlas’s video, Tajima’s sculptural environment makes a conceptual connection between black holes and the meridian system that maps and circulates energy within the human body—both of which represent the ungraspable and unknowable, within and beyond.

Analogous to the action of acupuncture needles, javelins puncture illuminated, gradient surfaces that outline both black hole star formations and energy pressure points of the body. In ancient times, javelins were used for hunting, sport and war, and now is the common name for the handheld missile used by Ukrainian forces to defend against the Russian invasion. Embodying chaos and entropy, the spears rupture the hole diagrams and grid architecture, resisting the imperative to control, systematize and contain.


 (b. 1949 in St. Louis; lives and works in New York City) has been a pioneering figure in film and video for over five decades. Atlas has extended the limits of his medium, forging new territory in a far-reaching range of genres, stylistic approaches, and techniques. Throughout his production, the artist has consistently fostered collaborative relationships, working intimately with such artists and performers as Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, Douglas Dunn, Marina Abramovic, Yvonne Rainer, Mika Tajima/New Humans, Antony and the Johnsons, and most notably, Merce Cunningham, for whom he served as in-house videographer for a decade from the early 1970s through 1983; their close working relationship continued until Cunningham’s death in 2009. In 2017, the Hammer Museum acquired Atlas’s video 

, which had been recently featured in the 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial. His work is also included in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; among others. In 2017, Atlas and choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener premiered 

, a new two-part work consisting of a stereoscopic 3D film and a dance performance with real-time video mixing. In 2019, he unveiled a new commission for Art on theMART: a site-specific video work that spanned across the 2.5 acre river-façade of theMART in Chicago. The artist has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Bessie (New York Dance and Performance) Awards, the 2006 John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a USA Artists Gracie Fellowship.

(b. 1975 in Los Angeles; lives and works in New York City)  is an artist whose practice materializes techniques developed to shape the physicality, productivity, and desires of the human body. Her sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations focus on the embodied experience of ortho-architectonic control and computational life. From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, Tajima's works operate in the space between the immaterial and the tangible to create heightened encounters that target the senses and emotions of the viewer, underlining the dynamics of control and agency. Tajima holds a BA in Fine Arts and East Asian Studies from Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, and an MFA from Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY. Selected exhibitions include 

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; 

 at Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; 

, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; 

, Castello di Rivoli and GAM, Torino, Italy; 

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

, Sculpture Center, New York, NY. Her work is also in public collections that include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

 (b. 1991; lives and works in New York City) is a multidisciplinary artist, who works primarily in music and video. With Sediment Club—a project functioning across the genres of no-wave, noise rock and improvisation, founded alongside Austin Julian and Jackie McDermott in 2009—Bozic has toured North America extensively, and collaborated with artists such as improvisor Michael Foster, poet and thinker Felix Bernstein, and post-punk pioneers Bush Tetras. Additionally, he founded LGHQ with Garrett Rosenblum in 2014, and produced electronic scores for artists such as Charles Atlas, Violet Dennison, Jordan Strafer and Larry Bovik. Through his various projects, he has released music with independent labels such as Wharf Cat Records, Ramp Local, Anno, Crude Tapes, NNA Tapes, Feeding Tube Records and Softspot Records. He has performed or shown his work in different galleries and art spaces including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Kitchen, New York; Entrance, New York; and The Glove, Brooklyn; among others.

 is curated by Gabriel Florenz. Lead funding for the exhibition is provided by Bruce M. Halpryn and Chas Riebe. Commissioning sponsorship is provided by VIA Art Fund, with significant support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The Mathematics of Consciousness

Charles Atlas: The Mathematics of Consciousness

, the artist’s first institutional solo presentation, comprises three newly commissioned shadow box sculptures, hung on a visually striking custom fabric wrapped around the gallery’s walls. These works, her largest to date, mark the first time that the artist has incorporated full figures within the sculptural series she has developed over the past five years, which delves into the portrayal of female subjects through the aesthetic devices of shallow relief.

The artist turns to disparate sources to act as visual guides within her practice, such as early 20th-century fashion plates that featured illustrations of women dressed in the era’s latest styles and functioned as precursors to contemporary fashion magazines; the artist is drawn to the ways in which color and line dramatize the evolving trends from that time. Greco-Roman bas-reliefs and Medieval church carvings provide additional sources of inspiration—not only for the ways in which the body is fit within the confines of an architectural space, but also for the emphasis on emotive postures and hand gestures. Kielar’s work is united by a surrealist undertone that points to artist Hans Bellmer, who arranged handmade dolls into uncanny configurations. Though vastly different in conceptual aim and technical form, Kielar shares a similar interest in animating her sculptures with a sense of mystery and internal life.

The consistent thread through these references is the underlying intent to approach the human body as a vessel that can change shape to meet the cultural tides around it. Kielar is interested in continuing a tradition of distorting and manipulating the female form, in a manner that shows its evolving position within art. She bases her figures on archetypes, such as the Muse or the Amazon, that have lingered through the ages and inspired constant reinterpretation. In focusing on these classic roles, she brings the viewer’s attention to the complex dynamics of strength, beauty, vulnerability, sex, and heroism that have always circulated around female identity. She also opens a larger discussion around the constant expansion of expectations placed on women and their bodies, and the effect that these changes have on their perception of themselves.

The artist compresses the formal distinctions of sculpture and painting by melding aspects of each into a unified field of symbols and dimensionality. In each work, a single female subject is constructed through the arrangement of individual shapes that have been carved from foam and wrapped in a fabric bearing a pattern of the artist’s design. Each section of the subject’s body appears to float within a box that is encased in the same fabric, creating an overall effect of a figure that ripples between abstraction and representation.


(b. 1978, New York, NY) earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, New York and an MFA from Columbia University, New York. Kielar has presented solo exhibitions at venues such as Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; Locust Projects, Miami; Casey Kaplan, New York; and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York. She has also been included in group exhibitions at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; White Columns, New York; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London, among others. In Fall 2021, Kielar created work for the exhibition 

, which opened at Ba-tsu Gallery, Tokyo, and traveled to Chateau de la Colle Noire, Montrauroux. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Dikeou Collection, Denver; the Christian Dior Art Collection, Paris; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; the New Century Art Foundation, Singapore; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. Kielar lives and works in Brooklyn.

 is curated by Gabriel Florenz with Vivian Chui. Major funding for the exhibition is provided by the Coby Foundation. Additional support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Shadow Box

Anya Kielar: Shadow Box

 marks the latest chapter in the artist’s ongoing project titled 

Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Trans-Pakistan)

, which brings together augmented reality, ceramic sculptures, and video to explore nostalgia, gentrification, and urbanization in Lahore and South Asia. The media installation is the first solo institutional presentation by the Pioneer Works former technology artist-in-residence.

Majeed turns to her own familial history and archives as the conceptual basis for her project—particularly, her uncle’s failed tourism company ‘Trans-Pakistan,’ which she has digitally reimagined as “Trans-Pakistan Adventure Services.” Another point of inspiration is Bahria Town, the privately-owned real estate developments found throughout Pakistan. Within Lahore’s iteration of Bahria Town, European landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square reify Western interests, but remain cloaked in a pervasive, Islamic security apparatus. Throughout her serial project, Majeed reinterprets these built environments as speculative, exploratory spaces for examining prevailing logics around race, gender, sexuality, and capital.

The installation features a distorted replication of  a monumental fountain located at the center of a roundabout in Bahria Town, distinguished by protruding horse figures. Majeed’s rendition is distorted not only by the addition of new sculptural features but also by augmented reality that animates the sculpture with galloping horses and plastic bags emanating as pools of water. Majeed stages a second augmented reality component on a low platform covered in black and white tiles: pixelated and lenticularized Urdu text emerging from an undulating, checkered abyss, creating the illusion of depth and embodying the theme of diasporic double consciousness. These features not only employ symbols that recur throughout the artist’s practices in drawing and video, but also build on the kitsch “digital” culture derived from Lahore’s urbanscape and subaltern.

A monochrome motif surrounds the environment, bearing graphic patterns and Urdu text adapted from historical poems that describe the collapsing of land and sky. This text is intentionally translated to ‘queer’ the gendered nouns and verbs that wrap around the gallery’s walls. Among these patterns are arrows that direct viewers to move about the gallery in a counterclockwise direction, a way of subverting conventional modes of thinking within urban planning. The multimedia environment is further united by a singular musical score in which sounds recorded in Bahria Town are glitched and woven together into ambient noise.

 explores themes of doubling and revels in dichotomies to navigate the personal and the governmental, the kitsch and the corporate, the real and the digital.

Umber Majeed (b. 1989, New York, NY) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and educator. She received her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design in 2016 and graduated from Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan in 2013. Her writing, performance, and animation work engage with familial archives to explore Pakistani state, urban, and digital infrastructure through a feminist lens. Majeed has had two solo exhibitions: 

In the Name of Hypersurface of the Present

Trans-Pakistan Zindabad (Facts about the Earth)

, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, Virgina (2021). The artist has also shown in venues across Pakistan, North America, and Europe. Recent group exhibitions include; 

, The Slought Foundation, Philadelphia (2012); 

, The State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia (2015); 

, Queens Museum, New York (2018). She is a recipient of numerous fellowships including the HWP Fellowship, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon (2017); Refiguring Feminist Futures Web Residency, Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM, Germany (2018); the Digital Earth Fellowship, Hivos, the Netherlands (2018-19); and the Technology Residency, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn (2020). Her work has been acquired by several private collections, including the Lekha and Anupam Poddar Collection at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, India.

 is curated by Gabriel Florenz, and supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Made in Trans-Pakistan

Umber Majeed: Made in Trans-Pakistan

Alvin Armstrong is a painter whose work explores the social and political landscape of Black American culture. His paintings are often filled with real and fictional subjects, culled from archival material, his community and lived experiences. He’s lived in Hawaii, Japan, and California all of which have informed his art practice.


Armstrong received an MS in Eastern Medicine and is a licensed acupuncturist. The self-taught artist had his New York solo debut exhibition This Place Looks Different with Medium Tings in Fall 2020. His first Chelsea solo show To Give and Take was presented at Anna Zorina Gallery in May 2021, curated by Stephanie Baptiste. He was included in the Let Freedom Ring installation curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah at Brooklyn Academy of Music in January 2021 and was selected as an Artsy Vanguard for 2021. Armstrong will present new work in a solo presentation at The Armory Show 2022. His work has been featured in the 

. He will be a Visual Arts Resident at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn in 2022.

3C37BC5E-AE5D-49EE-8157-D88439DD94F1 &#8211; Alvin Armstrong

Alvin Armstrong

 is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and scholar. She has been described by the New York Times as “one of New York’s most adventurous musicians” and “a charismatic and fiercely intelligent performer.” She is a core member of thingNY, Varispeed, and the Chutneys. Her soundwalk Cairns, created with Joseph White, is ongoing at Green-Wood Cemetery. Her work has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. She has released multiple albums on Gold Bolus Recordings. She is a resident artist at the HERE Arts Center, where she is developing the opera mɔːnɪŋ, and she has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opera America, and the Japan Foundation.

Gelsey Bell

Bianca Abdi-Boragi is a French-Berber-American artist who received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and her BFA from ENSAPC (Paris). Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artnet, and Artspiel among others, and her solo shows include the Border Project Space Gallery and CADAF Art Fair. She has exhibited with SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the NYC French Consulate, Chashama Gallery, the Flux Factory, the Immigrant Artist Biennial, Field Project Gallery, NURTUREart Gallery, and internationally. Bianca received the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights from Yale Law School and was a resident at NARS, MASS MoCA's studios, the Centquatre, Paris, and more.

Bianca Abdi-Boragi

ann/drew gayle is a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist whose work is natal to liminal and unnamed spaces. They hope their work can function as a provocation to peak experiences that can only be found in ambiguity and the blurring of lines, social relations, definitions, and roles. Perhaps temporary utopias can exist in a world in desperate need of light. (they/them)

ann/drew gayle

Nahee Kim (she/they) is an artist, teacher, and web programmer who is performing “nahee.app” on social media. nahee.app is a speculative program that writes itself by interpreting Nahee’s sexual identity, preference, and experiences as computational objects. nahee.app creates sex code and documentation and partner matching algorithms by converting mechanisms of existing programming languages and network protocols into provocative interactions. It expands its code about sexual behavior to human reproduction by programming its own experimental family through the project <Daddy Residency> with new forms of intimacy. Based in New York and Seoul, Nahee is 1/3 of the Korean artist collective <업체eobchae> and a member of NEWINC.

Nahee Kim (she/they) is an artist, teacher, and web programmer who is performing “nahee.app” on social media. nahee.app is a speculative program that writes itself by interpreting Nahee’s sexual identity, preference, and experiences as computational objects. nahee.app creates sex code and documentation and partner matching algorithms by converting mechanisms of existing programming languages and network protocols into provocative interactions. It expands its code about sexual behavior to human reproduction by programming its own experimental family through the project &lt;Daddy Residency&gt; with new forms of intimacy. Based in New York and Seoul, Nahee is 1/3 of the Korean artist collective &lt;업체eobchae&gt; and a member of NEWINC.

torrents_of_sex-nahee-kim

torrents_of_sex - Nahee Kim

handshake_erotica-nahee-kim

handshake_erotica - Nahee Kim

daddy-residency-open-call-nahee-kim

daddy-residency-open-call - Nahee Kim

cybersecurity4uterus-nahee-kim

cybersecurity4uterus - Nahee Kim

nahee_app_run_daddy_app &#8211; Nahee Kim

Nahee Kim

Alex Mctigue received his MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BFA in Photography from SVA. His practice often puts pressure on the overlap between photography and language. In 2017 he was a participant of the SOMA summer residency program in Mexico City. His recently published book, Of the night, by the city, was made in conjunction with Penumbra Foundation during the risograph print residency program in the summer of 2021. 

He has previously taught at The Cooper Union, and currently teaches in the photography department at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Alex Mctigue 

Jonathan Ojekunle is a Brooklyn, NY based artist who specializes in portraits. He was born and raised in Oyo state, Nigeria to a father who was an artist and a mother who is a teacher. Jonathan earned a Bachelor of Arts from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife Nigeria. He recently completed his Masters of Fine Art, with a concentration in sculpture, at CUNY Brooklyn College, Brooklyn NY. Over the years, Jonathan has worked on various commissions for individuals, government and professionals. Moving to America was a transformational experience for him. His new portraits are an effort to understand how he sees himself and in a new environment.

Jonathan Ojekunle

Brian Swift is a menswear designer who was born and raised in NYC, though he considers the internet his current home.

He graduated from Parsons in 2018 with a BFA in menswear design.

Upon graduating, Swift launched Alacritous: a queer nightlife label reinvigorating clothing and accessories for the internet age. Alacritous draws inspiration from emerging technologies, memes, and sci-fi films to yield collections that are eclectic, reflective and remixable. Past collections have synthesized digital techniques with exquisite handcraft. This has resulted in unlikely pairings, such as machine knits with crystal pavé, algorithmic textile prints and CNC-cut vinyl denim appliqués.