Artist Residencies

Through its Artist in Residence (AiR) program, Urbano provides an exhibition, socialization, and dissemination platform to emerging and mid-career artists locally, nationally, and internationally renowned for their socially engaged practice. Our AiR program has stabilized into a format and model for involving contemporary artists and youth in participatory public art, gaining increasing attention for both the artists and the organization.

AiRs use their projects as teaching tools for the Youth Artist Projects and the greater community, bringing social justice issues to the fore through art. Through our work with culturally-diverse AiR, we have expanded our audience to reach communities that might not typically attend our arts venues.


 

Search by theme, medium or year

 

 

OUR PLANET, OURSELVES

2022-2023

This year’s programming seeks to explore this idea of interconnectedness between our planet, our bodies, and ourselves through the practices of placemaking, performance, and creative justice. Of particular importance is the role of our bodies within environmental activism movements and notions of the self, which not only includes human bodies but more-than-human beings (water, plants, fungi, etc.). How do we think about environmental justice activism, and how may art function as a platform to advance notions of care and co-evolution?

 

 

DEMOCRACY

2021-2022

As we continue to contend with ongoing social, political, and economic injustices unveiled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, how can art help us move towards a more inclusive and equitable society? How can art encourage social action to develop and nurture a democracy that benefits and empowers us all?

Through the lens of DEMOCRACY, this year’s Artists-in-Residence (AiR) exemplify practices in community organizing, placemaking, public art, activism, social practice, institutional critique, and participatory artmaking. Their projects explore individual, collective, and intersectional interpretations of democracy, with topics including representation, inclusion, participation, collaboration, accessibility, human rights advocacy, mutual aid, capitalism, and other social systems and civic dialogues.

 

RADICAL CARE

2020-2021

How do we share practices that foster community care and participation and make this line of human-centered work public through art? Through the lens of Radical Care, this year’s Artists-in-Residence use the process of making as caring are exploring and creating forms of care for themselves and their communities and reimagining technological and non-technological forms of togetherness, resulting in virtual and hybrid meetings and events. 


CREATIVE CONDITIONS

2019-2020

The theme Creative Conditions sought to explore what toolkits are artists creating to change the conditions we live in. What conditions do artists need to create? Artists-in-Residence worked closely with youth artists to explore this theme by means of storytelling, scriptwriting, journaling, research, and production.


RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY

2018-2019

By addressing physical, social, and economic challenges, Urbano joined a city-wide initiative to build a more resilient Boston. Artists-in-Residence worked closely with community partners and youth artists to explore the theme of Resilience and Sustainability through a racial, socio-economic, gender, sexual orientation, and environmental, intersectional lens.


THE COMMONS | THE OTHER

2016-2017

Artists, staff, project facilitators, and youth worked closely with community partners in the Egleston Square neighborhood to explore issues of racial, ethnic, cultural, and urban identity and representation embedded within the social synergies of spatial distribution. Through Urbano’s place-making approach, Artists-in-Residence developed social laboratories for creativity to increase inter-group understanding, tolerance, and civic culture.