Athens Residency Spring 2025
Residency Begins: Monday, February 17th – Monday, April 14th 2025
Over the past two decades, Sara Cochran worked in a variety of museums across the United States. In 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, she opened The Church, an art center in Sag Harbor (NY) with artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik. She curated and co-curated 13 exhibitions, including 5 major thematic shows Road Rage, Empire of Water, Threading the Needle, Strike Fast Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, and Are You Joking: Women & Humor. Previously, she collaborated with artist Gregory Sale on a year-long project, Future IDs, on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco. As Director and Chief Curator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art she doubled the museum’s annual attendance and curated 8 exhibitions, including with Betye Saar and Postcommodity. As Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Phoenix Art Museum, Cochran organized 15 exhibitions, premiering Kehinde Wiley’s Memling Series. Earlier in her career, she held curatorial positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She earned her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and Masters from Université de la Sorbonne, Paris IV. In 2015, she participated in the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate Universities.
Especially in these polarized times, contemporary art and museums can serve as a calm and compelling arenas in which viewers can see through the eyes of others, understand new points of view, explore questions without the heat of politics, and be a laboratory for invention. I believe passionately in doing the hard work to bridge the divide between artists and the general public in ways that respect art and viewers. Relevancy is key and a produce of sustained conversations that make us all stronger.
Gouled Ahmed is an Addis Ababa-based Somali visual artist, costume designer, and filmmaker. They are the recipient of the African Cultural Fund’s inaugural grant (2019), the Prince Claus Fund’s inaugural Seed Award (2021), the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Production Programme Grant (2022) & the Graham Foundation’s Research Grant (2023).
Gouled’s self-portrait photography work has been exhibited widely at institutions such as the V&A Museum, London (2022), The Brooklyn Museum (2022), the Portland Museum of Art (2023), The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Australia (2024), Lahti Biennial, Finland (2023), & the 15th DAK’Art Biennial, Senegal(2024).
Their collaborative film with poet Asmaa Jama ‘The Season of Burning Things’ has been screened at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Oscar qualifying Black Star Film Festival (2022), BAFTA qualifying Aesthetica film festival (2022), the Arab film festival at the Barbican Center, London (2022), and Art Basel Hong Kong (2023). Their latest collaborative film has had solo presentations at Spike Island Gallery, Bristol UK (2023) and The Africa Center, Harlem NY USA (2024). It will be screened at the ICA, London in 2025 through the Bloomberg New Contemporaries program.
Gouled was selected to be part of DAZED MENA’s inaugural 100 list (2024), and was also featured in the documentary ‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’, a film commissioned by Johnnie Walker (2021). They have previously been an artist in residence at Black Rock Senegal (2022) & were most recently selected as a MacDowell fellow (Spring/ Summer 2025).
Meet the Jury of the Spring 2025 Athens Residency
We would like to thank our stellar jurors for their service in thoughtfully and patiently considering the applications!
Paolo Colombo is a curator and an artist. He’s been the Art Advisor for the Istanbul
Museum of Modern Art (2008 to 2023). With Tamara Chalabi, he co-curated the Iraq
Pavilion for the 2019 and 2017 Venice Biennales. He was a curator for the 2nd
Mardin Biennale in 2012, and a curator for the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial, in 2011.
From 2001 to 2007 was Curator of The Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo in
Rome. From 1989 to 2000 he was Director of the Centre d’art contemporain in
Geneva. In 1999 he curated the 6th Istanbul Biennial.
Among his exhibitions are: Rosemarie Trockel, Reflections (2016); Ed Ruscha MixMaster (2015); In Praise of Shadows (2009); Ed Ruscha (2004); Francis Alÿs (2002); Kara Walker (2000);
Christopher Wool (1999); Pipilotti Rist (1996); Ugo Rondinone (1996); Rosemarie
Trockel (1994); Juan Munoz (1991); Kiki Smith (1991); Robert Gober (1988).
As an artist, in recent years he’s had one person shows in Los Angeles, Geneva,
Athens and London.
He published two books of poetry: the first one in Greece with Ekdosis Agra in 2014,
the other in Turkey with Kiraathane in 2022. He has been associate producer of a number of award winning films, including “The Edge of Heaven” and “Soul Kitchen” by Fatih Akin; and “The Tree” by Julie Bertuccelli, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Joy Glidden is best known as the founder of the Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival, and the DUMBO Arts Center. She was the director of New Orleans-based nonprofit Louisiana ArtWorks, founding director of PBS television series, Art Index TV (2010–present) and founding director of the Center for the Preservation of Artists’ Legacies (CPAL) (2020–present). She served on the PROSPECT New Orleans.1 Honorary Committee Member, and on the Board of Directors of ArtTable as the National VP of Programs. She currently serves on the Advisory Committee to Harlem Burial Ground, Harlem, NY. Glidden has given talks on developing non-profit art organizations for New York University, 92nd Street Y, and the Pratt Institute, lectured on entrepreneurship in the arts at Appalachian State University, and on professional career development for MFA students at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Louisiana State University. Glidden has lectured on the positive economic effects of an artist’s community with the Danish, Norwegian, and Korean Consulates.
Tariku Shiferaw (ARCAthens Fellow, Spring 2023) is a New York based artist who explores the concept of ‘mark-making’ to address the physical, social, and political spaces of art and societal constructs. A select list of institutions Shiferaw exhibited with include the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland), The Drawing Center (New York), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (Germany), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (Cleveland), California African American Museum (Los Angeles), Zuckerman Museum of Art (Kennesaw), Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), and Smack Mellon (Brooklyn).
Shiferaw has participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2018-2019) and in Open Sessions at The Drawing Center (2018-2020). He has also been an artist-in-residence at the LES Studio Program (NY), Silver Art Projects (NY), ARCAthens (Greece), Experimental Print Residency at Lafayette College (PA), and Vermont
College of Fine Arts (VA).
