NOLA/NYC Research Fellowship Spring 2025
Residency Begins: Tuesday, April 1 – Tuesday, June 3 2025
Meet the Fellows of the Spring 2025 NOLA/NYC Residency
Steffi Stouri is an independent curator and researcher based in Athens, specializing in feminist epistemologies, archival practices, and sonic art. With an academic background in Heritage and Museum Studies (MA, University of Amsterdam) and History and Philosophy of Science (BSc, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens), her work explores the intersections of gender, identity, and memory. Her curatorial projects often engage with embodied experiences and fragmented histories, aiming to challenge dominant narratives through collaborative practices and innovative exhibitions.
Notable projects include Otherlands (2024) a site specific exhibition and sonic performance in the archaeological site of Heraion, Unboxing Callas (2023–2024), an archival and group exhibition exploring the legacy of Maria Callas in dialogue with the Greek National Opera’s archive, and From Cartography to Cookbooks (2021), a digital exhibition examining Dutch colonialism through cartography and culinary history. She has also curated sound-focused projects like Chase (2018), a sound installation exploring sonic performance and the body, and Symbiotic Degradation (2020), a hybrid exhibition addressing environmental degradation and its artistic representations. Her practice is deeply informed by a commitment to reparative curating, cultural exchange, and community engagement. Through the NOLA/NYC Research Fellowship, she seeks to expand her exploration of sonic art, while connecting the cultural histories and musical legacies of New York and New Orleans to her ongoing curatorial work.
Angelo Plessas lives and works between Athens and Kymi, Greece. He explores the intersection of spirituality and the networked world, investigating how ancient, folk, and cybernetic histories intertwine. By weaving together elements from the spiritual and the online realms, Plessas creates spaces that challenge the notion of binaries—material versus virtual, human versus machine, past versus future—proposing instead a fluid reality where all these dimensions converge. His work spans performances, artist residencies, artist’s books, interactive websites, quilted sculptures, neon installations, and educational projects.
His work has been exhibited in Documenta 14, the 8th Thessaloniki Biennale, the Onassis Foundation, the 8th Biennale of Gherdëina, the Serralves Foundation, and the 13th Gwangju Biennale in S. Korea. Other projects have also been exhibited in The Museum of Contemporary, Chicago; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; the DESTE Foundation, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. He is the founder of the independent space P.E.T. Projects in Athens. He won the DESTE Foundation Prize in 2015.
Meet the Jury of the Spring 2025 NOLA/NYC Research Fellowship
We would like to thank our stellar jurors for their service in thoughtfully and patiently considering the applications!
Chris Alfieri is a founding member, President and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Prospect New Orleans (PNO). He was appointed Chairman in 2018. Since 2008, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Prospect New Orleans has presented the work of more than three hundred Artists from around the globe, the vast majority underrepresented and identifying as BIPOC. Prospect is the longest-running exhibition of its kind in the United States. Prospect Artists are selected by some of America’s most talented curators, Dan Cameron (P.1 & P.2), Franklin Sirmans (P.3), Trevor Schoonmaker (P.4) and now, Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi (P.5) and Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson (P.6). For over a decade, Prospect has invited Artists to be inspired by New Orleans and to reflect the intricate histories of this tricentennial City in their work. The current exhibition (P.6, The Future is Present the Harbinger is Now) is a citywide contemporary art triennial featuring fifty artists who have created newly commissioned works. New Orleans is a uniquely American city that embodies so many urgent issues of today, but which remains deeply invested in and subject to its recent and historical past.
George is the Executive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City, former Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans and co-founder and Executive Director of Elsewhere, an experimental museum and artist residency. He is also a founding member of Readying the Museum, a national cohort of artists and museum directors designing a solutions-based methodology for systemic change in the museum sector. As a cultural critic, George writes about arts, museums, cultural economy, urbanization, and place. Other projects include Kulturpark, a public investigation of an abandoned amusement park in East Berlin. George holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Political Communications, MA in Critical Theory and Visual Culture from Duke University, and a PhD in Communication and Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mare Spanoudaki (ARCAthens Fellow, 2024) is a multidisciplinary researcher, cultural worker, and curator whose work spans diverse fields, including social movements and identities, folk and popular culture, institutional critique, exhibition histories, and themes of communality and intimacy. She holds a BA in Communication, Media, and Culture from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, an MA in Cultural Policy and Management from City, University of London, and an MRes in Exhibition Studies from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She has curated community projects, archival material, online platforms, art publications and contemporary art exhibitions in Greece, the UK, and Germany. She has also worked for numerous cultural and art institutions across Europe, where she has actively engaged in producing, communicating, and organizing cultural events.
