Hello New York! · Edition 4

2025: Hello New York!

DatesJuly 7–18, 2025

WhereBrooklyn, New York

Cohort16 artists

2025: Hello New York! — group photograph — 2025: Hello New York! — Brooklyn, New York.

The edition

What this one was about.

As with other recent editions, participants met with curators, gallerists, and arts professionals across New York, with a program emphasis on "knowledge sharing" and perspectives on urgent cultural issues facing artists working today.

The cohort

16 artists.

Cinthia Kazez

Curator, writer & cultural producer, Buenos Aires

Cinthia Kazez is a curator, writer, and cultural producer based in Buenos Aires. Kazez joined the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a growing practice rooted in contemporary art, critical discourse, and exhibition-making. Working across curatorial projects, writing, and institutional collaborations, Kazez has developed a practice centered on the relationship between art, spatial experience, and cultural dialogue. Her work often engages contemporary artistic production through research-driven exhibitions, interviews, and public programming that bridge artistic inquiry with critical reflection. Active within Argentina’s contemporary art scene, she has contributed to projects and conversations involving leading cultural platforms including MALBA and MALBA Puertos, while also participating in broader dialogues around design, architecture, and contemporary visual culture in Buenos Aires. Through curating and writing, Kazez continues to shape thoughtful exchanges around contemporary art and cultural production in Latin America.

Elena Bajo

Artist, educator & choreographer

Elena Bajo is a Spanish-American artist, educator, and choreographer working between Europe and the United States. Bajo participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025, bringing a deeply interdisciplinary practice that moves fluidly across contemporary art, ecological research, and experimental pedagogy. Working across sculpture, choreography, performance, film, and installation, Bajo has developed a singular practice centered on plant intelligence, ancestral knowledge systems, and ecological transformation. Her work investigates the relationships between bodies, landscapes, and systems of power, often positioning human and more-than-human forms of consciousness as collaborators in processes of artistic production. She is founder of the S.L.A.B Project in Wonder Valley, California, an ecological art platform dedicated to climate action and collective experimentation. Her work has been presented internationally at major institutions and exhibitions including Manifesta 15, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Performa Biennial. In 2026, Bajo was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, further cementing her position as an important voice in contemporary ecological and posthuman artistic discourse.

Ernesto Cabral de Luna

Artist, Toronto

Ernesto Cabral de Luna is a Mexican artist working in Toronto. Cabral de Luna participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a rapidly expanding practice centered on photography, archives, and diasporic memory. Working across analog and digital processes, his practice draws on personal and family archives to explore migration, memory, and the fragmentary nature of storytelling. Through material experimentation—including transfers on metal, glass, and found surfaces—he constructs layered visual narratives that examine rupture, displacement, and cultural inheritance. Recent projects include workshops and exhibitions at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, alongside artist residencies in Banff and New York. His work continues to build a compelling visual language around archival disruption and diasporic experience.

Fer Sucari

Artist, curator & media activist

Fer Sucari is an artist, curator, researcher, and media activist working between Latin America and the United States. Sucari participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025, bringing a long-established interdisciplinary practice spanning video art, digital culture, and critical media research. Working across moving image, installation, software-based works, and curatorial projects, Sucari has developed a practice centered on technology, memory, identity, and the political dimensions of digital systems. His work critically examines the infrastructures shaping contemporary life—from networks and algorithms to systems of mediation and surveillance—while exploring how technology influences perception, communication, and collective experience. A pioneering figure in Latin American media art, Sucari has exhibited and presented work internationally through festivals, museums, and academic platforms, while also contributing to critical discourse through curatorial and educational initiatives. Through artistic production, research, and advocacy, he continues to shape important conversations around technology, visual culture, and contemporary media practice.

Jad El Khoury

Artist & architect, Oslo

Jad El Khoury is a Lebanese artist and architect based in Oslo. El Khoury participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025, bringing an internationally recognized practice shaped by public art, architecture, and political memory. Working across installation, public intervention, and socially engaged practice, El Khoury transforms architecture into a site of healing, using urban space to confront conflict, displacement, and collective trauma. Drawing from his experience growing up in postwar Beirut, his work often activates buildings marked by violence, reimagining them as spaces of reflection, resistance, and renewal. He is widely recognized for Burj El Hawa (Tower of the Wind), his large-scale 2018 installation on Beirut’s war-scarred Murr Tower, as well as projects presented in Oslo, Amsterdam, Paris, and Beirut. A recipient of the Arte Laguna Prize for Urban Art and Land Art, El Khoury has emerged as a powerful voice at the intersection of public art, architecture, and social transformation.

Juan José Cielo

Visual artist, New York

Juan José Cielo is a Colombian-American visual artist based in New York. Cielo participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025, bringing a multidisciplinary practice shaped by migration, speculative thinking, and cultural hybridity. Working across painting, photography, and short film, Cielo has developed a distinctive visual language that merges science fiction, Latin American mythology, and personal memory. Drawing from his experience growing up between Medellín and Miami, his work explores diasporic identity, belonging, and the imaginative possibilities created by living between cultures. Through surreal yet emotionally grounded compositions, he constructs worlds where space travel, folklore, and everyday life collide, using futurity as a framework to examine displacement and aspiration. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and platforms including Coral Springs Museum of Art, Piero Atchugarry Gallery, and Smack Mellon. A recipient of the 2022 YoungArts Jorge M. Pérez Award, Cielo has emerged as a compelling voice in contemporary art, expanding conversations around migration, identity, and imagined futures.

Katherine Zhang

Writer, art historian & curator, New York

Katherine Duxiaole Zhang is a writer, art historian, and curator based in New York. Zhang participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a research-driven practice shaped by critical writing, curatorial inquiry, and transnational perspectives. Educated at The Courtauld Institute of Art and with an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies in Modern Art at Columbia University, Zhang has developed a practice centered on the political and poetic dimensions of visual culture. Her work explores borders, cartography, migration, and systems of perception, examining how images mediate relationships between geography, memory, and power. Moving fluidly between curatorial research, writing, and exhibition-making, she approaches contemporary art as a site for critical reflection and spatial inquiry. Through projects spanning institutional and independent contexts, Zhang is emerging as a thoughtful voice in contemporary curatorial discourse, bringing rigorous historical analysis into dialogue with urgent social and geopolitical questions.

Marcela Villanueva

Curator & cultural producer, Berlin

Marcela Villanueva is a curator and cultural producer based in Berlin. Villanueva participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of an interdisciplinary practice spanning curating, moving image, and experimental cultural programming. Working across exhibitions, screenings, and collaborative research, Villanueva has developed a practice centered on contemporary artistic production, critical discourse, and cross-cultural exchange. She is founder of KarnE Kunst, an independent platform dedicated to experimental artistic practices and interdisciplinary dialogue. Her work frequently engages film, visual art, and expanded curatorial formats, creating spaces for exchange between artists, institutions, and audiences across local and international contexts. Active within Berlin’s contemporary art ecosystem, she has contributed to projects that bridge exhibition-making, moving image, and public programming. Through curatorial practice shaped by experimentation and collaboration, Villanueva continues to build a dynamic voice in contemporary cultural production.

Mariana Vidal Escabi

Artist, designer & educator, New York

Mariana Vidal-Escabi is a Puerto Rican artist, designer, and educator based in New York. Vidal-Escabi participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of an interdisciplinary practice bridging visual art, design, writing, and pedagogy. Working across printmaking, textiles, installation, and artist books, Vidal-Escabi has developed a distinctive practice centered on memory, language, intimacy, and material experimentation. Her work often explores identity and emotional experience through layered visual systems that merge text, pattern, and image. Alongside her studio practice, she serves as Associate Director and Assistant Professor in Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design. Through exhibitions, publishing, and teaching, she continues to build a thoughtful practice at the intersection of art, design, and education.

Maya Bamberger

Independent curator & scholar, New Haven

Maya Bamberger is an independent curator and scholar based in New Haven. Bamberger participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a research-driven practice rooted in collaborative curating, critical inquiry, and collective learning. Working across exhibitions, writing, and discursive formats, Bamberger approaches curating as a social practice, developing methodologies centered on dialogue, active listening, and shared inquiry. Her work focuses on creating temporary research communities with artists, often exploring questions of decolonization, care, spectatorship, and alternative ways of being together. From 2019 to 2023, she served as curator at RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv, where she organized numerous solo and group exhibitions and initiated the Shuttle Project, supporting emerging artists at pivotal stages of their careers. Her independent projects, writing, and editorial work—including Shoket, a magazine for curating—reflect a thoughtful commitment to expanding curatorial practice beyond exhibition-making and toward new forms of collective knowledge production.

Natali Bravo-Barbee

Multidisciplinary artist, New York

Natali Bravo-Barbee is an Argentine-born multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Bravo-Barbee participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a practice grounded in photography, sculpture, and socially engaged artistic inquiry. Working at the intersection of photography, installation, and alternative processes, Bravo-Barbee has developed a distinctive practice centered on memory, migration, identity, and collective care. Using analog, digital, and experimental techniques—including cyanotype—she transforms personal relics and everyday objects into poetic visual records of lived experience. Her work frequently engages motherhood, postcolonial histories, feminist discourse, and intergenerational memory, merging the personal with the political through materially rich installations. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Mattatuck Museum, Flushing Town Hall, and Queens Botanical Garden. Through an evolving practice shaped by research, advocacy, and community engagement, Bravo-Barbee continues to build a powerful voice in contemporary socially engaged art.

Nicole Awai

Multimedia artist & educator

Nicole Awai is a Trinidadian-born multimedia artist and educator based between New York and Austin. Awai joined the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 with an internationally recognized practice spanning painting, collage, sculpture, installation, and mixed media. Working across abstraction and assemblage, Awai has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in material experimentation, cultural memory, and diasporic identity. Her work merges found objects, layered surfaces, and hybrid forms to examine histories of migration, colonialism, belonging, and perception, often blurring the boundaries between personal narrative and collective experience. Over the course of her career, her work has been presented at major institutions including Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, and the Busan Biennale. A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant and an Art Matters Grant, Awai has also held influential teaching positions at Yale School of Art and University of Texas at Austin. Through a rigorous interdisciplinary practice, she continues to shape critical conversations around abstraction, materiality, and contemporary diasporic art.

Nikki Myers

Curator & researcher, New York

Nikki Myers is a curator and researcher based in New York. Myers participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a curatorial practice grounded in archives, photography, and Black visual culture. She develops research-driven exhibitions and programs that examine memory, race, kinship, and the social life of images, with a focus on how representation and historical narratives are constructed, circulated, and contested within contemporary culture. Her work approaches curating as a site of inquiry, using lens-based practices and archival materials to build critical frameworks for reflection and dialogue. Myers has worked across major institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, and The Kitchen, contributing to curatorial research, exhibitions, and public programming. Her practice bridges institutional contexts and independent research-based projects within contemporary art.

Omar Rodriguez-Graham

Artist & educator, Mexico City/Los Angeles

Omar Rodriguez-Graham is an artist and educator working between Mexico City and Los Angeles. Rodriguez-Graham participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a multidisciplinary practice centered on painting, installation, and expanded visual systems. His work engages abstraction as a conceptual field through which to explore history, architecture, and the construction of pictorial space. Moving between geometric structure and gestural disruption, his paintings interrogate how images organize perception, memory, and cultural meaning. He has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City) and the Centro de la Imagen, as well as galleries internationally through Brandt Gallery. He is also active as an educator, contributing to contemporary discourse on painting and visual culture.

Paula Urbano

Multidisciplinary artist, Stockholm

Paula Urbano is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stockholm. Urbano, after participating in the Curatorial Program for Research Hello New York! in 2019, has developed a highly research-driven artistic practice spanning video, installation, sculpture, performance, and text. Her work explores migration, exile, identity, and belonging, often drawing from personal and collective histories shaped by displacement. Working at the intersection of art, architecture, philosophy, and social inquiry, she creates immersive narrative-based projects that examine how place shapes memory and selfhood. Urbano has exhibited internationally across Sweden, New York, Buenos Aires, Miami, and Santiago de Chile, establishing a compelling voice in contemporary socially engaged art.

Rachel Parish

Interdisciplinary artist, theatre-maker & researcher

Rachel Parish is an interdisciplinary artist, theatre-maker, and researcher working internationally. Parish participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2025 as part of a socially engaged practice spanning performance, installation, writing, and collaborative public work. Her practice explores how communities form across human and non-human actors, engaging ecology, history, and social systems through participatory and research-based projects. Working across theatre, visual art, and site-responsive installation, she develops long-term collaborative frameworks that unfold in public spaces, institutions, and non-traditional environments. Her work has been presented at venues including Tate Britain, the de Young Museum, Lyric Hammersmith, Battersea Arts Centre, and the Woodruff Arts Center, as well as in civic and everyday spaces such as streets, schools, and community centers. She has also led projects with organizations including Flux Projects, Art on the Atlanta BeltLine, and Vlerick Business School. Across performance, writing, and pedagogy, Parish builds expansive, dialogic practices rooted in care, listening, and collective inquiry.

All Hello New York! editions