Introducing Our 2026 Open Call Residency Cohorts
Introducing Our 2026 Open Call Residency Cohorts
2.5.2026
The Luminary is thrilled to introduce our 2026 Residency Cohorts, marking the beginning of a year-long collaboration with eleven artists, curators, writers, and organizers. Over the coming year, residents will pursue creative research and develop new projects in and in dialogue with St. Louis.
The 2026 Open Call residency program is framed by ECHOES / ECOS, a thematic lens that considers how ideas, technologies, environments, and communities reverberate across social, political, and planetary systems. Within this framework, research is approached as a collective, responsive process—asking how signals travel, mutate, and return through shared cultural and ecological contexts.
Selection Process
Selected through a highly competitive open call that received over 130 applications from sixteen countries across five continents, the 2026 residents were chosen by a jury composed of artist Chloë Bass and curator-writers Pia Singh and TK Smith. Residents were organized into three thematic cohorts based on shared points of convergence across research interests, questions, and artistic approaches—designed to foster cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exchange. These themes function as flexible frameworks rather than prescriptive prompts, allowing residents to pursue experimental and critical inquiry grounded in their own practices.
2026 Residency Cohorts
AI & Creative Ethics
Amada Miller (Marathon, TX)
Jordan Brown (Baltimore, MD)
Elizabeth Withstandley (Los Angeles, CA)
Free Speech & Artistic Expression
Rami George (Philadelphia, PA)
Joyce Chung (Philadelphia, PA)
CAO Collective (Laura Dudu (Oakland, CA) & Huiyin Zhou (Durham, NC))
Climate Futures
Barnett Bolen Projects (Nina Barnett (Johannesburg, SA) Jeremy Bolen (Atlanta, GA))
Erin Turner (Brooklyn, NY)
Sang Woo Yoo (Chicago, IL)
Residency Experience
Over the course of each cohort’s two-week residency, The Luminary’s staff will engage residents through site visits, studio visits, and community-based encounters responsive to their evolving lines of inquiry. Residents will also be invited to participate in public-facing and educational programming, including artist talks, panel discussions, studio visits, and workshops.
Learn more about each of the 2026 Open Call residents here: https://theluminaryarts.com/past-residents