Toward a Sentence

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About the Curatorial Fellow:

Vu Thien An (Thea) Nguyen is an emerging curator and art researcher based between New York and Hanoi. Her research considers how translation and communication operate within studio practice, tracing how ideas move across languages and forms of making. Grounded in care, her practice nurtures and presents evolving voices. She works as a facilitator and bridge-builder to bring together people, concepts, while responding to cultural narratives.

Recently, Nguyen curated Leah Liu's solo exhibition susurrus at the Chinese American Arts Council | Gallery 456 (New York), and co-curated Womb of Fire, a traveling exhibition and publication project featuring 100 works by Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese women and non-binary artists. She is part of Parsons School of Design, Design History and Practice Program Class of 2026 and currently serves as Curatorial Assistant to guest curator Phil Zheng Cai for the 2026 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program at Residency Unlimited.

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About the artists:

Obadah Aljerfri is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist and designer rooted in long-term inves-tigations into identity and perception across queer, Muslim, and diasporic experience. Their con-ceptual practice integrates painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and illustration with satir-ical, abject, and tender gestures that trouble the violences of the gaze. Holding an MFA in Integrat-ed Practices from Pratt Institute and a BFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and De-sign, they bring over ten years of experience in art production, art direction, illustration, and branding across art, design, fashion, and marketing. Aljefri has worked on major exhibitions with Muhannad Shono, Jenny Polak, and Andrew Woolbright, and has exhibited internationally at Ithra, the Bronx Council on the Arts, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, and Volta Basel.

Erika Choe is a Brooklyn-based artist working across sculpture, performance, video, and installation. She holds an MFA from School of Visual Arts and a BA with highest honors from University of Virginia. She has received the NARS Foundation Full US Fellowship 2026, James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship Award by NYC Crit Club ‘25, Artist Sculpture Award by Zola ’25, Ceramics Residency by NYCxDESIGN Festival ‘24, and the Ruth Caplin Dance Award for Artistic Excellence ’15. Erika performed at renowned venues like The Shed NY, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Fridge Art Gallery NY, and Schrittmaacher Festival in Germany, performing for international choreographers like Akram Khan, Alejandro Cerrudo, and Yin Yue.

Jisoo Chung is a multimedia artist working across video, installation, drawing, and performance. As a Korean artist who relocated to the United States, she examines failures in language—mistranslations, autocorrections, and linguistic omissions—to trace the sociocultural power embedded in language and names. Her practice considers how identity is negotiated, distorted, or rendered invisible through systems of translation. Chung is a nominee for the United States Artists Fellowship, a fellow of the MacDowell Residency, and she has received grants from the LACE Lightning Fund (Andy Warhol Foundation), the Puffin Foundation, the Seoul Arts and Culture Foundation, and Jungwoon Prize at the Seoul International Experimental Film and Video Festival, among others. Chung holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BFA from Seoul National University. She served on the production committee at GYOPO, is a co-founder of an after school art program Drawwing Cabinet, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Bakersfield College. She lives, works, and teaches in Los Angeles.

Priyanka Dey lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and holds a BFA from Pratt Institute. Originally, Dey is from Mumbai, India. Dey aims to create works that play with optics of perception by experimenting with and leveraging obscurity. Her process lays emphasis on striking balance between a calculative yet intuitive paradigm and resists a definitive categorization.

Nicole Economides (b. 1992, New York, USA) is a visual artist working between Athens, Greece and New York, USA. She holds an MFA from Parsons School of Design, The New School (2019). Economides has presented solo exhibitions including Sunday Afternoon (Callirrhoë, Athens, 2024) and Illusion of Home, as a Memory (Callirrhoë, Athens, 2023), and participated in group shows at MOMus, Athens (2023); Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, and Lincoln Center, New York (2021); and Queens College, CUNY, New York (2020). She has received the Hopper Prize (2024), ARTWORKS Stavros Niarchos Foundation Fellowship (2022), and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2018). Her work has been featured in Financial Times, Coveteur, Loophole and Kathimerini.

Aviv Grinberg (b. 1991) is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, installation, and readymade. His practice investigates systems of order, concealment, and transformation through both industrial and organic materials. Drawing from personal history, including his identity as a gay man, his late sister’s mental illness, and his service as a prison guard, Grinberg’s work engages with structures of control and the ways in which they shape behavior, perception, and memory. He has worked extensively with everyday maintenance objects such as carpet beaters and cleaning product containers, using them to explore how social and psychological systems are maintained, hidden, and internalized. In recent work, he shifts from industrial defects to organic ones, focusing on damaged plants, diseased leaves, and natural processes of growth and decay. Through this transition, he examines the tension between control and release, and questions whether what we perceive as flaws are disruptions or inherent conditions of living systems.

Arom Ju is a multidisciplinary visual artist from South Korea, now based in the U.S. Beginning in digital illustration, she translates the flat precision of screen-based imagery into painting, bridging digital and physical languages. She has recently expanded her practice to include mobile-like mov-ing elements that explore motion and fragility. Ju holds an MFA from Hongik University and has ex-hibited in the United States and Korea, including at the New Museum Los Gatos, A Space Gallery, and Bushwick Gallery in Brooklyn. Her work has also been featured by institutions such as Microsoft and The New York Times.

Noa Klagsbald (b.1992) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working between Tel Aviv and London. She holds an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA (Magna Cum Laude) from Shenkar College of Art. Klagsbald creates staged photographic and installation works exploring power dynamics and masculinity within culturally charged arenas such as sport. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Camden Art Centre, OOF Gallery London, the Jewish Museum Lecce, Museum on the Seam, and the Cultural Olympics Paris. She was selected for New Contemporaries 2023 (UK) and is a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumna. A photograph from her GOAL series was presented aboard the International Space Station as part of Axiom Mission 1.

Colby Lamson-Gordon is a Brooklyn-based artist working across image, video, and sound. Adopted from China to the United States, they explore (dis)placement and imagined memory through pro-cess-driven images and experimental documentary. Their practice draws on the archive and em-bodied knowledge to probe longing and the instability of personal history. Lamson-Gordon’s work has shown at Ridgewood Off-Kilter Film Festival, East Village Film Festival, Residency Unlimited, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Mannes School of Music, and Gallery ZXY. They hold an MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Economics from Barnard College, where they received the O’Connor Award for best economic thesis. An upcoming resident at NARS Foun-dation and Vermont Studio Center, they live in Brooklyn and teach at Parsons.

Ailyn Lee (b. South Korea) received her MFA in Fine Arts and BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. She has exhibited her work at various venues in New York and South Korea, including A.I.R. Gallery, Latitude Gallery, SVA Chelsea Gallery, and the Busan International Art Fair. She has been an artist-in-residence at the New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in 2025, Wassaic Project, and Vermont Studio Center.

Jill Smith (she/her) is a queer, Jewish multi-disciplinary artist, born and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. She is interested in the archival properties of materials, objects, and rituals. Through her material and process-based practice, Smith explores the tensions between presence and absence, connection and distance, and the ways in which perception of memory and lineage may shift over time. 
Smith has exhibited work in Canadian spaces including the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Centre[3] for Artistic + Social Practice, The Brandscape, Ed Video Media Art Centre, Forest City Gallery, and Friends and Neighbours Gallery. Smith holds a Master of Fine Arts from University of Waterloo, (Canada, 2024) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honors Specialization in Studio Art) from Western University (Canada, 2017). She has participated in artist residency programs at AGA LAB in Amsterdam (2017), and Luminous Bodies at Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto (2018), and is currently artist-in-residence at NARS Foundation in Brooklyn (2026). Smith is the recipient of grants and awards from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Keith and Win Shantz International Research Scholarship, among others. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at Cocoon in Montreal (2026).

Fe holds a BFA in Art and Art Education from Pratt Institute, where they trained in woodworking, glass, metal fabrication, mold-making, and photographic processes. Lugo has been an educator in New York City arts programs and has held residencies including Stove Works and Wassaic Project. Their work has been presented in community-centered art spaces and interdisciplinary exhibitions, and they continue to expand their practice through research-driven studio work, material experi-mentation, and teaching. Lugo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Rowan van As (1991, Goes, NL) is a Rotterdam-based visual artist who creates installations, sculptures, and performances, often as social gestures. He studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy (2010–2014) and earned his MFA at St. Lucas, Antwerp (2015–2016).He draws from everyday urban life, remixing found images and objects into layered, surreal works that shift the meaning of the discarded.Food forms an intuitive part of his later practice — as material and connector. From April to June 2026, he will be in residence in New York, developing a project on the city’s oyster history.His most ambitious project to date is a functioning reinterpretation of a classic yellow cab, which he aims to bring to New York.His work explores the relative powerlessness of the individual, seeking a poetic language that is playful, confrontational, and open to dialogue.

Chanya Vitayakul (they/them, b. 2003) is a multidisciplinary artist from Bangkok, Thailand. Their work has been exhibited in New York, Rhode Island, South Korea, and Thailand, and has appeared in publications including Curatory Magazine, Divide Magazine, New Visionary Magazine, and the Survivor Arts and Writing Collective. Chanya holds a BFA in Graphic Design︎︎︎ from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)︎︎︎ and is based in Long Island City, New York.

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