Ojala Fellows
Selected artists, scholars and community organizers are invited to stay for free at Casa Ojala for duration of up to 4 weeks. In return the guest will give back to the community in Mexico City through free community events or workshops accessible to public.
Silvana Hurtado Dianderas
April/May 2025
Peruvian by birth and resident in the Netherlands, Silvana builds her artistic identity through a deep exploration of materiality and the senses, within conceptual frameworks that address the body, perception, and memory. Silvana specializes in interactive installations and seeks to activate a symbiotic relationship between work and viewer, inviting participation through stimuli such as sound, taste, and proprioception. During her residency at Casa Ojalá, in collaboration with Otea Autismo A.C. (@oteaautismo) and funding from Stimulerings Fonds Creatieve Industrie (@stimuleringsfonds), she will develop the project Embodied Resonances. This project focuses on the relationship between art and emotional self-regulation in neurodivergent individuals, especially those on the autism spectrum. Through weekly workshops, feedback sessions, and the development of ceramic prototypes, Silvana seeks to create objects that help users listen to their body's signals and encourage emotional regulation. The collective experience will be key to refining the designs, which will culminate in a publication and final exhibition. The project extends its practice toward therapeutic and collaborative approaches, reaffirming art as a space for care, vulnerability, and shared transformation. silvanahurtd.com
Edith Morales
Feb 2025
Her work uses systematization and data collection to question the system, memory, and untraceable evidence, confronting the operation of economic policies and the violence implicit within them. She questions normativity, disappearances, and the invisibility of the individual within the system; gender violence by redefining the symbols used by the state; the misuse of power; food sovereignty; the territory and biodiversity of native corn species; and the dangers they face in the face of policies of dismantling and extractivism. She uses various strategies to address issues of social and cultural importance for indigenous and peasant peoples. Her installations are often based on years of research and participation in social and community organization processes, specifically her works related to the topic of corn and food sovereignty, so the pieces are inserted or take up the thinking of collectives and entire peoples through organizations and not an individual perspective. She participates in struggles of peoples and organizations focused on agricultural and territorial issues, in addition to being a specialist in this topic that is reflected in her pieces. From the space she coordinates, the Milpa Urbana Ecological Center works with the community to defend seeds, water, corn, and share community initiatives. She has exhibited in museums nationwide and abroad, including the United States, India, and Germany. She belongs to the National System of Creators. She is also a member of the State Space in Defense of Native Corn of Oaxaca, the Milpa Urbana Collective, and the Milpa Urbana Ecological Center in Oaxaca. (Website: Edithmorales.com)
Ava Avnisan
July 2024
Ava (She/ Them) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. Ava’s research-based work is situated at the intersection of image, text and code. Using an array of emerging technologies including 3D scanning, augmented and virtual reality, and generative AI, Ava works across installation, performance, photography and film to create artworks that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language. Ava is Assistant Professor of Art and Design at San Diego State University. avivaavnisan.com
Arshia Fatima Haq
May 2024
Arshia Fatima Haq (born in Hyderabad, India) works across film, visual art, performance, and sound, through counter-archives and speculative narratives, and is currently exploring themes of indigenous and localized knowledge within the context of Sufism. Her projects have been presented nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, nightclubs, and in the streets, and have been featured at the Broad Museum, LA; LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions); the Hammer Museum, LA; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston; Onassis Stegi, Athens; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Toronto International Film Festival; and NPR; among others. Haq is the founder of Discostan, a collaborative club-based project, radio show and record label drawing from the cultural production of South and West Asia and North Africa and their diasporas. She has produced radio programming for Dublab and KCRW and currently hosts and produces a monthly radio show on NTS. Haq received an MFA in Film and Video from California Institute of the Arts. arshiahaq.com
Dahlia Ibraheem
March 2025
Dalia is a researcher and PhD candidate in anthropology at Rutgers University, USA. Originally from Cairo, her research explores the relationship between sound, perception, and value in Mahraganat, a genre of Arabic electronic dance music emerging from marginalized neighborhoods in the city. Her main areas of study include popular culture, sport, urban ethnography, nationalism, the anthropology of the arts, mobility regimes, youth, global Blackness, and the anthropology of the state. Previously, she conducted an ethnography on organized ultra clubs in Egyptian football. The images in this post are from her current project.
Alieza Khatami
August 2024
Alireza Khatami is an Iranian writer, director, and producer. He was influenced by the rich oral traditions of his heritage in the Khamse community, which led him to create a unique storytelling style, blending fantasy and realistic narratives. His works explore precarious lives and feature a dark sense of humor. His debut, Oblivion Verses, premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival, winning three awards, including the Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay and FIPRESCI. His second feature, Terrestrial Verses, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.
Pedram Baldari
July 2024
Pedram is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He works as an interdisciplinary artist focusing on coloniality, conflict and statelessness within and outside the arts. He is from Rojhelat (eastern) Kurdistan (Kurdistan region of Iran). He has worked on the Canadian Enbridge pipelines, 3 in Minnesota and 5 in Michigan, passing through Anishinaabe treaty lands as part of his collaborative project Radio Rhizome. His most recent land art project, The Heart of a Mountain, takes place in his homeland, Rojhelat (Eastern) Kurdistan, where he was born and raised in the city of Sine. This project focuses on the Kurdish ways of stewardship of the environment in Hawraman, where these high-altitude mountains served as a refuge to him and many of his people during the ethnic cleansing campaigns against them in the 80s. Baldari has been featured in national and international art venues and biennials such as the Victoria&Albert Museum London, Documenta 13th Import-Export, Video Nomad Tokyo, Art Basel Switzerland, Walker Art Museum, Asheville Center for Craft, Weisman Museum, Plains Art Museum, South Dakota Museum of Art, Amarillo Museum of Art, Art Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Art, the Soo Visual Arts Center, and numerous institutions and galleries worldwide. He has received awards and fellowships from institutions such as Magic of Persia, Jerome Fellowship, and StarDust Foundation. Pedram is named 2021-22 the National Endowment for The Arts Awardee by the MacDowell Foundation. Baldari is the 2022-2023 Luksic Scholars Joint Research Awardee, collaborating with Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the University of Notre Dame. Recently, he received the 2023 Berlin BBA International Artist Prize. Baldari is the recipient of 2024-2025 The Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration award, Office of the Vice President of Research and the Arts Initiative. Pedram has been accepted to residencies internationally, such as Vermont Studio Center 2015-2020, MacDowell Foundation, Yaddo Foundation, Franconia Sculpture Park, Jentel Foundation, Sculpture Space, VCCA, Good Hart Foundation, Kunstferien Letchebach, and Delfina Foundation. pedrambaldari.com
Rebecca Shippee
March 2024
Rebecca Shippee as a resident for March 2024 with biquiniwax mentorship. Rebecca is an artist and curator living in Los Angeles. She graduated from Purchase College in 2013 with a BA in painting and a BA in art history. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018 and graduated with an MFA from Yale University in 2020. She was a resident at the Atlantic Center of the Arts in 2022 and a lecturer at the Norfolk School of the Arts in 2023 and completed a residency at the Sundress Academy of the Arts in 2024. Rebecca is founder of Triangle Projects, which uses unconventional spaces to exhibit artwork. Her interests include novel architecture, sports documentaries and painting in all its forms. In 2024 she will curate an exhibition with the theme "Painting in Real Time" at OCCCA. She will also participate in Other Places Art Fair 2024 with artist Ian Page. As part of her stay at Ojalá, she will engage with independent spaces/collectives in Mexico City under the mentorship of biquiniwax. This residency is a collaborative case study between the two spaces and the artist; a step towards exploring new ways of bridging local and external, without shying away from difficult conversations. Recent projects include To Tire of Grace, a large scale installation in Brooklyn, NY that explores the responsibilities of motherhood within consumerist culture. You Know Your Children, installed at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts (Michigan City, IN), visualized the personal narratives of Potawatomi matriarchs amid the backdrop of U.S.-Native American history and land dispossession. In Madison at Franklin, the artist collaborated with Grand Rapids, MI residents to represent the stories of those affected by the 1967 race riots, the Great Migration, and economic displacement on the city’s southeastern corridor.
Tonya M. Foster
Jan 2024
Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist, editor, and Black feminist scholar. She is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and co-editor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include poetry collections—Thingifications (Ugly Duckling Presse); A History of the Bitch; as well as a 2-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop (Wesleyan University Press); and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). Raised in New Orleans, she is a Louisianian from generations back on the maternal and paternal lines. Dr. Foster holds the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry @ San Francisco State University. As part of her stay at Casa Ojala, Tonya will host a public event at Libreria Utopicas that will consist of readings and a panel discussion with other poets and artists in Mexico on the complexities of Black life and art in the Americas.
Basma Eid
Nov 2023
Basma is Queens NY based organizer, campaigner, and political educator. She is committed to building cross border movements for justice and liberation rooted in solidarity. She has supported various campaigns aimed at the abolition carceral systems, including intersectional divestment campaigns such as #MoMADivest. She has organized around the decriminalization of street vending and other precarious work. She is deeply committed to indigenous sovereignty and has organized in solidarity with the Palestine refugee community in Lebanon. She currently directs campaigns and membership at ESCR-Net, the international network for economic, social, and cultural rights.
Mandy Cano Villalobos
Nov 2023
Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans installation, 2D, performance, and sculpture. Her projects explore ideas of home, memory and cultural identity. She employs discarded, “rewanted” objects to honor the stories of underrecognized individuals, peoples, and cultures. Materials are everyday remnants – tattered clothes, orphan socks, broken toys, kitchen utensils, candy wrappers, metal scraps, and the like. When she incorporate these castoffs into her work, she reassigns them value. What was abandoned becomes precious. This transfer of worth reflects the empathetic potential for viewers to connect with the stories she presents, to see themselves in the othered, and to create a home that encompasses difference. Recent projects include To Tire of Grace, a large scale installation in Brooklyn, NY that explores the responsibilities of motherhood within consumerist culture. You Know Your Children, installed at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts (Michigan City, IN), visualized the personal narratives of Potawatomi matriarchs amid the backdrop of U.S.-Native American history and land dispossession. In Madison at Franklin, the artist collaborated with Grand Rapids, MI residents to represent the stories of those affected by the 1967 race riots, the Great Migration, and economic displacement on the city’s southeastern corridor. Cano Villalobos exhibits throughout the United States, Latin America and in Europe. Venues include Main Window Dumbo (Brooklyn, NY), Marisa Newman Projects (New York, NY), Zolla Leiberman (Chicago, IL), Salon ACME (Mexico City), Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst (Soest, DE), The Modern Gallery (Veszprém, Hungary), Museum of Contemporary Art, Arlington (VA), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), and many others. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ARTnews, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, and The Chicago Reader, among others. She is the recipient of a awards and grants from multiple organizations including the Gottlieb, Puffin, Frey, and Chenven Foundations, the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Cano Villalobos is represented by Proyecto T in Mexico City, Lafontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI, and drj art projects in Berlin. She works in Grand Rapids, MI.