Via PR

In its 15th year, the residency program offers support to artists, curators and scholars from Poland, Ireland, Taiwan, California, Minnesota, and Chicago, whose work addresses a wide range of social issues

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned organization for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, proudly announces the 2026 cohort of resident artists and curators on the fifteenth anniversary of its Jackman Goldwasser Residency. The program offers supportive residencies of varying lengths to local, national, and international artists and curators who work across disciplines to address a wide range of social issues. A new initiative in partnership with 3Arts, Beyond Bodies of Work, is added to the program, offering six-month studio residencies at the Art Center for Deaf and disabled artists.

Developed in partnership with 3Arts, the “Beyond Bodies of Work: A 3Arts + Hyde Park Art Center Residency” builds on the existing 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency, which provides three-month residencies and monthly stipends tailored to Deaf and disabled artists, and is open to alumni of that program. The first resident artist will be Pooja Pittie, a self-taught painter and fiber artist based in Chicago who will have a studio space at the Art Center from June 1 to December 1, 2026. Living with a progressive form of muscular dystrophy, Pittie’s work draws on the dynamics of a slowing body and an active, curious mind. 

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González, Art Center Exhibitions and Residency Manager, shares: “In putting together the cohort, I was thrilled by the clear intersections between the expansive practices of our incoming residents. Each artist and curator is at a pivotal point in their career. Artists are working across expansive mediums from craft and papermaking to performance and installation. Their practices explore bodily and environmental ecologies, integrating tactile and interactive methodologies, as well as deep commitments to the impact of art, history and justice across their communities. I feel privileged to support, engage, and learn from the community of artists with disabilities through our new partnership with 3Arts. ”

For over a decade, the Jackman Goldwasser Residency at Hyde Park Art Center has connected artists deeply with their own practice in the context of Chicago’s vibrant, multifaceted community. Each year, the Residency invites international, national, and local artists and curators to complement their mode of production with increased attention towards reflection, connection, and research to spark new ideas and considerations of local and global art practices. The Residency offers high-quality, free studio space where artists make work, research new projects, access the Art Center’s broad international network of artists and resources, and connect with a dynamic public.  

The participants in the 2026 cohort of the Jackman Goldwasser Residency program are:

Chicago Artists

ebere agwuncha (yearlong resident) is an Igbo-American craftsperson and educator. Their work embodies the histories of various Igbo (an ethnic group of Nigeria) sites, objects, and architectures, paying homage to the traditional collective crafting practice of Nigerian women.

Carlos Flores (yearlong resident) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker whose practice bridges collective construction, performance, and environmental organizing. His work is rooted in the city’s Southwest neighborhoods and explores how public art and community action can counter environmental harm and displacement.

Cydney M. Lewis (yearlong resident) is a multimedia artist working in collage, assemblage, and installation. Her practice transforms everyday materials into explorations of adaptation, spirituality, and the possibility of balance between the natural and human-made worlds.

Yoonshin Park (January 15-May 25) is a Chicago-based artist, educator, and curator whose work reflects on the transience and hybridity of identity through everyday gestures and the experience of in-betweenness across language and place. Rooted in the tactile processes of papermaking and bookbinding, her practice merges material experimentation with quiet meditations on space and self.

Beyond Bodies of Work Resident: Pooja Pittie (June 1-December 1) is a self-taught painter and fiber artist based in Chicago. Living with a progressive form of muscular dystrophy, Pittie’s work draws on the dynamics of a slowing body and an active, curious mind. Through abstract painting and fiber art, she weaves together personal memories, cultural heritage, motherhood, and her experiences of disability, creating intricate compositions that speak to resilience and identity.

A public program introducing some of the Chicago artists will take place at the Art Center on February 27th at 6 p.m., with agwuncha, Flores, Lewis, and Park.

National & International Artists

Fidencio Fifield-Perez (August 1-31) is based in Northern California, where he is an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of California Davis. Through his work, he examines borders, edges, and the people who must traverse them, centering the materiality of paper ephemera.

Sam Gould (July 16-27) is a Minneapolis, Minnesota based artist and publisher whose work sits at the intersection of co-education, the social, and the movement of power in day-to-day life. He is the director and co-founder of “Confluence: An East Lake Studio for Community Design,” a vehicle to research, examine and celebrate the material and social structure of Minneapolis’ 9th Ward and beyond.

Fidencio Fifield-Perez and Sam Gould’s residencies are made possible through the generous support of the McKnight Foundation and Artist Communities Alliance.

Aleksandra Kędziorek (September 14-28) is a Poland-based art historian, curator and researcher working at the intersection of architecture, design, and visual arts. Kędziorek historically-conditioned curation seeks inspiration and creative responses in the past for the challenges of the present.

Two residency exchange programs will be announced in the coming months with Askeaton Contemporary Art (Ireland) and Grand View Art Village (Taiwan). In both exchanges, in addition to the Art Center hosting international residents, alumni of the Jackman Goldwasser Residency will travel abroad to participate in the Art Center’s partners’ residency programs.

For more information on the Jackman Goldwasser Residency, please visit www.hydeparkart.org or email Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González at ggonzalez@hydeparkart.org

The Jackman Goldwasser Residency is funded by: Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation Research and Production Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Artist Communities Alliance, The David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Art Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Joyce Foundation.

About Hyde Park Art Center

Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering, production, and exhibition space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of artists to establishing a strong legacy of risk-taking and experimentation, emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. Today, the Art Center offers a diverse suite of programs for artists and art lovers of all backgrounds, ages, and stages in their careers including: contemporary art exhibitions in six galleries; an open-access community-based school with 2,000 annual enrollments; weekly arts education to 1,000 elementary school students in public schools; weekly and summer teen programs for 100 teen artists; professional-advancement programs for artists; a local and international artist residency; and public programs that connect residents with Chicago art and artists. The Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studio is the nation’s first fully contribute-what-you-can visual art school for all ages. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for creative voices of today and tomorrow, providing the space to cultivate new work and connections. For more information about Hyde Park Art Center, please visit www.hydeparkart.org.