"As artists we are not singular, we are constantly engaging in dialogues with other art, maybe it be of the past, or of our peers and mentors. Thanks to the Djerassi Program, lasting friendships have formed throughout this month, and I am absolutely certain that the art of these new friends will in some way or another inform my own practice in the future." Monika Zobel (2018)
Current Artists in Residence
February 27 – March 26, 2024
The Djerassi Resident Artists Program is thrilled to welcome artists-in-residence in 2024. Learn more about the current residents below!
Amy Lam | Portland, OR | Literary Arts
Amy Lam is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. She was formerly the deputy editor at diaCRITICS, exploring arts and culture of Vietnamese and SE Asian diaspora.
She had been a contributing editor and cohost of Backtalk podcast at Bitch Media, and editorial lead at On She Goes sharing the world of women of color and travel. She is a Kundiman fellow and received an MFA from the University of Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Gay Mag, Indiana Review, and more.
Audrey Johnson | Oakland, CA | Choreography
Audrey Johnson is a queer, Black, mixed-race dance artist and plant worker with roots from Detroit, Michigan/Anishinaabe land, currently based in Oakland, CA/Ohlone land. Audrey’s performance, choreographic, and teaching work experiments with improvisation and embodied time travel, in refusal of colonized time and space.
Her performance work has been presented by CounterPulse, ODC, Gravity, FRESH Festival, RAWdance, (San Francisco); Queering Dance Festival, 2727 California Street (Berkeley, CA); the Malcolm X Jazz Festival (Oakland, CA); Sidewalk Arts Festival, Detroit Dance Exchange, and Daring Dances (Detroit, MI). As a performer and collaborator, Audrey has danced in the companies and projects of artists Gerald Casel (SF), Jennifer Harge (Detroit), Biba Bell (Detroit), Detour Dance (SF), Stephanie Hewett (Oakland), among others. As an educator, she has taught dance as embodied practice at community spaces, dance centers, and youth programs, and is a current faculty member with the LINES BFA Program through Dominican University.
Audrey holds a BFA in Dance with honors from Wayne State University, and was a co-founder of Collective Sweat Detroit, an organization holding spaces for dance and dance artists in Detroit founded in 2017.
Ellison Libiran | San Francisco, CA | Media Arts
Ellison Libiran is a multimedia creative fascinated by the way people are telling stories through events and experiences.
Growing up in tropical islands, he had a strong intimacy with nature and folklore. This informed his natural curiosity for creative storytelling. A graduate of broadcast journalism, Libiran has been in some capacity of professional media for over a decade. In 2014, he co-founded Back Pocket Media with his best friend, a non-profit company that produces live journalism across the United States. Their goal is to revitalize the media space with a more artful experience.
Francesca Carol Rolla | Venice, Italy | Literary Arts
Francesca Carol Rolla (Venice IT, 1986) is a PhD Doctor of Visual Arts, earned at the Doctoral School of Humanities, Strasbourg University, with a thesis entitled “Letters to a Radical Performance Art Curator Performing Urgencies through the Curatorial Praxis.” 15+ years world-wide experience in curating, producing, directing and writing about participatory and inclusive visual art exhibitions, educational activities, and performance art projects. She is a certified Yoga and Pranayama Teacher and she has been traveling the world. She is actually working as Creative and Development Producer for Red String Film Production Company, creating and curating contents for movies and docuseries, and overseeing the development of upcoming projects and international co-productions.
Lucas Baisch | Providence, RI | Playwright
Lucas Baisch is a playwright and artist from San Francisco, currently based in Brooklyn. His plays have been read and developed at the Goodman Theatre, The Playwrights’ Center, The NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights’ Workshop, The Bushwick Starr, The Mercury Store, Cutting Ball Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, The Neo-Futurists, Chicago Dramatists, Links Hall, SF Playground, etc. Full-length plays include: REFRIGERATOR (First Floor Theater), On the Y-Axis (The Bushwick Starr Reading Series), Dry Swallow (Brown University), 404 Not Found (2022 O’Neill NPC Finalist), import speech_memory (Cutting Ball’s Variety Pack Festival), The Scavengers (DePaul University), A Measure of Normalcy (Gloucester Stage), and co-writing on The Arrow Cleans House (The Neo-Futurists).
Lucas is a recipient of a Steinberg Playwright Award, the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center, the Kennedy Center’s KCACTF Latinx Playwriting Award, and the Chesley/Bumbalo Playwriting Award. He is currently a member of Page 73’s Interstate 73 writers group, Ars Nova’s PlayGroup, and the LMCC Workspace residency. Lucas has taught writing at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, Macalester College, The Playwrights’ Center, and through the Chicago Public Schools. His plays have been published by Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, Yale’s Theater Magazine, and forthcoming with 53rd State Press.
Outside of writing for theater, his artwork has been presented at Elsewhere Museum, the Electronic Literature Organization, gallery no one, and the RISD Museum. He has held residencies through ACRE, Elsewhere Museum, Millay Arts, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Goodman Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, and as a Lambda Literary Playwriting Fellow. MFA: Brown University.
McArdle Hankin | San Francisco, CA | Media Arts
McArdle Hankin is a new media and performance artist whose work uses storytelling and collaborative performance. Trained as a journalist, his work, while often rooted in narrative and spoken language, incorporates a range of mediums and scales (new and archival) audio, video, primary text, interviews, and photography.
He co-founded Back Pocket Media, a creative studio that produces live multimedia events and mixed medium art. Back Pocket has partnered with 40+ organizations and 100+ writers, journalists and artists from across the country including the New York Times, ProPublica, Bloomberg, GQ, KQED, Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, Minnesota Street Project, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Shayan Lotfi | Brooklyn, NY | Drama
Shayan Lotfi is a writer whose work has been presented at the Atlantic Theater, Roundabout Theatre, South Coast Repertory, The Lark, and Boston Court.
He is a member playwright at New Dramatists, and has been a member of The Working Farm Writers’ Group at SPACE on Ryder Farm and Page 73’s I-73 Writers Group. He has held residencies at MacDowell, Millay, and Marble House, and is currently under commission from the Atlantic Theater and South Coast Repertory.
Shiuan Chang | Woodside, NY | Composer
Described as “spiritual, light, and comforting” by Classic Agenda (FR), Shiuan is the 2018 Chicago Civic Symphony Composer Prize and the 2021 Asian Cultural Council awardee. He has just completed his residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
His recent major production includes “Sounding Light (2020),” collaborating with the Cloudgate Contemporary Dance Company; Two flagship productions of the Taiwan International Festival of Arts: “I-Village (2021),” collaborating with the Sheng-Xiang Rock Band and the National Symphony Orchestra, and “A thousand stages, Yet I have never quite lived (2021)” collaborating with the Beijing Opera artist Hei-Min Wei and National Symphony Orchestra, directed by Kengsen Ong; 80 minutes production “Fateless Love (2022)” for orchestra, choir, and three singers premiered by National Symphony orchestra and Taipei Chamber Singers.
CHANG Shiuan’s music has been performed nationally and internationally at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Suntory Hall, Jordan Hall, Moscow Philharmonic Chamber Hall, Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Taiwan National Concert Hall, Le Phenix Valenciennes, Royaumont, Archipel Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, Grafenegg Festival, and the Bartok Festival. In addition, he has been commissioned and collaborated with the Tonkunstler Orchestra, Taiwan Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Civic Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Asasello Quartett, TANA Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Atlas Ensemble, Ensemble Multilaterale, Ensemble Musicatreize, Earplay Ensemble, Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, Ekmeles Ensemble, Les Metabole, Princeton Singers, and Orkest de Ereprijs.
Shoo Shin | Chicago, IL | Visual Arts
Soo Shin is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist who creates drawings, sculptures, and installations that explore poetic moments and spaces where the body reveals its personhood. Shin received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the United States and her BFA from Ewha Womans University in South Korea. She has been awarded the Individual Artist Grant, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago, IL, USA; Fellowship, Kohler Arts/Industry, Kohler, WI, USA; Vilcek Foundation Fellowship, Macdowell Artists Residency, Peterborough, NH, USA. Shin has exhibited at venues including Patron gallery, Chicago, IL, USA; Art Basel Miami, Miami Beach, FL, USA; Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago, IL, USA.