Gabriel Sosa and Sam Richardson Named Urbano Project's Winter 2021 Artists in Residence

Urbano Project has announced that Gabriel Sosa and Sam Richardson will be the two Artists in Residence working on the theme of Radical Care in Winter 2021, leading virtual Youth Artist Projects for Boston Public School teens from January through March. Richardson's "When We See Each Other" will focus on learning to care for each other and our communities through the lens of photography; and Sosa's "Reading the Public Space" will explore language as a medium for healing, through collaborative conversations and public art. Visit www.urbanoproject.org for information.

Sam Richardson's "When We See Each Other" project takes the form of collaborative image making and radical acts of how we care for one in another within the context of photography. Youth artists will think about how to produce art within practices or care, engage in the history of photographic collaboration, and envision how they, and their community, would like to be represented at this current moment. The workshop is an expansion of Self-Portrait Service (SPS), a collaborative project with artist V Haddad. The initial foundation of SPS is ongoing to anyone within the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. The work is in service of collaborators: their needs, desires, and visions for imaging themselves are paramount.

Gabriel Sosa will lead the Youth Artist Project "Reading the Public Space," which explores the use of language as a medium for healing. This project includes close examination of artists who deeply integrate text and language into their artistic practices. Students will create work that engages the hopeful and thought-provoking elements in language. In doing so, they'll consider how to resourcefully and effectively place this language in the public space.

Youth Artists Projects are in-depth long-term artistic explorations of Urbano's annual theme through the lens and mentorship of the Artist in Residence, resulting in projects that are presented in the public realm, physically and virtually. Urbano's Winter 2021 Call for Youth Artists is open and accepting applications at: http://urbanoproject.org/call-for-youth-artists-winter-2021-yaps. Each AiR's Youth Artist Project will be taught virtually and with other COVID safe adaptations. Students will be paid a stipend for participation, and art materials will be delivered.

Visit www.urbanoproject.org for more information.

Sam Richardson is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in photography, as well as video, sound and writing. She is based in Los Angeles, CA. As an image maker working in a documentary-informed practice, Richardson strives to unlearn, break open and find new ways of creating images that interrogate collaboration and photographic relationships in the context of the body, trauma and care. She utilizes her experience as a Crisis Counselor to survivors in the ER of New York City, abolitionism and personal history to enter her work with a practice of care and investigation into personal and shared experience. Sam's work has been shown at Studio Voltaire in London, ACUD Galerie in Berlin, Metrograph NYC, and Bard College in upstate New York. Sam has been an Artist-in-Residence at Room and Board and UnionDocs (UNDO) in NYC, and has collaborated on organizations and projects such as JusticeLA, California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Bard Prison Initiative, and the Women's Prison Association.

Gabriel Sosa is an artist, curator, educator, and linguist based in Boston. Through a multi-disciplinary practice that includes drawing, video, and public installation, he combines interests in translation, memory, and social justice to explore how the use of language subtly and consistently shapes our everyday experiences. His work has been shown at the Tufts University Art Galleries; O, Miami Poetry Festival; Centro Cultural Español, Miami; La Fábrica de Arte Cubano, Havana; A R E A, Boston; and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. He was one of the curators of the Area Code Art Fair 2020, the first art fair focused on artists with ties to New England, and has also organized exhibitions at the Nave Gallery in Somerville and Haley House in Roxbury. Gabriel has been an Artist-in-Residence at Lugar a dudas, Cali, Colombia; Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Mass MoCA; and Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, CA. He is currently a Now + There Accelerator Fellow, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

His most recent project "No es facil/It ain't easy" is a bilingual series of nine billboards shown in various Boston neighborhoods from July 2020 through January 2021; specifically, in immigrant communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, including East Boston, Roxbury, Roslindale, Mattapan, and Dorchester. The phrasing draws from the vernacular of his Cuban-American upbringing and the poetry of William Carlos Williams in an effort to subvert an iconic consumerist medium to provide comfort and solidarity in the midst of these difficult times.

For more information about Sosa visit his Website

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