Team — The Immigrant Artist Biennial [TIAB]

TEAM 2023

Katya Grokhovsky
Founding Director

Born in Ukraine, Katya Grokhovsky is a New York-based artist, educator and Founding Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Grokhovsky has received support through numerous residencies including The California Studio, Manetti Shrem Visiting Artist in Residence at UC Davis, CA, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) Studio Program, Sculpture Space, School of Visual Arts MFA Art Practice Artist in Residence, Kickstarter Creator in Residence, Pratt Fine Arts Department Artist in Residence, Art and Law Fellowship, The Museum of Arts and Design Studio Program, BRICworkspace Residency, Ox-BOW School of Art Residency, Wassaic Artist Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Studios at MASS MoCA and more. She has been awarded the New American Fellowship, FST Studio Projects Fund, Brooklyn Arts Council Grants, NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship, ArtSlant 2017 Prize, Asylum Arts Grant, Australian Council for the Arts Grant, and Freedman Traveling Scholarship for Emerging Artists, among others. Grokhovsky earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University, Australia and a BA in Fashion from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.

Meghana Karnik
Curatorial Adviser

Meghana Karnik works across modalities as a curator, arts administrator, and writer; exploring paradoxes between art and social change, belief and technology, lived experience and institutional process. For Meghana, curating is shaped by relationships—to people, infrastructures, and resources. Currently, she is participating in de Appel Curatorial Programme 2023 (Amsterdam) and is Curator-in-Residence within The Luminary’s Process-As-Practice Residency (St. Louis). From 2021-2022, Meghana was Manager, Grants & Artist Initiatives at Art Matters Foundation (New York) supporting Artist2Artist, a grant program that shifts philanthropic power to culture workers. From 2019-2020, she was Associate Curator for FRONT International 2022 (Cleveland). From 2015-2019, she was Program Manager and later, Associate Director of EFA Project Space (New York). In New York, she serves as a curatorial adviser to The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) and on the advisory board of Critical Practices, Inc. (CPI).

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
Associate Director and Curator

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Guyanese/Swedish independent curator and researcher based in NYC. She is interested in feminism, decolonial theory, and social practice. She has held curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and Bard Graduate Center. She holds dual Master’s Degrees in Art History from Stockholm University and Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center. Anna Mikaela is co-editing *Assuming Asymmetries: Conversations on Curating Public Art Projects of the 1980s and 1990s* and *Archeology of a Profession in Sweden: Curating Beyond the Mainstream* both forthcoming with Sternberg Press. In addition, Anna Mikaela is the founding editor-in-chief of Cultbytes.

Laura Day Webb
Development Officer

Laura Day Webb has a passion for supporting artists on the rise and connecting philanthropy with the arts. As the Development Officer for Patron Circle and Gifts she will expand the biennial funding through a Patron Circle with in-person events beginning in 2022. Currently pursuing her Master's degree in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art in NYC, Laura heads Brand & Partnerships for @newcube.art, a tech forward gallery platform that champions and fosters early career artists. Alongside newcube, Laura is also the Content Manager for Friend of the Artist’s Studio Image Project whose volume to be released next year, showcases the studio spaces of emerging artists across the globe. Laura is also an independent curator whose recent September 2021 exhibition, “The Art of Resilience" ran at NYC’s High Line Nine Gallery and featured works by eight contemporary Kenyan and British artists. The show examined the interplay between art, community, and conservation with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Lewa Wildlife conservancy in Northern Kenya, a non-profit UNESCO World Heritage site.

Katherine Adams
Curator

Katherine Adams is a curator, writer and researcher based in New York. Her recent curatorial work and research has centered on time-based media, performance and photography. She is a graduate of Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies (2023). Previously, she worked as a researcher with galleries including Venus Over Manhattan (New York) and Andrea Rosen Gallery (New York). In 2020, she was a selected participant of IMPAKT Center for Media Culture (Utrecht, Netherlands)'s 'Full Spectrum Curatorship' Program and a scholarship recipient for the Certificate Program of the New Centre for Research & Practice, where she remains affiliated as a Researcher. Her most recent curatorial project is 'Countercapture' at Miriam Gallery (Brooklyn, New York) and in 2020, she served as The Immigrant Artist Biennial's Exhibition Manager. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Yale University.

Carson Woś Development Officer Corporate Sponsors

Carson Woś is a researcher, writer, and arts administrator. Her research interests include fiber art, global feminisms, and architectural sustainability, and she is a freelance contributor of Cultbytes and Artspiel. Carson currently serves as the Director of Operations for Helwaser Gallery and as the Development Officer for The Immigrant Artist Biennial. She has held positions at Artnet, Hampton Court Palace, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, and Creative Capital. In addition, she has worked on capital campaigns for MoMA and Whitney Museum. Carson holds an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center, and an MA (Hons) in Art History from University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Xuezhu Jenny Wang
TIAB 23 Writer-in-residence

Xuezhu Jenny Wang is a Chinese writer and translator specializing in postwar and contemporary visual culture and design. Currently, she is working on a research project that focuses on mid-century interior design and mechanization. Currently working as the managing editor of Revista Jennifer, Wang has previously served as copy editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator, editor of the Columbia Undergraduate Journal of Art History, and producer of The Conversation Art Podcast. Her art criticism has been published in ArteFuse, Art Spiel, and Cultbytes. She has held admin and project-based positions at Barro, Aicon Gallery, and Cai Studio and is pursuing her Bachelor's degree in History and Theory of Architecture at Columbia University.

Bianca Abdi-Boragi
Curator

Bianca Abdi-Boragi is a French-Algerian/ American interdisciplinary artist/curator who received her MFA from Yale School of Art, Sculpture, in 2017, and obtained her BFA from ENSAPC. Her shows have been featured on Hyperallergic, Artnet, Artspiel, Taggverk Magazine among others. Solo shows include the Border Project Space Gallery and CADAF Art Fair. She has exhibited at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the Flux Factory, Heaven Gallery Chicago, The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2020, NARS Foundation, The Border Project Space, VCU Arts, NURTUREart Gallery, Chashama Gallery, Field Project Gallery, Galerie Protégé and has screened art films at Anthology Film Archive, UnionDocs, Video Revival, NY, and the Whitney Humanity Center. Abdi-Boragi was the recipient of the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights from the Yale Law School and was in residency at Pioneer Works, NARS Foundation, MASS MoCA's studios, the Centquatre, Paris, France, Pact Zullverein, Essen, Germany, Cal'Arts, Los Angeles.