The New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation is pleased to present It would hurt us – were we awake –, a group exhibition featuring work from the Season III, 2025 International Residency Artists: Jayden Ashley, Doreen Chan, Elizabeth Chang, Alessandro Di Lorenzo, Gill Gatfield, Kimin Kim, Shivani Mithbaokar, Maya Smira, Cass Yao, Giorgia Volpe, Kay Yoon, and Tony Zhao, curated by NARS Curatorial Fellow Daniela Mayer.

‍It would hurt us – were we awake – presents twelve international artists whose works drift along the mutable edge of sleep and waking life, where inner sanctuaries are unsettled by invisible architectures of external power. Shaped by today’s pervasive climate of ambient anxiety, the exhibition reflects on how sites of rest and refuge—mental, bodily, or built—are rendered precarious by elusive, often existential forces. Across media, the artists explore these fragile barriers, navigating the tension between safety, vulnerability, and the subconscious.

Expanding on the artists’ meditations on twilight shadowlands, a collection of unique artist-made Dream Zines complements the exhibition.

Read the Dream Zines here.

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About the Curatorial Fellow:

Daniela Mayer is an independent researcher, curator, and educator specializing in modern and contemporary art across the Americas, with a focus on transnational networks and the intersections of identity, race, and socio-political histories. Their curatorial practice emphasizes accessibility and social responsibility, highlighting artists who critically engage with power structures andunder represented histories.

Mayer curated and organized Cosmic Shelter: Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida’s Private Cosmococas at the Hunter College Art Galleries (October 2023–March 2024), which featured the U.S. premiere of two unique installations by the namesake Brazilian artists. In July 2024, Mayer curated Para Todos Todo, Free in the Open Air at MAMA Projects, the first solo New York exhibition of Colombian-American artistChristina Barrera. They also organized A Sense of Place, a 2021 symposium in collaboration with The Artist’s Institute and Dakar’s Raw Material Company, focusing on intersections of art, activism, and marginalized histories. Mayer also contributed to the curatorial team and exhibition catalogue for Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms (2019) at the Robert RauschenbergFoundation.

Their research has appeared in Art Style: Art & Culture International Magazine, and they are a contributing writer at Hyperallergic. Mayer was a lecturer at Hunter College and guest lectures at the School of Visual Arts. They were a fellow at the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust and held various research and administrative roles at Hunter College, Sotheby’s, and Art21. Mayer holds an M.A. and Advanced Certificate in Curatorial Studies from Hunter College, and a B.A. from New York University.

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About the artists:

Born and based in Brooklyn, NY, visual artist Jayden Ashley (b. 2002) explores the vacuum between Black experiences and external perceptions of Blackness. Ashley has been an artist-in-residence at multiple programs around the world, including the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY (2025), Foundation House in Greenwich, CT (2024), and Casa Belgrado in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023). Notable group exhibitions include Threaded Visions at BWAC Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2025) and Crossing Points at Galeria Azur, New York, NY (2024). Ashley is also a recipient of the Colin Chase Fellowship Fund from the Vermont Studio Center.

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Doreen Chan (b.1987, Hong Kong) is a mixed-media artist focusing on social practice. She was trained in visual communication and photography before receiving her MA in Art Education from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. In her work, Chan re-examines the tensions between interpersonal relationships and subject formation. Through collecting, selecting, and reorganizing fragments from everyday life, she explores how individuals interact with collective and personal memories. She works site-specifically on installations, public programs, virtual projects, and collaborates with a wide range of individuals using images, sculptures, objects, sounds, and performance. Chan has exhibited in institutions such as Ars Electronica Festival 2022 (Linz), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Times Museum (Guangzhou), Art Omi (New York), and Para Site (Hong Kong). In 2023, her commissioned project, Sipping Dreams, inaugurated Tai Kwun Contemporary’s V Hall. In the same year, she was listed as ArtReview China’s Future Greats. In 2021, she was an Eyebeam fellow and the 4th VH Award of Hyundai Motor Group finalist. She was also selected as Cultured Magazine’s Young Artists (2021). Chan currently lives in New York.

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Elizabeth Chang (b. 1980, Oakland, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Alameda, CA. Her work explores presence, memory, and perception through drawing, sculpture, installation, and photo-based processes. Informed by a background in psychiatry, she brings a research-driven, psychogeographic approach to questions of place, language, and emotional experience. She has exhibited in Mexico City, New York, Houston, and Philadelphia and has participated in residencies at Vermont Studio Center, NYC Crit Club/Canopy Program, and radio28cs.

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Alessandro Di Lorenzo (b. 1997) is an artist originally from Matera (Italy), now based in Paris. His work merges sculpture, drawing, installation and video, and unfolds in a hybridized space at the crossroads of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. His approach is linked to an art of metamorphosis, constantly evoking an encounter with a sensitive environment that generates new possibilities for co-dependence. His most recent works are conceived as speculative docu-fictions and are often presented as an interdependence of humans and non-humans, biological forms, modern and ancestral technologies that change composition and evolve. They provoke an investigation of certain vernacular rites and marginal realities in southern Italy, revealing the role that some alternative cosmogonies play in our society and stimulating a new understanding of the dynamics that regulate our relationship with the multiplicity of possible realities.

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Gill Gatfield holds a Bachelor of Laws and MFA (Hons) from University of Auckland. She has undertaken residencies and research at Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art NYC, Foreign Objekt Intelligence Lab, Vermont Studio Center, Poison Creek NZ, and KØN Museum Denmark. She is the recipient of NSW Government Sculpture Commission (2024), Arts Council New Zealand Global Digital New Work Grant (2023), CODAworx Creative Revolutionary (2020), VSC Sculpture Fellowship (2019), and NZ Women of Influence Awards (2019). Gatfield’s work has been exhibited in biennales, museums, and public space in Oceania, Europe and North America. Major projects have been presented at Museum of New Zealand / Wellington Sculpture Trust (2023–24), Venice Art Biennale (2022), Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin (2021–22), Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), and KØN Museum (2015), among others.

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Kimin Kim (b.1998) is a Korea-based painter currently living in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work explores botanical symbolism, historical memory, and ritualized grief, using floral elements as symbolic vessels and ritual objects. Drawing from funerary traditions and ancestral rites, his practice reflects on how visual elements can function as metaphorical signifiers that culturally encode grief and mourning. Kim’s first solo show, Supulneol (Forestwaves), opened at Nua Gallery in Seoul in 2023, followed by No Leaf Will Be Shaken at Space 776 in New York in 2024. He is currently featured in multiple group exhibitions across New York.

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Shivani Mithbaokar (b. 1993, Mumbai, India) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work constructs interior worlds intertwining decorative motifs that resemble female anatomies - where she treats the body as a landscape, to navigate its psychological states of healing and transformation using diverse materiality of wallpaper, fabrics and found objects. She received her BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design in 2018 and recently completed her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the Pratt Institute. She has shown her work at Yui Gallery (New York, NY), 440 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Greenpoint Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and Arsenal Gallery (New York, NY) amongst others. She has also participated in Zine festivals in the US and India such as MoCCA Arts Fest (New York, NY), Bombay Underground Festival (Mumbai, India), and her zines can be found at Printed Matter and Domino Books.

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Maya Smira is a multidisciplinary artist born in Israel in 1983. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (2014), a BFA in Photography from Minshar School of Art (2012), and a BA in Arts and Humanities from the Open University of Israel (2012). She also holds a teaching certificate from Kibbutzim College of Education and is a certified yoga and dance instructor. Maya has received several awards, including the LG Art of the Pixel Award and the Outset Prize for best video artist at Fresh Paint Art Fair. She has presented solo exhibitions in Israel and Shanghai, following a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and festivals.

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Giorgia Volpe is a multidisciplinary artist who has been exploring the intersections of memory, territory, and social interaction for over thirty years through public interventions, performative actions, photography, video, installations, and objects. Her practice weaves visual and affective narratives, developing series of works that transform spaces into sites of encounter and reflection. Born in Brazil and based in Quebec, she holds a BFA from the University of São Paulo and an MFA from Université Laval. Her work has been featured in more than 150 exhibitions, residencies, and public art projects worldwide, including the Lyon Biennale (Résonance), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, MAC São Paulo, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Openart in Sweden, and Contextile in Portugal. Volpe has created over twenty permanent public artworks in Quebec, seamlessly integrating them into urban spaces through programs led by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Montreal, and the City of Quebec. In 2012, she published Mues et Entrelacs with Les Éditions Sagamie. Recipient of the Videre Award for Tisser l’existant (2017) and for excellence in arts and culture (2023), she continues to expand her artistic practice with a six-month residency at NARS Foundation in New York in 2025.

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Cass Yao (b.1998,China) is a gender-fluid artist based in New York working with sculpture,performance, and new media. They hold a BFA in Interactive Media Arts from NewYork University (2023). Their sculpture and installation have been exhibited inLatitude Gallery (NY), and non-profit spaces like LIC-Arts (NY), New UncannyGallery (NY), BRIC House Gallery (NY), theBlanc Art Space (NY), etc... Inaddition to studio practice, Yao’s performance practice is grounded intheatricality and ritualism. They have directed five sculpture-based,multi-sensory performance projects at venues in New York and Baltimore and haveparticipated in multiple durational group performances at public spaces.

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Kay Yoon (1994 Seoul, Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist based between Munich and Seoul. Her practice navigates spectral zones between cultural memory, technological mediation and embodied ritual. Drawing from Korean folk traditions and inherited structures of Western modernity, Yoon investigates how cultural rituals, family histories, and ideological systems persist, transform, and mutate across temporal and geographical boundaries. Working across sound installations, performance, poetry, and spatial interventions, Yoon creates immersive environments that channel fragments of past and future through a critically nostalgic lens. Her practice interrogates how technology mediates spiritual and ceremonial experiences, uncovering new forms of ritual emerging from contemporary landscapes and questioning linear concepts of time and memory.

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Born and raised in Beijing, China, Tony Zhao received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2024. While in China, he worked as an independent curator and educator at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Zhao has exhibited internationally, including at Union Street Gallery (Chicago), Gelman Gallery (Providence), and UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing). His recent solo exhibition Lake House at A/W Space in Nanjing, China explores interior spaces and personal objects encountered in his travels, reflecting on the melancholy of the vanishing American middle class from a traveler’s perspective, offering a meditation on space and memory.

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