Maybe–map(ping) dissonance

About the Curatorial Fellow:

Dylan Seh-Jin Kim currently serves as theInstitutional Giving Coordinator at Independent Curators International, theCuratorial Fellow at NARS Foundation, a participant in the InterdisciplinaryArt and Theory Program (IATP), a Bandung Resident at Asian American Arts Alliance& MoCADA. He has organized and worked on exhibitions and programs at MoMAPS1, Protocinema, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, Unclebrother, Tutu Gallery, NARSFoundation, Columbia University, brownstones, restaurants, and elsewhere. Hereceived a B.A. in Philosophy and Film and Media Studies from ColumbiaUniversity.

About the artists:

Jen Aitken is based in Toronto,Canada. She makes sculptures that combine perceptual ambiguity with structuralclarity. She uses common industrial materials to create unidentifiable formsabout intimacy, syntax, and bodily space. Aitken completed her MFA in 2014 atthe University of Guelph, Ontario, and her BFA in 2010 at Emily CarrUniversity, Vancouver. Aitken was featured in the 2020 Women to Watchexhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. Shepresented her first institutional solo show at The Power Plant, Toronto in2023, titled The Same Thing Looks Different, which was accompanied by anexhibition catalogue. Her first large-scale public sculpture was installed atthe new headquarters of the National Bank of Canada, Montreal, in 2023.Aitken’s work is in public collections across Canada, including the Art Galleryof Ontario and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Sheyda Azar (Persian: شیدا آذر,she/they) is a NY-based cross-disciplinary artist who materializes theinterplay between bodily autonomy and control across sculpture, performance,and installation. They explore ideas of resistance, power dynamics, andtransformation through a visual language grounded in ritualism and BDSM. Bycreating immersive, sensorial, and process-driven scenarios and experiences,Sheyda subverts male-oriented practices and targets the systemic violencelong-imposed on womxn and marginalized bodies. Sheyda holds a BFA in paintingand has earned MFAs in Studio Arts from UNC Chapel Hill in 2021 and Sculptureand Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2023. They have shown work ingalleries, artist-run spaces, and non-profit institutions internationally.Sheyda has received several fellowships and residencies, including the VermontStudio Center and NARS Foundation.

Philippe Caron Lefebvre (b. 1986, Canada) is aFrench Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist. He spent his youth in thedense forests of the Laurentian Mountains, north of Montreal, Canada. Drawn bynature's mysteries and the impact of humans on wildlife, he has connected deeplyto his roots while dreaming of alternative lifestyles. Initially apprenticed toa ceramist, he then completed his undergraduate degree at UQÀM, followed by aMaster's degree in sculpture from Concordia University. He has participated invarious artist residencies, including Atelierhaus Salzamt (Austria, 2022),Fondation La Napoule (France, 2022), Art OMI (USA, NY, 2019), and Banff Centre(Canada, 2018). His work has been exhibited in Japan, Italy, Mexico, the UnitedStates, and Canada.

Beatrice Côté (Montreal, Canada) is apainter and ceramicist whose work draws from the play of color in her dailylife. She captures incidental moments and overlooked urban spaces—front yards,gardens, balconies. Through detailed and blurred gestures, Côté explores tracesof human presence within nature and architecture, reflecting a call forpreserving environmental and cultural heritage.

Lafina Eptaminitaki is a visual artist,architect, and poet from Crete, Greece, based in New York. She holds an MDes(with Distinction) from Harvard University, an MA from the Royal Danish Academyof Fine Arts, and an MArch (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Thessaly.Professionally, she has collaborated with the Guggenheim Museum, Storefront forArt and Architecture, and MOS Architects, contributing to various exhibitions,installations, objects, and publications. Lafina has received several grants,awards, and residencies, and has exhibited internationally, including at NewYork Live Arts, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, 11th and 10th Biennale inAthens, 6th Architecture Triennale, AIA Architecture Conference in Las Vegas,Milan Furniture Fair, et al. Currently, she teaches at Syracuse University.

Ian Ha was born in Norfolk, Virginia, grew upin Yong-in, South Korea, and currently has a studio practice in New York. Hanavigates on disjointed fragmented information processing and the dynamicneural networks of the post-internet generation, reflecting an intricateassemblage of personal narratives created from external stimuli. Ha works inpainting and printmaking, mounted within non-traditional structures to stagemultidimensional spatial illusions. Ha uses nested shapes such as the sphericalwheel and the cutout book cover, and repurposed objects such as the pianohinge. Ha received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2024and the TAKIFUJI Art Award in 2021. His exhibitions include "TheUncanny" (solo, 2022) at Rabbit & Tiger, Seoul, "Shifts andEchoes'' (duo, 2023) at Fragment Gallery, New York, and “Butterfly Dream"(group, 2024) at A-Lounge Gallery, Seoul.

Ali Kaeini earned his MFA fromVirginia Commonwealth University in 2023. In 2024, he received the MacDowellFellowship and was also a recipient of the VMFA Professional Award. In 2023, hewas awarded the Hamiltonian Fellowship and the VCCA Artist of Color Fellowship.He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2019. Hiswork has been exhibited in solo and group shows across the U.S. and the MiddleEast, including at DDDD in New York, Delgosha Gallery in Tehran, and theVirginia Museum of Contemporary Art (VMOCA). He currently lives and works inNew York, NY.

Woojae Kim is a Korean artist andwriter living on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam, andTsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, Canada). His works explore rituals ofinterdependency and listening to inaudible frequencies of relationships withnon-humans and the land. His work has recently been exhibited at Artspeak,Access Gallery in Vancouver, and Dreams Comma Delta in Ladner. His texts werepublished in the Canadian Art and the Capilano Review. Kim received an MFA fromMilton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. He was longlisted forthe Sobey Art Award 2023.

Jung Won Lee (b. Seoul, Korea) is anartist based in Brooklyn and Seoul. She celebrates the poetics of vulnerabilityby creating ambiguous, unreliable objects. Primarily working in sculpture,installation, and drawing, her practice aims to build structures for care. Leeholds a BFA in General Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art(MICA) and a BA in Media Studies and Korean Language and Literature from EwhaWomans University. She has exhibited at Current Space, Gateway Gallery,Middendorf Gallery, and Sheila & Richard Riggs Gallery in Baltimore, MD.

Jieun Lim is a Korean artist based inDuesseldorf, Germany and Seoul, South Korea. She studied fine arts at theKunstakademie Duesseldorf, where she received her diploma and Meisterschueler.In Korea she holds a BFA in painting from Hong-ik University in Seoul. Herworks have been internationally exhibited including K21 Museum of ContemporaryArt in Duesseldorf, Gallery Ermes-Ermes in Rome, IKOB Museum of ContemporaryArt in Eupen, Belgium, Gallery LC Queisser in Tbilisi, Georgia, Museum of ArtSolingen, Germany, Philara Collection in Düsseldorf, Shinhan Gallery, Seoul,Bangkok Biennale, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Studio in Chiangmai, and many others.Her works can be found in the collections of the IKOB Museum of ContemporaryArt and the New collection of Academy Gallery, Duesseldorf.

Letizia Scarpello (Pescara, 1989) is amultidisciplinary artist. She was born in Italy, where she received her MFA inSet and Costume Design for Theatre from Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan(2015). The artist is interested in the fusion of fiction with reality, inrepresentation as realisation, in a relationship of continuity with existing.This is why Letizia Scarpello often works for ephemeral installations,specifically conceived for a place in its historical moment, pursuing a visionthat espouses ecology (understood as the reduction of dependence on matter) inartistic creation. She uses, however, a multifaceted language that inabstraction maintains a pictorial background, thanks to the manual techniquethat inherits its nobility from her family upholstery and weaving's history. LetiziaScarpello's awards include the Piero D'Amore Art Prize (Turin, 2022), theWinzavod Center for Contemporary Art AIR Award promoted by the ItalianInstitute of Culture (Moscow, 2021), and the Santa Rita Prize promoted byAzienda Speciale PALAEXPO (Rome, 2021). Notable residencies include the NARSFoundation, New York (2024), the Highlights by The Blank Contemporary Art,Bergamo (2018), and the Via Farini AIR, Milan (2016). The artist has exhibitedin galleries and institutions (such as A Pick Gallery, Turin in 2024, LabsContemporary Gallery, Bologna in 2023, Monitor Gallery, Pereto in 2021, SalaSanta Rita, as part of PalaExpo, Rome in 2021, Triennale, Milan in 2016) andunusual locations (such as the Corralejo Waterpark, Fuerteventura in 2021, andMacao Social Center, Milan in 2018).

Sao Tanaka (b. Tokyo, Japan) is basedin New York City. She holds a BFA in Japanese painting from Tama ArtUniversity, an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from Hitotsubashi Universityand studied at the School of Visual Arts. Her works have been internationallyexhibited, including at Mizuma & Kips Gallery in New York, BunkamuraGallery in Tokyo, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima.Tanaka has received the Fellowship of the Pola Art Foundation Overseas StudyProgramme, the Hiraizumi Curator Jury Prize, SHIBUYA ART AWARDS 2019, WinningSelection Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art "Open Call for ArtProject Ideas 2018,” and the Grand Prize at the 5th 21st Century Asia DesignCompetition from Kyoto University of Art.

Jeehee Yoo (b. Seoul, Korea) is amultidisciplinary artist in New York. She holds an MFA in Mount Royal School ofArt from the Maryland Institute College of Art, a Post-Baccalaureate inPainting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA in KoreanPainting, and a double major in History of Art from Ewha Womans University inSeoul. Her diverse educational background, seamlessly merging Koreantraditional elements with contemporary perspectives. Her work has beenexhibited at various places, most recently in the Nars Foundation ResidencyProgram. Her open studio has been reviewed by Isa Farfan in Hyperallergic andinterviewed in the New Visionary Magazine.

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