One US-based applicant per season of the International Residency will be awarded a Full Fellowship, which covers all program fees for the season. A jury consisting of NARS staff and select art professionals review applications on the merit of artistic quality and level of need, studio practice, and the potential professional development and benefit from engaging with the NARS community. Only US-based artists are eligible to receive the Full Fellowship.
Xinan Ran is a multidisciplinary artist that creates scalable installations and public encounters, searching for the point where trauma, nihilism, and humor converge. Ranked “Highbrow and Brilliant” by New York Magazine’s Matrix (2023), she is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow, a 2024 More Art Commission Artist, and a 2024 NYSCA grant recipient.
Read more
Brooklyn based visual artist Jayden Ashley (b. 2002) explores the vacuum between Black experiences and external perceptions of Blackness. Ashley uses history, language, and iconography to juxtapose realities and perceptions of Blackness and provoke viewers to question their perceptions about race.
Read more
Gloria Fan Duan’s studio-based practice explores the aesthetic connections between nature and technology. She has exhibited internationally at Art Basel in Basel, Ars Electronica, Currents New Media Festival, and the Wrong Biennale, with projects featured in Architectural Digest, Vogue, and Vanity Fair.
Read more
Ali Kaeini's paintings and textiles, inspired by Iranian history and architecture, explore themes of memory, forgetfulness, war, and solitude. He achieves this by reproducing silhouettes of museum artifacts and recycling used fabrics. Ali earned his MFA from VCU in 2023 and was awarded the MacDowell Fellowship and VMFA Professional Award in 2024. He currently lives and works in New York.
Read more
A multi-media artist based in the American Southwest and Pakistan; Sarah Ahmad’s work confronts environmental racism. The ‘nature gap’ and the disproportionate weight of climate disaster experienced in rural and marginalized communities. Ahmad’s Sacred Geometric patterns illuminate creation’s underlying oneness. She employs public art in service of earth-centered, community healing.
Read more