Urban Video Project

Maia Chao, 1/2 of UVP’s 2026 Residential Commission awardee, has a performance happening in tandem with the 2026 Whitney Biennial this week!

Maia Chao is a Philadelphia-based artist whose collaborative work spans social practice, performance, and video. Her commissions include The Shed, MoMA Education, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She has also presented work at the RISD Museum, Bronx Museum, Oregon Contemporary, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Boston Center for the Arts. Chao has participated in residencies at Pioneer Works, Fine Arts Work Center, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She was a 2022-23 Pew Fellow and is currently Public Artist-in-Residence at the Times Square Arts. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

In residence this July, Chao and Johnson’s () work will be on view at UVP during our 2026-27 program year.

Join Light Work for SURVIVAL GUIDE: SYRACUSE, a FREE film screening + Q&A with interdisciplinary artist Alisha B Wormsley and co-founders of Sankofa Reproductive Health & Healing Center Asteir Bey and SeQuoia Kemp at 6 p.m. next THURSDAY, 3/19 in the Everson Museum of Art auditorium!

Thank you to the The Daily Orange for this piece on Alisha B Wormsley’s new work! “The Temple of Survival” runs through May 30th at the Everson Museum of Art plaza. In conjunction with the exhibition, Wormsley will be present for a special indoor film screening and panel talk on Thursday, March 19.

Light Work’s ‘The Temple of Our Survival’ explores sanctuary, black matriarchy Light Work’s Urban Video Project’s unveiled a new installment, “The Temple of Our Survival” created by artist Alisha B. Wormsley. The projection depicts interviews with black women exploring themes of afrofuturism and black matriarchy.

EXTENDED DEADLINE APPROACHING!

We’re looking for artists to create new work for the UVP architectural projection site on the facade of the iconic Everson Museum of Art.

UVP Residential Commission artists will receive a fee of $10,000. They will also be in residence for a calendar month during the 2026-27 program year, during which they will be provided work space, facilities access, in-kind support, and accommodation in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence apartment in Syracuse, New York. The exhibition of the resulting work will take place in the following program year (2027-2028).

Click the link in our bio to find out more and to apply!

Light Work’s Urban Video Project is now accepting proposals for the 2027 UVP Residential Commission!

We’re looking for artists to create new work for the UVP architectural projection site on the facade of the iconic Everson Museum of Art.

UVP Residential Commission artists will receive a fee of $10,000. They will also be in residence for a calendar month during the 2026-27 program year, during which they will be provided work space, facilities access, in-kind support, and accommodation in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence apartment in Syracuse, New York. The exhibition of the resulting work will take place in the following program year (2027-2028).

Click the link in our bio to find out more and to apply!

Last chance to see “The Portal’s Keeper” at our architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade! This piece was created as part of the UVP Residential Media Arts Commission program, and closes on December 20th.

While in residence at Light Work in early 2025, media artists LaJuné McMillian and Manuel Molina Martagon worked with local, community-engaged creatives Kofi Antwi, Chloe Flores, Sofia Gutierrez, and Martikah Williams. Together, they discussed their practices and their visions for a liberated future.

LaJuné McMillian & Manuel Molina Martagon: “The Portal’s Keeper”

September 25 – December 20, 2025
Th – Sat, dusk – 11pm

More info at lightwork.org/uvp

Congrats to on having her film, This Side of Salina”, included in this year’s ! This film was commissioned by Light Work as part of the UVP Residential Media Commission program.

Four Black women from the gritty and tenacious city of Syracuse, New York, reflect on sexuality, youthful regret, emotional vulnerability, raising a daughter, and working in reproductive health services. In a series of their own choreographed vignettes, each woman thoughtfully engages with the neighborhoods she’s known all of her life. Two performers flip through classic 1960s titles by Black authors in a bookstore. Others sit in a hat store finding time to pour into each other, as mentors and confidantes. These are businesses that are owned by local Black women, and they know it. In Brady Market, a community grocery, they playfully shop and chat with ease and confidence. They dance to their own rhythms in the outdoor plaza of the Everson Museum of Art. Together they look down at the city from its highest point and ponder how to battle the inequities of the place that they call home.