SPACES: International Artist Residency Initiative at The Village of Arts and Humanities

The Village of Arts and Humanities (the Village) will host two accomplished West African social practice artists, Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Olanre Tejuoso, during residencies in which they will collaborate with north central Philadelphia's families to design and execute a public art project. During their six- to nine-month residency, Ohene-Ayeh and Tejuoso will engage community members through facilitated dialogue inside the Village's new mobile studio, the "Fabrication Lab," to design and execute a multi-part project that will re-contextualize various forms of "space"—physical, mental, and socially-constructed. In collaboration with the community, Ohene-Ayeh will draw on Ghanaian quilting and tapestry traditions to create individual and communal narratives from discarded cloth woven into large-scale tapestries, which will be incorporated into a public installation on a false façade in the neighborhood. Tejuoso will repurpose discarded materials from the neighborhood to craft window displays along the merchant corridor, and the Village will host a series of street performances and communal dinners along the avenue to draw attention to the displays and the repurposing of extraneous waste.