Thoughts on art residences

First published on ololufe-collective.art Aug 18 2022

I am an multi-disciplinary artist who has no desire to get an art residence for several reasons. And I will detail them in this blog. Enjoy. 

First things first the application process. Like seriously. Applications suck. And residencies have so many conditions, theres a real level of rigidity that stares you in the face as you are applying. Some actually require you to pay to apply. It's not giving accessible to poor people. Or a neurodivergent/neurodistinct person like myself that just hates deadlines, also my self expression really be coming to me in the moment, I have no idea what I will be doing from hour to hour. So that forward planning and detailing my art project just doesn't work for someone like me. A lot of residencies also require you to apply 6 months to a year in advance, again I literally never know what could be happening in that time. Also the effort of applying and not being compensated for my work that I put into my application then to be rejected. Yeah so since a lot of applications are not open ended or compensated it ain't for me.