NYC Artist Safe Haven Residency Program

The Artist Safe Haven Residency Program is designed to house and nurture international artists who are persecuted on the basis of political affiliations, ethnic, locational, religious, and/or gender-based persecution; forcibly displaced; artists who need a respite from dangerous situations; or artists from countries experiencing active, violent conflict.

This initiative is led by a coalition of organizations working to safeguard free expression, and includes Artistic Freedom Initiative, Residency Unlimited, Westbeth Artist Housing, PEN America’s Artist at Risk Connection, Tamizdat, and ArtistSafety.net.

Westbeth Artist Housing provides artists of all disciplines a residency for 6 months to two years, depending upon the requirements of the sponsoring program partners. Matthew Rutenberg of the Westbeth Board of Directors spearheaded Westbeth’s involvement in the coalition.

For more information on the NYC Artist Safe Haven Residency Program:

Artistic Freedom Initiative.com

Recent Safe Haven Artists at Westbeth:

Lama El Homaïssi Lama El Homaïssi is a Lebanese performer, writer and voiceover artist currently based in New York City. In Lebanon, she created original shows for the Sony Pictures Television Arabia and Talpa Middle East catalogs, developing commissions for clients, as well as adapting productions to the SWANA region (most notably The Voice and So You Think You Can Dance). In 2017, Lama pursued her MFA in Musical Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee where she honed her skills in acting and storytelling through song, then began developing and performing her own work for the stage. Her capstone project Article 534 was a play about queer identity, resistance and safe havens in Beirut that combined storytelling with music. The project is titled after the archaic article in the Lebanese penal code that criminalizes the LGBTQIA+ community, deeming queer relations “contrary to the order of nature” to this day.

Ahmad Fanoos, Afghan vocalist and harmonium player, has headlined live and televised performances all over the world. Winning both the Best Artist Award in Afghanistan (2008) and the Golden Voice Award in Dubai (2012), he served for three years as a coach and a judge for Afghan Star, the influential television program showcasing talented young Afghan performers that served as a catalyst for social and cultural change by spanning ethnic, language, and gender lines.
Because of his notoriety as a musician and progressive ideals, his life, livelihood, and family were threatened by the Taliban. He escaped from Kabul on a Fox News evacuation flight in the closing weeks of the US presence in Afghanistan in late August 2021. He is now reunited with his two sons, Elham Fanoos (Pianist) and Mehran Fanoos (Violinist), and has established the “Fanoos Ensemble.” The group is touring as part of a project called “Heart of Afghanistan,” telling the story of Afghanistan from its pre-Islamic Buddhist heritage through their own arrangement of traditional Ghazals based on Rumi’s poetry, songs by the legendary pop icon Ahmad Zahir, and Afghan folk songs from different ethnic groups in different dialects.

Sahraa Karimi is a film director, scriptwriter and university lecturer from Afghanistan. She is the first and only woman in Afghani history to earn a doctorate in filmmaking and to head the Afghanistan Film Organization. Karimi was forced to leave Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, due to the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban to power. Her 30 short fiction and documentary films have received awards from film festivals all over the world. Karimi’s debut feature film “Hava, Maryam, Ayesha” was shot entirely in Kabul with Afghani actors and had its world premier at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. It was Afghan’s entry to the 2019 Academy Awards. She is currently on a filmmaking fellowship with the New School Dept of Film and Media Studies and is a member of the New University in Exile Consortium Scholars. She is at work on her second feature film, “Flight from Kabul,” a co-production with Slovakia, Italy, and France. http://hava.nooripictures.com , https://vimeo.com/153122208 (pw moteshakkeram)

Alejandro De La Guerra is a multidisciplinary artist from Nicaragua who works on the aestheticization of power, collective memory, and monumental languages of public spaces. He uses performance, large-scale works, sculptures, embroideries, and relational art. He conceives of his art as a single multi-layered project driven by an exploration of violence and healing, art-activism, and relations of power in human relationships. He has participated in three Central American biennials, residencies at the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation; the Artist Protection Fund; Câmera Sete Casa da Fotografia de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; and RAPACES in Central America. alejandrodelaguerra.com and artistic freedom initiative

Achiro P. Olwoch. Achiro Patricia Olwoch hails from Gulu, in Northern Uganda. Achiro is presently completing her late father’s manuscripts that he left behind after his death in 1994. This alongside her first novel “Sex or Slave” set in 1950’s Uganda during colonialism. She is an award winning writer, director and producer for her “Coffee shop TV” series as creator and writer and “Yat Madit” as head writer, and her short films: “The Surrogate,” “The Mineral Basket,” “Maraya Ni.” She is presently working on a feature documentary “My Prison Diary” due for release in 2022. Achiro P. Olwoch website Photo: Writers Workshop.

Dieu-Nalio Chery. Haitian photojournalist. In Haiti, where the vast majority of people are illiterate, a photo is literally worth infinitely more than a thousand words: For a journalist, there is no stronger way to chronicle and convey the daily life of a nation than through photography. For the past few years, Chery has been mostly working on breaking news, dealing with human rights issues as covering violent demonstrations, illegal arrest, hungry children, homeless, hurricanes and flooding. He photographed violent evictions of people living in camps after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. When his stories were published, it raised the attention of Human Rights organizations. Artist at Risk Dieu Nalio Chery bio Photo: Mathide D Chery.

Nazanin Noroozi Born in Tehran, Iran, her work explores themes of the archive, technology and family. Noroozi’s work has been widely exhibited in both Iran and the United States, including the Immigrant Artist Biennial, Noyes Museum of Art, NY Live Arts, Prizm Art Fair, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NYFA IAP 2018, Mass MoCA Residency, and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Residency. She is an editor at large of Kaarnamaa, a Journal of Art History and Criticism. https://www.nazaninnoroozi.net

Haig Papazian A Lebanese Armenian artist, composer, and architect born in Beirut. He is a founding member and violinist of Mashrou’ Leila, the Lebanese pop band whose electro-pop anthems about political freedoms, race, and modern Arabic identity have challenged the status quo of the Middle-Eastern music industry.

Mai Khoi rose to stardom in 2010 after winning the Vietnam Television song and album of the year awards. She became increasingly uncomfortable having to submit her work to government censors and, thinking she could reform the system from within, nominated herself to run in the National Assembly elections on a pro-democracy platform. Her campaign sparked a nationwide debate about political participation and culminated in a meeting with Barack Obama.

Faten Gaddes is a photographer from Tunisia. Her interactive installation, Punching-Ball, which symbolized the violence experienced by women across different religions was attacked and burned by extremists in Tunis. Her stay here during the pandemic is captured in a series of photographs entitled  Postcards from Home.

Kanchana Ugbabe has made the transition from India to Nigeria and writes fiction based on her negotiation with the new cultural terrain. Coming from an area torn apart by ethno-religious conflict, she also explores through her writing what it means to encounter terrorism in everyday living. Kanchana comes to us from Harvard where she was a Visiting Scholar in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies.

Hadi Nasiri is an activist/artist/researcher from Iran whose work encompasses performance, painting, sculpture, graphic design, and political protest exploring themes about the relationship of religion (specifically Islam) to women’s rights, LGBTI rights, sexuality, and political ideology.

Rashwan Abdelbaki. A recipient of several residencies and fellowships, Rashwan is known for work that delves into the interplay of racism, religion, and politics through joyful colors and eye-opening portraits.

King Raam is an Iranian musician, storyteller, and actor. He started his performing career as the singer/songwriter/founder of Hypernova, a post-punk band born in the undergrounds of Tehran in the early 2000’s. After touring worldwide with Hypernova, and unable to return to Iran, Raam is developing his solo storytelling performance “Departure,” a work-in-progress.

Felix Kaputu. Accused of participating in a separatist group and of violating national security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he was subsequently detained illegally. He believes he was arrested on government orders as a warning to academics and intellectuals to remain silent. When released from prison, he found himself under constant surveillance and unable to return to the university where he had worked, decided to leave the country.