Akira Ikezoe: ARTnews

Akira Ikezoe by Christopher Garcia Valle/ARTnews

EFA Studios Member Akira Ikezoe is named This Spring’s Breakout Star by ARTnews.

“[Akira] Ikezoe’s attempts to remake the universe according to his own absurdist logic have earned him many admirers this spring, thanks to his simultaneous appearances in two prestigious New York shows: the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1’s Greater New York, a recurring survey for artists based in the city. He is one of just two artists in both of those exhibitions, the other being Taína H. Cruz.

Appearing in both shows would be a career-making moment for any artist, but it’s all the more notable in Ikezoe’s case because he was not so well-known in New York before, despite having steadily shown in the city since he moved from Tokyo in 2010. He doesn’t even have a New York gallery. Instead, he is represented by Proyectos Ultravioleta, a beloved commercial space in Guatemala City that is known for spinning artists with small but loyal followings into biennial-circuit superstars. Ikezoe seems poised for that exact trajectory, with his current showings after he was included in the 2025 Sharjah Biennial alongside artists such as Wael Shawky, Richard Bell, and Raven Chacon.”

Laura Anderson Barbata & Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe: Wayamou: Common Tongues

EFA Studio Member Laura Anderson Barbata is part of a two-person exhibition alongside Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. Wayamou: Common Tongues is now on view at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.

On view through May 10, 2026
Museo Tamayo
Paseo de la Reforma 51
Bosque de Chapultepec
Miguel Hidalgo
C.P. 11580

The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, through Museo Tamayo, presents Wayamou: Common Tongues, an exhibition that foregrounds the work of ACT lecturer Laura Anderson Barbata and her longstanding artistic dialogue with Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. Bringing their work together for the first time, this exhibition highlights Barbata’s sustained commitment to reciprocity, intercultural exchange, and ecological and spiritual worldviews that challenge the territorial and colonial crises threatening ecosystems and vernacular cultures.

Since her first journey to Mahekoto-Teri (Platanal) in Venezuela’s Amazonas State in 1992, Barbata has centered her practice on the exchange of knowledge. During that formative visit, she learned the art of canoe making from the Ye’kuana community and, in return, led a handmade papermaking workshop for young people and children from neighboring communities. Among the participants was a young Yanomami, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, who would go on to become an artist following this experience. This foundational moment established a shared trajectory rooted in dialogue, mutual learning, and respect for ancestral knowledge systems.

Over the decades, Barbata has developed a transdisciplinary practice that moves fluidly between art, activism, pedagogy, and community collaboration. Her work engages deeply with questions of ecology, spirituality, language, and collective memory, often through long-term projects embedded within specific communities in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, the United States, and Mexico. One of her most significant ongoing initiatives, Transcommunality (2001–present), brings together stilt dancers, artists, and artisans from Mexico, New York, and the Caribbean, creating networks of solidarity and shared cultural expression across borders.

Image courtesy of Museo Tamayo

Keren Anavy: Floating in Three Acts

EFA Studio Member Keren Anavy is giving a walkthrough on April 8 for her landmark solo exhibition, Floating in Three Acts.

On view through April 30, 2026
Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY Old Westbury
Route 107, Old Westbury, NY 11568

Wednesday, April 8, 2:40–4:20 pm
Exhibition Walkthrough with the artist and Gallery Director Hyewon Yi, PhD

Thursday, April 30, 2:40–4:10 pm
Live Intervention: Performance by students of artist Marcela Torres

Spanning 2,500 square feet across three interconnected gallery spaces, the exhibition unfolds as an immersive, site-specific environment integrating drawing, painting, printmaking, laser cutout, sculpture, video, and sound.

Rooted in Anavy’s transnational experience as an immigrant artist, the exhibition traces a deeply personal narrative shaped by memory, identity, and nature. Created in the shadow of profound personal loss, the work reflects on fragility, creation, and the shifting boundaries between a gaze inward and outer worlds. Structured in three acts: Garden, Ocean, and Water Channels, the exhibition uses water as a central metaphor for reflection, transformation, and ecological vulnerability, guiding viewers through states of cultivation, submergence, and drift.

Image: Work by Keren Anavy. Credit JSP Art Photography

Janet Loren Hill at Tephra ICA

EFA Studio Member Janet Loren Hill is part of a two-person exhibition with Andrew Casto at Tephra ICA.

March 14 – July 25, 2026
Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art
12001 Market St #103, Reston, VA 20190

The exhibition brings together Hill’s shaped paintings and Casto’s ceramic and mixed-media vessel forms in a dynamic dialogue between painting and sculpture, the absurd and the sublime. Hill’s work features surreal figures navigating layered environments that trace histories of labor, coercion, and rupture, while Casto’s materially driven vessels draw from geological processes to reflect on environmental change and disruptions to everyday life.

Image: Janet Loren Hill, Company Town: Where Truths Are Made Correct (Snailbrook, TX), 2025, Gouache on paper, 22 x 30 inches.

Nazli Efe: 2025 AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum

EFA Studio Member Nazli Efe, named a 2025 AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum!

Nazli’s interdisciplinary work explores Water, memory, and the unconscious, using alchemical processes like pouring molten wax into Water to create evocative, ever-changing forms. Her installations, sculptures, and performances transform materials into preserved fragments of personal history.

Image: Nazli Efe, 'Kanlica (My Grandfather’s House),' 2022, IV bags, IV pole, mulch, silicon tubing, Water, beeswax, oil sticks, acrylic, resin, photographs, found objects from nature, glass containers, aquarium pump, chains, metal wire, 79 x 87 x 63 in.

© Courtesy of Federico Savini

Cecile Chong: NYSCA Grant Recipient

EFA Studio Member Cecile Chong, together with Tao Leigh Goffe as part of their collaborative project Broken China, has received a Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support their creative work.

Sponsored by The Old Stone House, this grant will help fund their upcoming exhibition, Splintered Family Frames: Diaspora Albums, which continues their exploration of memory, identity, and cultural heritage.

On top of that, Cecile Chong has received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2026.