Meet the 2024 Residents

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, David Aliperti was immersed in nature throughout his childhood. Wild and isolated, and using materials readily found at hand, he made art from a young age by shredding paper and leaves, stacking objects to form small sculptures. Aliperti describes his upbringing in Brazil as steeped in folklore and mysticism; an experience that blurs the boundaries of the material and the spiritual realms. 

In his art practice, Aliperti explores how time spent—and communal effort in the making of an artwork—can serve to slow down the pace of the viewer’s visual experience. His series developed at SoMad, titled Mother Tree, includes sculptures molded by hand from repurposed paper paste, a very lightweight yet buildable foam composite. This material choice enables new, gravity-defying flora to ascend to an almost weightless effect. These sculptures require many hours of meditative handwork spent sculpting the numerous individual petals, leaves and stems that come together to form the whole of each sculpture. Aliperti loves for traces of that handwork via fingerprints and nail marks to remain. 

The process of making this work is intentionally labor intensive and slow. Aliperti wants to challenge viewers with the notion that a small object can contain so many hours of labor. Aliperti explores cycles of life, death, rebirth and reconfiguration in his work, and his process emphasizes the value of human connection. He views the human imprint as both tangible and ephemeral. In these patterns of repetition, he finds universality in that systems repeat on micro and macro scales across all forms of life. Aliperti takes comfort in this transience. His work does not monumentalize a sole maker, but rather encapsulates communal effort and time spent together. The work is also an invitation to the viewer to create on their own terms and to join with others collaboratively. 

To sculpt the many small clay parts that go into these pieces, Aliperti held "Grass Nights" at SoMad where community members could gather, get to know one another, and construct clay pieces alongside him. SoMad residents are encouraged to propose programming that aids in their process and makes use of the space's intention for fostering togetherness and collective creativity.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Soraya Zaman now lives and works in New York City. Identifying as queer and non-binary themselves, Zaman explores ideas of gender and sexuality in their work. Their curiosity led Zaman to document people in the trans-masculine community throughout the United States of America, culminating in the publication of their critically acclaimed 2019 book American Boys by nonprofit publisher Daylight Books. This series was also exhibited in a dynamic, public exhibition in Melbourne, Australia's Fed Square in January 2022. Fed Square is “the civic, cultural and community heart of the city as well as the gateway to the Arts Precinct.” Most recently, a selection of images from American Boys was acquired by the prestigious Bowdoin College Museum of Art to be a part of their permanent collection. 

Whereas the making of American Boys centered on travel throughout the country and photographing people in their own personal environments, the SoMad artist residency gave Zaman the opportunity to fix their practice to a single space. Granted both time and space, Zaman was able to not only to play and explore but also to hone in on the genre of still life photography. Still life photography often represents subjects at their “prime” and most “beautiful": a flower at peak bloom, fruit at its most luscious. However, Zaman’s innate curiosity led them to a study of finding the beauty and vulnerability within the unseen moments, the distorted and refracted. Zaman seeks to introduce a tension between preservation and decay. 

With the combination of a crystal bath solution and epoxy resin, Zaman individually manipulates each photograph in the series to produce an entirely unique image. The photographs emerge adorned in crystals, emulsion layers stretched and transformed. These sculptural photographs take on new layers of complexity, furthering Zaman’s exploration of time, decay, vulnerability and preservation. Zaman asks viewers to question: what is the prime of beauty? Can we find comfort in letting things sit for gradual study? How much space exists for transformation outside of the expected? 

Rotting fruit played a key role as one of Zaman's materials in this series, and they were able to experiment with it safely within SoMad's walls. The goal of each residency is to meet artists where they are and to make seemingly challenging or impractical artistry possible at SoMad.