Light Work continues remote work, changes Artist In-Residence program

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Steven Molina Contreras expects Light Work’s 2021 Artist in-Residence Program to include a lot of conversations over Zoom.

Molina Contreras, who recently finished his undergraduate degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology, is now a participant in the program. Light Work, a nonprofit photography organization at Syracuse University, aims to give exposure to a diverse set of artists.

“It’s a wide age range,” said Dan Boardman, the lab manager at Light Work. “It’s young artists who are just starting their careers and just leaving their graduate program, and it’s also artists who have been around for a long time but maybe have been underrepresented or are still emerging in their field.”

Light Work has contended with many issues brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Access to its lab and exhibitions in Watson Hall has been limited since March. The Artist in-Residence program, in which participants come to Syracuse and access the photo lab on campus, has moved online.

Despite the shift, Light Work has made accommodations to the program to make it more accessible remotely.

“Our caution is that we are navigating people coming here,” said Cjala Surratt, communications coordinator for Light Work and its Urban Video Project. “It’s difficult to have people come here, but then for 14 days, they have to be in quarantine, so that cuts into a great deal of time they can work in the lab.”

In addition to offering work space for the participants, Light Work funds artists through a $5,000 grant and also acts as a community space. The organization wanted to ensure it provided the program’s grant to participants, Surratt said.

“We heard from them that they were missing the community and missing the opportunity to continue their work,” Surratt said. “(They) really wanted to be afforded the opportunity to have support for whatever the project they were working on.”

Molina Contreras already has a plan on what to do with the program’s resources: he’s planning to build his own archive.

The archive would include Molina Contreras’ project “Adelante,” which is about his family, who is from El Salvador. Being unable to come to Syracuse will allow him to focus more on similar projects, he said.

“The core of my practice is a lot about thinking about my family’s immigration experience and just really thinking about how that has shaped and continues to shape our relationships with each other and towards America,” he said.

Many other residency programs have shuttered due to the pandemic, but Light Work is set on supporting artists, Surratt said. As of now, Light Work plans to operate remotely for the 2022 season unless there are drastic changes in COVID-19 restrictions in both New York state and at SU.