On March 1, 2021, Erie Arts & Culture welcomes our third visiting artist of 2021, Rachel Libeskind. Rachel’s residency will be split into two chunks of time, with the first half of her residency spanning March 1st through the 5th. Rachel will then return to Erie on the 10th and continue to be in residence with Erie Arts & Culture through March 22nd.
In early 2020, Erie Arts & Culture launched a visiting artist residency program in collaboration with Long Road Projects. Through this program, Erie Arts & Culture and Long Road Projects provide contemporary artists with dedicated time and space to reflect, research, and create new bodies of work – outside of their usual environments. This program also creates opportunities for new perspectives and creative processes to be shared, which in turn positively impacts the cultural and creative landscape in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
This visiting artist residency program is made possible through the generous support of a privately funded grant from The Erie Community Foundation.
Rachel Libeskind is a multi-disciplinary artist, often merging her installations and performances with her studio practice. Born in Milan and raised in Berlin, Rachel is now based between New York and Berlin, Germany. She holds a B.A. with honors from Harvard University.
Rachel is an artist who is constantly pushing the boundaries of available mediums. She draws inspiration from themes both personal and public, creating a body of work that intelligently marries historical and contemporary notions of identity, gender, re-appropriation, and reproduction - creating a situation where social commentary and materiality go side by side.
Rachel has presented solo exhibitions, installations, and performances at Center for Jewish History (New York, NY), Watermill Center (Long Island, NY), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Bombay Beach Biennale (Combay Beach, CA), and Mana Contemporary (Miami, FL). She has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany); Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL), Carpenter Center at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), and National Media Arts Festival of Lithuania (Vilnius, Lithuania). She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (Kaneohe, HI), The Watermill Center (Long Island, NY), and The Scuola di Grafica (Venice, Italy).
While in residence with Erie Arts & Culture, Rachel’s plan is to execute on specific elements of her practice that require printing and fabrication technologies that she does not have access to in a regular way within her personal studio in Berlin. Because Erie has long been one of the United State’s capital of fabrication, and because Rachel is relatively self-taught within a lot of the practices she employs in her work, she welcomes the opportunity to be exposed to the fabrication processes, technologies, and companies that operate as part of Erie’s industrial economy.
Rachel already has plans to collaborate with Erie-based artists and companies. During her first week in residence, Rachel will be working closely with printmaker Doug Eberthardt. In addition to being a practicing artist, Doug is also an associate professor of printmaking at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Rachel will be working with Gene Davis Sales & Service, Printing Concepts, and Organ Supply Industries during her residency.
This is Rachel’s first time visiting Erie and she looks forward to exploring a place that is new to her that is also so steeped in the history of American capitalist growth. Erie’s role as a center of immigration re-location within the US also interests Rachel. Immigrants are a demographic whose voices and narratives are important to Rachel, both personally and within her practice.
