OPEN Invitation
While we have a lot of ideas, a lot is much less than all. So we turn to you, reader, for assistance in rendering all that is possible. Each year, OPEN will host some number of exhibitions in response to proposals submitted through an online application form—we call this program OPEN Invitation. The form never closes, but due to limited capacity we suggest applying with the assumption it’s not going to work out, and then be pleasantly surprised if and when it does.
For our inaugural year, we’re hosting five artists who, in order of appearance, are called Rafay Rashid, lexi welch, Tori Hong, Sara Ahli, Sasha de Koninck. Their bios are below; more on each project will be shared down the road.
Rafay Rashid
September 2025
Rafay Rashid is a Providence-based artist working within the lineage of socially engaged and participatory art practices. His work blurs the boundaries between exhibition, performance, and collective care, often taking the form of gatherings, ambient installations, and improvised social spaces—offering a counterpoint to the commodification of self-care in contemporary life. Influenced by his work activating live-art spaces, Rashid’s ongoing project Wreck Room at AS220 transformed a gallery into a recovery-oriented rec center, featuring ping pong tables, open meetings, and modular spaces for rest and conversation. Emphasizing presence, interdependence, and everyday performance, his work invites audiences into co-authorship and sustained forms of engagement. Rashid has performed at institutions including the Whitney Biennial, Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, and Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney, often bringing elements of improvisation, music, and embodied exchange into institutional contexts. His practice foregrounds healing, play, and mutuality as essential components of aesthetic experience and reimagines the exhibition as a living social organism.
lexi welch
October/November 2025
lexi welch (b. 1991) works with image, sculpture, and sound in pursuit of the limits of representation, visibility, and selfhood. Current projects include a series of audio channels composed for subwoofers; an essay on an unrealized video about self-immolation; and a film set at the threshold to hell. Ambivalence, repetition, and homoerotics structure these inquiries. lexi holds a B.A. in Film and Electronic Arts from Bard College, an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2022.
https://www.lexiwelch.info
Tori Hong
January 2026
Positioned within queer theory and praxis, Tori Hong pursues an interdisciplinary art practice expressed through drawing, installation, social practice, textiles, and writing. Her artistic research explores the complex themes of Hmong and (North) Korean ancestry, self-determination, and collective survivance. Through diaristic investigations, Hong invites her audience to find connection with oneself, each other, and the more-than-human world. Select awards include the RISD Graduate Commons Grant Fellowship (2025), AIGA Worldstudio DxD Scholarship (2024-2025), Springboard for the Arts Hinge Arts Residency (2021), Forecast Public Art Early Career Research and Development Grant (2020), and more. Hong is currently based in Providence, RI, where she received her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025.
https://ntxoo.art
https://www.instagram.com/ntxoo.art/
Sara Ahli
Spring 2026
Sara Ahli (b. 1993) is an Emirati and Colombian-American visual artist based between Dubai and Providence, Rhode Island. Working at the intersection of sculpture, design, and embodied research, her interdisciplinary practice spans fashion and glass; exploring the body as a vessel for memory, transformation, and cultural inheritance. Through materially driven processes, she investigates the thresholds, limitations, and resilience of the human form.
Ahli is represented by Aisha AlAbbar Gallery in the UAE. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, Glass, 2024) and the California College of the Arts (BFA, Fashion Design, 2015). Her curatorial work explores how nontraditional spaces can become cultural venues for deeper public engagement, bridging art and everyday life.
https://www.saraahli.com
https://www.instagram.com/sara.aahli/
Photo by Raheed Allaf
Sasha de Koninck
Summer 2026
Sasha de Koninck is a visual artist, designer, and educator. While studying textiles in undergrad, she was introduced to the field of electronic textiles and wearable technology. She went straight to graduate school after completing her BFA, in order to further continue the expansion of her research. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Intermedia Art, Writing, and Performance at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she worked with Laura Devendorf and the Unstable Design Lab. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University in Boston, where she works with Laura Forlano in the Critical Futures Lab.
https://studiosdk.net