Tori Hong: For the Time Beings
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/
Ana Popescu + Chris Mayes-Wright
February 2026
Ana Popescu (b. 1988) is a Romanian-American artist currently living in Providence, Rhode Island. After receiving her BFA from Pratt Institute, Ana co-founded A.Pop, an immersive underground event company in NYC producing site-specific installations and live performances. In 2023, she completed a residency at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, followed by the Anderson Ranch Scholarship in 2024. Ana received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025, where she was awarded the RISD Fellowship, the Windgate Foundation Scholarship, the RISD Graduate Ceramic Award, and the Graduate Ceramic Residency.
Chris Mayes-Wright (b. 1984) is a British-born music composer, producer and audio technologist with experience in many aspects of audio applications. He is interested in the concepts of aleatoric sound, non-conventional rhythm, and using found sounds from the built and natural environments in music composition. He also has a deep working knowledge of multi-channel networked audio systems and has designed and installed immersive sound systems in New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Toronto.
https://www.anapopescu.com
Gallerie All Together with Kara Stokowski
March 2026
Gallerie All Together (GAT) is an experimental educational platform offering children and pre-teens a safe, fun introduction to the practice of curating in a gallery context. With emphasis on play, GAT promotes critical thinking, independent and collaborative decision making, and self confidence. GAT first took place at the RISD Museum in 2024.
Kara Stokowski—a long-time youth educator, DJ, curator, and community organizer in Boston and Providence—is in the process of versioning the original GAT model for a new run of events at OPEN, March 2026.
openforever.org/gallerie-all-together
Sara Ahli
April 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
June 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
FringePVD
Summer 2026
OPEN is proud to be one of many Valley Arts District organizations supporting FringePVD for their summer 2026 run. More info will be announced by The Wilbury Theater Group down the road.
Since 2014, The Providence Fringe Festival®, a.k.a FRINGEPVD, has nurtured emerging and established performing artists by presenting fun, fearless and affordable theater to the community. FRINGEPVD creates ties between artists, audiences, businesses and local organizations, amplifying the vibrancy of Providence as a renowned cultural destination and an unparalleled place to live, work, and visit. Photo: Motion State Arts
fringepvd.org
Lisa Perez
December 2026
Lisa Perez’s practice includes sculptural painting and works on paper—taking a malleable approach to form and embodying color as form over substance. Her work ebbs and flows between abstraction and landscape, bridging her practice and experiences of the wider, wilder, more-than-human world. Focusing on the importance of attentive observation and a slowing down, works offer glimpses into sensate experiences, and strive to evoke a heightened awareness of our interconnected nature.
Lisa received her MFA from the U.C., Berkeley. She has received fellowships from RISCA, Vermont Studio Center, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her work is in the permanent collections of the RISD Museum and Newport Art Museum, and Lisa has exhibited at Chazan Gallery, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY, the RISD Museum, David Winton Bell Gallery, Bristol Art Museum, The Drawing Center in NYC, Dorsch Gallery, and SCOPE, Miami.
Leah Beeferman
January 2027
Leah Beeferman makes digital images, prints, objects, and videos, records sound, and writes texts. She wants to understand the atmosphere and its movements, calculations, and shapes: the ways it makes weather forms, forms landscapes, and alters them. She flattens the weather, frames it, gives it edges. Though of course it is not possible to truly flatten the weather, to compress its four dimensions of dynamics into two. Only in images — two-dimensional, or perhaps completely dimensionless — does the weather slow to a stop, collapse to a plane. Recent solo exhibitions include Penumbra Foundation Project Space, NYC, and the Peeler Art Gallery, DePauw University, Indiana. Currently, she teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, and was the recipient of a 2016 Fulbright Scholar Grant to Finland.
Heather McPherson
February 2027
Heather McPherson's practice includes painting, drawing, and resin-based work. Emphasizing durational processes and themes of sacrality, she explores how materials record accumulation and absorption. Her recent work looks at how surfaces can carry traces of memory and affect, creating the conditions for thought to unfold while delaying resolution. An Associate Professor of studio art at Providence College, she holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from RISD. Recent shows include Giorgio at Distillery Gallery in Boston, What Would Artist Do at an abandoned storefront in Providence, Below the Thin at Take it Easy in Atlanta, and group shows at Below Grand, Kristen Lorello, and 315 Gallery in New York. She has presented previous projects with the RISD Museum, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. McPherson lives in Providence, RI.
To the Future
Closed for summer break, August 2026
Dan Neff, September 2026
Cara Giaimo, October 2026