Residency Exhibition: 2024-26 New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship

June 12–August 2, 2026

2024–26 New York Community Trust Van Lier Visual Art Fellows Cyle Warner, kiarita, and Megan Mi-Ai Lee present a culminating exhibition marking the conclusion of their two-year residency at Abrons Arts Center.

While their practices diverge in material and approach, the Fellows share an impulse to connect meaningfully with memory and place. Across the exhibition, Caribbean breeze blocks, found furniture, and a Las Vegas karaoke bar emerge as points of departure through which each artist explores their evolving subjectivities.

Alongside work by the Fellows, the exhibition includes artworks curated by the Fellows from Abrons Visual Artist AIRspace Residency alumni baseera khan (2016–17), Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. (2019–20), and Park McArthur (2013–14), who serve as Fellowship mentors.

Curated by Ali Rosa-Salas, Director of Abrons Arts Center. Exhibition design by Anzia Anderson.

Opening Reception

  • Jun 12 June 12

  • Jun 30 June 30

  • Jul 9 July 9

    6pm Workshop with Megan Mi-Ai Lee

    Tickets

  • Jul 31 July 31

    6pm Workshop with Cyle Warner

    Tickets

Megan Mi-Ai Lee, 20 Tourists, 2025. Courtesy of Afternoon Projects.

Artist Workshop Series

kiarita

kiarita is a Brooklyn-based artist of Caribbean descent utilizing found furniture to honor moments of intimacy with their found family. Their practice engages with sustainability, rest as resistance, and alternative practices of care. They are a current Bronx AIM and Van Lier Trust fellow, and have received honors from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation & Sylvia Lipson Allen Memorial Fund. They have participated in numerous group shows nationality, although primarily showing in New York.

Cyle Warner

Cyle Warner (2001, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist of Afro-Caribbean descent whose practice engages with space, place, time, and distance in relation to the past and how we choose to move forward outside of contemporary values, an idea he refers to as Dis. Working across fiber, photography, and sculpture; he creates compositions that consider notions of home, care, and the creation & preservation of new myths. Warner attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art in 2022, and he earned a BFA in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts in 2023. Warner has exhibited at Regular Normal, New York, New York (2020, 2021); Oolite Arts, Miami, Florida (2022); Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal, Canada (2022); Welencora Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2022, 2023).

Megan Mi-Ai Lee

Megan Mi-Ai Lee is an interdisciplinary artist based in Queens whose work explores the ways fantasy diffuses through popular culture. Recent exhibitions include White Columns, online (2024); Cierah, New York, NY (2024); Pumice Raft, Toronto, ON (2024); Room 3557, Los Angeles, CA (2023); the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens, NY (2022); and Art Lot, Brooklyn, NY (2022). Lee has held residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art, Storm King Art Center, and Smack Mellon, and was the 2018 Curatorial Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park. She is a two-time Canada Council for the Arts grantee and received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2018.