Bushwick Gallery 22 Fayette Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 11206
June, 2026
Public Showcase: June 26, 2026
Throughout June, Bushwick Gallery has operated as an active working studio. Studio Summer centers on process, experimentation, material exploration, and sustained time inside the gallery environment.
The 2026 resident artists are Vedika Chauhan and Marleigh Belsley.
Over the course of the month, each artist has used the space to develop new work while expanding the language of their practice.
Vedika Chauhan’s work is rooted in color, feeling, and the unseen emotional worlds that art can make visible. Her practice returns often to blue, drawn from the sea, stars, memory, melancholy, and midnight. During the residency, Chauhan has explored water, reflection, and the relationship between the ephemeral and the eternal through abstract works that move between stillness, wonder, and imagination.
Marleigh Belsley’s practice examines the relationship between digital technology, image-making, sound, and the environment. Working across video, photography, sound, cyanotype, collage, and 16mm film, Belsley investigates how images are captured, interrupted, transformed, and held in time. Her work asks viewers to slow down, look closely, and consider the unstable boundary between preservation and disappearance.
Studio Summer brings together two artists whose practices are deeply attentive to water, light, reflection, memory, and transformation. While their approaches differ, both artists use process as a way to make visible what is often fleeting, hidden, or difficult to hold.
The residency culminates in a one-night public showcase on June 26. The presentation reflects a month of active inquiry, experimentation, and risk taking inside the studio.
Throughout June, Bushwick Gallery transformed into a space of observation, experimentation, and material exploration. This year’s residency brings together two artists whose practices investigate movement, transformation, and the ways we experience the world through images, memory, and perception.
For Vedika Chauhan, the residency became an exploration of water, reflection, and the emotional resonance of color. Across a three-piece painting series inspired by reflections on water, abstract forms and shifting blues capture fleeting moments of light that appear briefly before dissolving. Her accompanying diptych examines the relationship between sea and sky through two distinct shades of blue. One canvas holds stars, the other fish, creating a quiet dialogue between permanence and movement, distance and intimacy. Throughout her work, blue functions as both subject and atmosphere, connecting dreams, memory, melancholy, and wonder.
Marleigh Belsley’s residency projects investigate how images are recorded, interrupted, preserved, and transformed. Her four-channel video installation To Be Frozen explores states of suspension through iceberg imagery, hand-painted 16mm film, cyanotypes, and layered glass surfaces that fracture and obscure visibility. The accompanying still works extend these ideas, holding motion in place and asking viewers to linger between disappearance and preservation.
Several works focus on water as both material and metaphor. Between Sky and Sea uses direct animation on 16mm film made with ink and river water to blur distinctions between reflection and reality, while To Be Grounded in Fluid combines cyanotype chemistry, rainwater, watercolor, and ink to position environmental conditions as active collaborators in the creation of the image. In Back to the Idea of Release, Belsley draws parallels between photography and photosynthesis, using natural dyes and direct animation to explore how images absorb, transform, and release information over time. Her mixed-media work I Read Somewhere That Trees Get Lonely Too extends this inquiry into questions of memory, duration, and connection through photographic collage, bark, and repeated acts of re-photographing.
Although their approaches differ, both artists share an interest in what resists permanence. Water, reflection, memory, light, and transformation appear throughout the exhibition as recurring motifs. Chauhan approaches these themes through abstraction and emotional atmosphere, while Belsley investigates them through photography, film, and material process. Together, their works invite viewers to consider how moments are held, altered, and ultimately released.
Studio Summer reflects Bushwick Gallery’s commitment to supporting artistic development through time, experimentation, and dialogue. The works on view are not simply finished objects but evidence of a month spent pursuing questions, testing materials, and allowing new directions to emerge.
Non-Commercial Programs
This residency is part of Bushwick Gallery’s non-commercial programming. These initiatives prioritize artistic development, visibility, and experimentation rather than sales. Works presented within these programs are not offered for purchase.
For residencies, curated showcases, and other non-commercial opportunities, there are no participation fees. These programs are designed to provide artists with meaningful opportunities to develop and present their work without financial pressure or commercial expectation.
Bushwick Gallery is committed to expanding access to artistic opportunities across social, cultural, and economic backgrounds. These programs are grounded in accessibility, equity, and the belief that creative potential exists far beyond traditional barriers.