Residency: 15 June – 13 July, 2026

11 July, 11.00–13.00, Open Studio, Via Brignone 18, Spoleto
12 July, 11.00–11.45, Roll Call: Spoleto (performance), Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (tickets)

We are pleased to announce that the inaugural Creative Capital x Mahler & LeWitt Studios International Residency Incubator opportunity has been awarded to Ekene Ijeoma (2019 Creative Capital Awardee). In partnership with the Musei Civici di Spoleto, the residency offers a Creative Capital Awardee the opportunity to develop their practice and incubate new work in Italy during the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi 2026.

Ijeoma is a Nigerian-American conceptual artist who researches social, political, and environmental systems to poetically expose inequities and mutually empower communities. His multidisciplinary practice spans participatory land-works, interactive light installations, and data-driven performances. They draw on Black American and African experiences, traditions, and symbols through design and technology.

As part of his residency, Ijeoma will develop a site-specific version of his ongoing work Roll Call which is based on his generative poetry series titled ‘Name Poems’. The poems apply the Nigerian tradition of naming people after virtues to the bureaucratic practice of spelling out names using phonetic alphabets. Ijeoma has developed custom text bots which generate acrostic poems: mapping the letters in participants’ names to affirmations (for example, Leonardo may output L as in libero, E as in eccezionale, O as in onesto, …).

Ijeoma explains: “The experience of spelling my Igbo names Ekene (‘give thanks’) and Ijeoma (‘safe travels’) over the phone using English names with no meaning (‘Echo, Kilo, Echo, November, Echo’), inspired me to replace them with affirmations. Now I’m a happier caller.” During his residency, Ijeoma will research the names, dialects and idioms of the Umbrian region to develop a new bot which will generate poems that speak to the local community.

Ijeoma continues: “Roman-Catholicism institutionalised virtue naming in Nigeria and now I’m ritualising it in Italy. I’m interested in how social systems can serve as instruments for harmonising communities across cultural and political boundaries. In this performance, I’ll improvise with machines and various logics to bend bureaucracy towards self-discovery.” Participants will be invited to add their names to the attendance list for Roll Call: Spoleto. The performance will take place on the final Sunday of the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi (July 12, venue tbc). Ijeoma says: “On this Sunday, I will turn spelling into a blessing, gifting the community with an uplifting way of relating to their names and identities.”

Artist website

Ekene Ijeoma Ijeoma’s recent and ongoing projects include his Black Forest initiative planting thousands of trees across the US and transforming landscapes into living memorials addressing racial and environmental injustice. His immersive light installation Breathing Pavilion uses sychronised illumination to guide collective breathing, while Deconstructed Anthems is a series of jazz performances and installations in which musicians deconstruct ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ note by note, reflect increasing rates of incarceration, and ending in silence. In each of these, abstract data is converted into shared sensory experiences fostering awareness and collective engagement. Ijeoma’s work has been presented by Boston Public Art Triennial (2025), Bloomberg Philanthropies (2025), Dutch Design Week (2025), Getty PST Art (2025), Onassis Foundation (2024), Van Alen Institute (2022), the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis (2021), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2020), Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (2020), The Arts Club of Chicago (2019), The Kennedy Center (2019, 2017), Annenberg Space for Photography (2016), Neuberger Museum of Art (2016), Storefront for Art and Architecture (2015) and Museum of Modern Art (2015). His work has also been supported by Architectural League of New York (2025), Opportunity Agenda (2025), Community Engagement (2025), MIT Media Lab (2018–2024), New York Foundation for the Arts (2022, 2016), New York State Council on the Arts (2021), Creative Capital (2019), Map Fund (2019), Wave Farm (2018), and The Kennedy Center (2017). He studied at the Domus Academy, Milan IT (2009) and the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY (2006).

Creative Capital x Mahler & LeWitt Studios International Residency Incubator Program Open to Creative Capital Awardees (awarded between the years of 2000 to 2025) the residency is intended to invest in the long-term development of an artist’s practice by helping them to incubate experimental, innovative ideas. The award is open to artists of any discipline (visual arts, performing arts, film, literature, technology, and beyond)Residents benefit from the programs’ unique setting, expert curatorial and production support, as well as the opportunity to present work-in-progress in partnership with the Musei Civici di Spoleto during the Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi 2026. The jury comprises a panel of experts from Mahler & LeWitt Studios and Saverio Verini, Director of the Musei Civici de Spoleto.

Creative Capital Foundation Creative Capital Foundation’s mission is to defend and foster artistic freedom of expression by funding individual artists creating innovative new works through a national, open call grant program. Creative Capital is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that fundraises every dollar for its grants and programs for artists.

Musei Civici di Spoleto Spoleto’s museum network offers a comprehensive overview of the historical- cultural heritage of the city and region, which has national and international significance. The director is Saverio Verini (formerly MACRO and Fondazione Memmo). There are ten museums under its remit. These include the Palazzo Collicola: an important collection of 20th century and contemporary visual art with works by Sol LeWitt, Alberto Burri, Beverly Pepper, Alexander Calder, among many others.

Mahler & LeWitt Studios Set around the former studios of stone sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of Gustav and Alma, and pioneering conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, since 2015 the Mahler & LeWitt Studios has provided research and development opportunities for curators, writers and artists of all disciplines, particularly those who may benefit from phases of experimentation and creative dialogue with peers. The program offers ongoing support through its Special Projects and Publications programs, with the intention of bringing new work, developed during our residencies, to local and international audiences.