Source: Abrons Arts Center

Reported By: Matthew Kennedy

Abrons Arts Center, a leading home for interdisciplinary arts in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has announced its 2025–26 Performance AIRspace residents: Shamar Watt and Cherrie Yu. Supported by the Jerome Foundation, the program provides early-career artists with resources to develop ambitious performance projects. Each resident receives a commission fee and dedicated access to Abrons’ studios and theaters, culminating in a premiere presentation during the 2026–27 season.

Designed to support experimental voices in performance, the residency underscores Abrons’ ongoing commitment to empowering artists who expand the boundaries of form and storytelling.

Interdisciplinary artist Shamar Watt works at the intersection of sound, movement, and visual art, probing what he describes as the “entanglements of liberation.” By oscillating and modulating feedback noise, Watt creates temporal “phantoms” that immerse audiences in multi-sensory environments. His exploration of how sound can be visualized and how movement resonates sonically challenges traditional notions of performance.

Watt’s practice is steeped in Black radical archetypes and traditions. His movement language blends the physical intensity of Krump, the ritual gestures of Pentecostal pantomime, animist forms from the maroons of Accompong, Jamaica, and the profound physicality of Butoh. Sonic influences range from dub-techno and experimental electronic music to drone soundscapes and tribal rhythms. With what he terms “spiritual entertainment,” Watt aims to forge new pathways for human connection and transformation.

Born in Xi’an, China and based in the United States, Cherrie Yu is a choreographer and multimedia artist whose work spans film, writing, installation, and live performance. Her practice investigates the transmission of embodied knowledge, the functions of the archive, and the role of the artist as amateur.

Yu’s past projects include dance films, documentaries, and lecture-performances, often created in collaboration with both artists and non-artists. She holds a BA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her residencies include Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, MacDowell, Kala Art Institute, and Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, with exhibitions at ICA Maine, Stove Works, Prismatic Ground Film Festival, Essex Flowers Gallery, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Pageant Space.

As a program of the historic Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Arts Center is dedicated to ensuring that access to the arts remains integral to civic life. Founded in 1893 by Lillian Wald, Henry Street Settlement provides services to more than 60,000 New Yorkers annually across social services, health care, and arts programming. With a staff of nearly 850 and deep ties to its Lower East Side community, the Settlement continues to challenge the effects of urban poverty while cultivating spaces for creativity and cultural dialogue.

Through initiatives like the Performance AIRspace residency, Abrons Arts Center reinforces its role as an incubator for bold, original voices. By supporting Watt and Yu, the institution signals its commitment to nurturing artists whose work engages deeply with liberation, memory, and the possibilities of performance.